"Excruciating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impulse to obedience in the elephant, than the patience with which, at the order of his keeper, he swallows the nauseous medicines of the native elephant-doctors; and it is impossible to witness the fortitude with which (without shrinking) he submits to excruciating surgical operations for the removal of tumours and ulcers to which he is subject, without conceiving a vivid impression of his gentleness and intelligence. Dr. DAVY when in Ceylon was consulted about an elephant in the government Stud, which ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... powers of the stomach were too weak to prevent the food from undergoing perhaps both a vinous and acetous fermentation, and where, in consequence of the disengagement of gas and the formation of acid, the most excruciating pains were felt, the most dreadful sickness experienced, and all the symptoms of indigestion present in the most aggravated state; after almost every article in the materia medica, generally employed, had been tried ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... one thing remarkable about these temperance ships, that when they arrive in harbour, their crews, excited to madness by long abstinence from their favourite liquor, and suffering in consequence all the excruciating torments of thirst, run into violent excesses the moment they get on shore. St. Jago is famous for a kind of liquid fire, called aguadente, which is smuggled on board ship in the shape of pumpkins and watermelons. These are sold to the sailors for shirts and clothing; there being nothing so eagerly ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... stairs. Admitted at length into the bureau, the old crone, spectacle on nose, proceeded very deliberately to spell over, by a feeble lamplight, the addresses of a bundle of letters taken from a shelf. The process was excruciating, anxious as we were for news from home. She could make nothing of my friend's truly Saxon name;—what foreign official can ever decipher English names? Mine was more pronounceable, and as I kept repeating both, she caught that, and, incapable as I should have thought her of making ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Sometimes it is comforting to have problems decided for one. Now I did not have to go through any excruciating pangs of conscience or guilt or fight myself into a state of not wanting one or the other of them. They had just adjusted me to the situation mentally, and I felt that everything was perfect in the best of all possible marriages ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... however minute, in the eye, is very painful; but a piece of burning lime is excruciating. Shakspeare gives a graphic description of the pain from the presence of any foreign substance, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... I did not find much to praise in the beauty of the Veronese ladies, who, less wise than those of Padua, discarded the graceful and becoming head-attire of black lace, and adopted excruciating and ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from you—that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement—but they sing the same tune in another key, and the discords are excruciating. Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the pains, borne of her struggle and of lying on the bare ground, seized her. Stiff and sore, weakened, with head throbbing and stabbing, the whole horrible adventure came back to her. She tried to rise, but she was totally helpless and her least movement gave her excruciating pain. Her head covering had been laid aside before she had begun preparation of supper the night before, and her colorless and strangely brilliant hair, all tumbled and loose, lay around her head and over her shoulders in great waves and billows, tinged with blue and red ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... salvation set to what may be described as lightly spinning dicky-bird music. Anybody could sing them, and everybody did, and the more they sang the more cheerful they looked, but not repentant. The service was composed mostly of these songs interspersed now and then with wildly excruciating exhortations from Brother Dunn to repent and believe. He explained, with an occasional "ha! ha!" how easy it was to do, and there is no denying that the altar was filled with confused young people ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... a train of unavoidable misfortunes; then, sir, though a very industrious tradesman, I was twice burned out, and lost my little all both times. I lived upon those fires a month. I soon after was confined by a most excruciating disorder, and lost the use of my limbs. That told very well; for I had the case strongly attested, and went about to collect the subscriptions myself. I was afterwards twice tapped for a dropsy, which declined into ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... tastes and inclinations most dismally; and yet, what had he henceforth to do with pleasure? But if, after he had practiced the austerity of an anchorite, she should forget him, marry another, and be happy! The thought was excruciating. O, that awful "another"! He is the fiend that drags disappointed lovers down to the lowest depth of their tortures. If Laura had had a previous favorite, Haldane would have been most happy to have her meet ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Houston suffered excruciating pain from the arm hanging helpless at his side, but he traveled forward without a murmur, scarcely conscious of his own suffering in his anxiety for Jack. The cut was comparatively short, but their ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... boots and stiff collars no pen can fitly tell. But only to one another did they confide these sufferings and the rare moments of repose when they could stand on one aching foot with heads comfortably sunken inside the excruciating collars, which rasped their ears and made the lobes thereof a pleasing scarlet. Brief were these moments, however, and the Spartan boys danced on with smiling faces, undaunted by the hidden anguish which preyed upon them "fore and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... mayest look as if thou wert; harassed as thou hast been for a number of days and nights with a close attendance upon a dying man, beholding his drawing-on hour—pretending, for decency's sake, to whine over his excruciating pangs; to be in the way to answer a thousand impertinent inquiries after the health of a man thou wishedest to die—to pray by him—for so once thou wrotest to me!—To read by him—to be forced to join in consultation with a crew of solemn and parading doctors, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... schoolroom to the prim splendours of Georgy's state chambers; and the cool lawn and shrubberies of Hyde Lodge were a hundred-fold more pleasant to her than the stiff little parterre at Bayswater, wherein scarlet geraniums and calceolarias flourished with an excruciating luxuriance of growth and an aggravating brilliancy of colour. She liked any place better than the hearth by which Philip Sheldon brooded with a dark thoughtful face, and a mind absorbed by the mysteries and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... with fiendish mirth. The sole survivor, Don Alonzo Moncada, unfolds his story to John Melmoth. The son of a great duke, he has been forced to become a monk to save his mother's honour. He dwells with the excruciating detail in which Maturin is inclined to revel, on the horrors of Spanish monasteries. Escaping through a subterranean passage, he is guided by a parricide, who incidentally tells him a loathsome story of two immured lovers. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... been the happiest man in Europe at the conclusion of peace negotiations, but for his increasing bodily infirmities, especially the gout, from which at times he suffered excruciating agonies. He was a universal favorite, admired and honored as one of the most illustrious men living. His house in Paris was the scene of perpetual hospitalities. Among his visitors were the younger Pitt, Wilberforce, Romilly, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood; I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat; What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labor in my parents' breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd; Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... he could not see, he could feel. The pain was excruciating. He closed his eyes and fell to thinking, curiously enough, that the experience was similar to what he had gone through when upon learning to swim, he had first opened his eyes under the water. It had been under a blazing ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... thought the chatterbox was tired. In all ways, however, he was in these days a very ordinary child, devoted to fairy stories, fond of the popular nursery amusement of making up plays, and charmed with the excruciating noise he brought out of a little red violin. This he would sometimes play on for hours, till even the faithful Laure would remonstrate, and he would be astonished that she did not realise ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... the neck under ground, then standing at a distance and marking at their heads with their pointed arrows; and, at other times, binding them to a tree, and piercing the tenderest parts of their naked bodies with sharp-pointed sticks of burning wood, which last, because the most painful and excruciating method of torture, was the most ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... completeness, and of naming among the conspirators his chief friend Gallus and Pollio, and his own mother Atilla. The woman Ephicharis, slave though she had once been, alone showed the slightest constancy, and, by her brave unshaken reticence under the most excruciating and varied tortures, put to shame the pusillanimous treachery of senators and knights. On the second day, when, with limbs too dislocated to admit of her standing, she was again brought to the presence of her executioners, she ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... was the reply, accompanied by groans as the fellow with excruciating effort tried to support himself on ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... first move. Your next is as follows. Every rustic-cottage contains gruesome china-ornaments and excruciating-cheap German-prints of such subjects as "The Tryst" (always spelt "The Trist" on the German print), "The Saylor's Return," "The Warior's Dreem," "Napoleon at Arcola," and so forth. Point to a china-ornament and say, "I never knew cows in this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... (as you say) the evening with your friends in ease and quiet, that now such a dreadful malady should attack you! My heart is ready to burst with grief at the thought. How many hours have I lain awake on nights thinking what excruciating pains you might then be encountering, while I, poor, useless, and worthless worm, was permitted to be at ease! Oh, that it was in my power to mitigate or alleviate the anguish I ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a terrible sight to see the varied expressions of anxiety, fear, or dogged resolution depicted in the faces of these men. Some of them knew well that death, accompanied by excruciating torture, was certain to be their portion when the bombardment should be over. Others hoped that a severe bastinado might be the worst of it. None expected anything more—even though the British should win the day—than that there would be some modification in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... My nose has become disjointed, and I would fain repair it. I am suffering excruciating torments; but don't mind me. Go on your towelled and triumphant way, and leave the noseless wretch ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... him, twitch him up and throw him down, yell and blaspheme, and use the most obscene language that mortals can conceive; they would declare that they were Christ in one breath, and devils in the next; they would tie him head to foot for a long time together in a most excruciating posture; declare they would wring his neck off because ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... ignorance of the law of silence, the universal law of the wild, deprived him of many toothsome morsels. As for the many kinds of fungus which grew upon the mountain, he knew not which were edible and which poisonous. After an experiment with one pleasant-smelling red-skinned specimen, which gave him excruciating cramps, he left the whole race of fungi ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... address of Philip, his mother appeared to be transfixed, and motionless as a statue; gradually her lips separated, and her eyes glared; she seemed to have lost the power of reply; she put her hand to her right side, as if to compress it, then both her hands, as if to relieve herself from excruciating torture: at last she sank, with her head forward, and the blood ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... men of the Sand farm had always been plagued by witchcraft. They might be working in the fields, and bending down to pick up a stone or a weed, when all of a sudden some unseen deviltry would strike them with such excruciating pains in the back, that they could not straighten themselves, and had to crawl home on all fours. There they would lie groaning for weeks, suffering greatly from doing nothing, and treated by cupping, ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the most excruciating pain in his stomach, and which continued for so long a period, that his case became desperate, and his life was even despaired of. In this predicament, the medical gentleman to whom he applied administered to him a most violent emetic, and the result was the ejection of the larva, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... Sallust represents him as addressing his army before the battle, and telling them that they were about to enter, not upon a single action, but upon a long war,—that from success, then, would follow a series of victories,—and that therein lay their only salvation from a death at once excruciating and infamous. They must, he said, live upon victory after victory,—an expression that showed he had a clear comprehension of the nature of his situation. In the battle that followed, Varinius was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... he wrote from Shippensburg: "My journey here from Carlisle raised my disorder and pains to so intolerable a degree that I was obliged to stop, and may not get away for a day or two." Again, on the eighteenth: "I am better, and partly free from the excruciating pain I suffered; but still so weak that I can scarce bear motion." He lay helpless at Shippensburg till September was well advanced. On the second he says: "I really cannot describe how I have suffered both in body and mind of late, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... happiness in the presence of the woman. Only upon Cummins had there settled a deep grief. The changes of spring and summer, bringing with them all that this desolate world held of warmth and beauty, filled him with the excruciating pain of his great grief, as if the woman had died ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... be low, quoting the wrong person, talking on the wrong subject, teasing with notice, excruciating with attentions, disturbing a tete-a-tete in order to make up a dance; wasting eloquence in persuading a man to participate in amusement whose reputation depends on his social sullenness; exacting homage with a restless eye, and not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... actions? his mind debilitated; his strength turned into weakness; unable to stir or to move without help; not one ray of hope darting in upon his benighted soul; his conscience standing in the place of a thousand witnesses; his pains excruciating; weary of the poor remnant of life he drags, yet dreading, that, in a few short hours, his bad will be changed to worse, nay, to worst of all; and that worst of all, to last beyond time and to all eternity; O Jack! what will he then think of the poor transitory gratifications ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... is insensitive to touch. Either immediately, or, it may be, not for several days, it becomes discoloured and swollen, and finally contracts and shrivels. Above the dead area the limb may be the seat of excruciating pain. The dead portion is cast off, as in other forms of dry gangrene, by the formation of a line ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... before the whole household he repeated his false story, and clung to it with a bitter effrontery that we may well call diabolic, remembering how the nervous terror of punishment and exposure sinks the angel in man. Our phrase, want of moral courage, really denotes in the young an excruciating physical struggle, often so keen that the victim clutches after liberation with the spontaneous tenacity and cruelty of a creature wrecked in mastering waters. Undisciplined sensations constitute egoism in the most ruthless of its shapes, and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... dances, and wild gesticulations. The last hour of the brave soldier seemed at hand. He strove to bring resolution to his aid, and to fix his thoughts on a happier state of existence beyond this earth, the contemplation of which might aid him to bear without flinching, a short period of excruciating pain. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... all wide open one lovely April day, the loveliest time of all the year in Southern California, filling the house with the sweetness of wistaria and orange blossoms, but also, truth compels me to add, with so many noises of such excruciating kinds that I followed Ulysses' well-known plan and then tried to find quiet for my siesta in the back spare-room. The worst of this house is that it really has no back—it has various fronts, like the war. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... sea, through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, ever tracking silently in horrid calmness; the oppression of indefinite Guilt, with that Holy Eye still watching; the consciousness of instant danger, the sense of excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague wild fear, without will or power to escape: spurring for very life on a horse of marble: flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies—O, that universal crash!—greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations of the assembled dead—that hollow, far-echoing, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... large "repayther" on her stomach, which she used to ring on all occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by her fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these ornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gave excruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the Major's came in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the honest lady's eccentricities, and not in the least ashamed ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thanked you as a friend for the warning. Instead—I refuse to believe you in your dotage after all—you make that woman spy upon me until the great moment is come, you give her the weapons and you bid her strike when the blow will be most excruciating. You are not a man. You are Satan. I parted twice from the man I love. He would not let me go, and he came back and tried to keep me—I do not know how I escaped. God helped me. He is so brave and noble that if he had held those accursed papers in ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the ravages of disease, and her color was something frightful. Still, she did not suffer as much, for her mind had overborne her body to such an extent that she had the mastery for the time, to a certain extent, of those excruciating stabs of pain. People looked at her incredulously. They could not believe that she felt as she talked, that she was as happy and resigned as she looked, but it was all true. It was either an abnormal state into which her husband's death had thrown her, or one too normal to be credited. She looked ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sort of a set out altogether, sir: three British gentlemen and a respectable servant going out for a ride in the night in a place like this a-top of these excruciating animals, along with so many silent blacks dressed in long white sheets. It all seems mad to me, sir, and as if we ought to be in bed. I fancy I am sometimes, and having uncomfortable dreams, like one does after cold boiled beef for supper, and keep expecting to wake up with a pain ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... had happened, and servants were sent out in all directions. The first conscious perception Charles had was of waking to excruciating agony, and finding himself supported on men's shoulders along the road. No doubt every one believed him still insensible, or, much as he was disliked, they would not have been so cruel as to reproach him in his ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... hands with a hearty laugh. Yet, again, while Memory was reading, Conscience unveiled her face, struck a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith and quelled his remonstrance with her iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... head seemed to tighten like a metal band, though his lungs stabbed within him as he breathed, though the pain in his feet was unendurable, Eric wrenched again and again at the handle, but the door would not budge. He called, but there was no answer. Almost delirious with baffled rage and excruciating suffering, the boy hurled himself against the door, throwing his shoulder out of joint with the power of the blow. The door fell inwards ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the discovery taught me something further, namely, that my head was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain. I raised a hand to it. My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk's. Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up the staircase, Schwartzmann had fired at me; but, then, hadn't that been a ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... city an old woman was wheeled into the church in an invalid's chair. I knew by the expression of her countenance that she was suffering. When I met her after the service and asked her about her story she said as the most excruciating pain convulsed her body, "I have not been free from pain in twenty years and have scarcely slept a night through all that time," and then, brushing the tears from her eyes, and with an expectant face, ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... Pasha is a very queer and unhappy girl. She should have been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat for this vice, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... a little gayer,—the embroidery on this tattered coat of civilized life,—I went into only two theatres; one the Old Drury, once the scene of great glories, now of execrable music and more execrable acting. If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... noted these ominous evidences of disaster, his face afforded no expression of his thought. Plastered with mud and drenched to the skin, he rode steadily forward, speaking no word and scarcely glancing to the right or left, and when at last the excruciating journey came to an end, he hastened to interview Thomas and hear his report, without even waiting to change his clothes or obtain refreshment ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... more readily into pleasing harmony than a landscape of dazzling Alps, torrents, glaciers, and tempests; for the heights may sometimes overwhelm the picture and spoil the effect. And so it is with certain great pages of Tristan. We may take for example the verses which tell of excruciating expectation—in the second act, Isolde's expectation on the night filled with desire; and, in the third act, Tristan's expectation, as he lies wounded and delirious, waiting for the vessel that brings Isolde and death—or we may take the Prelude, that expression of eternal desire that is like ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... that unhappy hour when I stood at the bar of the Old Bailey, and heard sentence of transportation awarded against me. But I compare the feelings on these two occasions only as regards their intensity: in nature they were very different indeed. On the former, they were those of excruciating agony; on the latter, those of excessive joy. As we approached the house, I descried one at the door. It was a female figure. It was my mother. I gasped for breath. I flew over the ground. I felt it not beneath my feet. I would ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a state of torment about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat and rush insanely to Norwood. The idea of their frightening her, and making her cry, and of my not being there to comfort her, was so excruciating, that it impelled me to write a wild letter to Mr. Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit upon her the consequences of my awful destiny. I implored him to spare her gentle nature—not to crush a fragile flower—and addressed him generally, to the best of my remembrance, as if, instead of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... pulse was feeble and sluggish, but still throbbing. He recognized his physician, and his livid lips murmured almost inaudibly, "Ivan, I have taken poison, that which you gave me one day in Russia; but it has lost its efficacy! It does not kill, while it causes me excruciating pain." ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... to meet beside one child draped over the arm of a chair in an excruciating attitude. They straightened her out together. Corinna did not look at Evan nor speak, but from her to him he thought he felt a warm current pass—or perhaps it was only because he wished to believe it. None of the other helpers were near. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Kreutzer, on such evenings, was privileged to strike false notes with painful iteration, even to the actual distress of auditors, without a word of criticism from the leader or the manager. Excruciating discord from the flute, on three or four nights of a season, was accepted as part payment for such playing, upon every other night, as seldom had been heard from any flute in any orchestra ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... steadying myself here and there by the rocks, I limped a short distance, though every step wrung from me a cry of agony. Several times I stopped to rest, and to wipe the sweat from my brow; twice in less than five minutes I was obliged to sit down, and at last the pain in my foot became so excruciating that I could struggle ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... letter. Fear for his health, apprehension of his death during this cruel interim, caused an agony of suspense, which, by representing him to her distracted fancy in a state of suffering, made him, if possible, still dearer to her. In the excruciating anguish of uncertainty, she walked with trembling steps through all weathers (when she could steal half a day while her parents were employed in labour abroad) to the post town, at six miles' distance, to inquire for ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... quite so easy as to advance. The rapids presented innumerable difficulties in the way of ascent, with an enemy lining the banks of the river. And that which was more annoying forced itself strongly upon his mind—the Canadians were both loyal and brave. His agony was most excruciating when he received a letter from Hampton to the effect that the Plattsburgh-Grand-Junction-Invading-Army was marching as expeditiously as circumstances would allow out of Canada; that, in a word it had been defeated and was ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... October, 1348, at Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, where the first criminal proceedings were instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and in Freiburg, in 1349. Under the influence of excruciating suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zofingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... him: "Jenyns was possessed of lively talents, and a style eminently pure and 'easy', and could very happily play with a light subject, either in prose or verse; but when he speculated on that most difficult and excruciating question, 'The Origin of Evil,' he ventured far beyond his depth, and, accordingly, was exPosed by Johnson [in the 'Literary Magazine'), both with acute argument ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... eliminating it from the system by the great emunctories, viz., the skin, kidneys, lungs, and bowels. As the large proportion of invalid visitors to Buxton consist of those suffering from the uric acid or gouty diathesis, and rheumatism, and seek relief from the excruciating pains and cripplement incident to such diseases, the great attraction must of necessity be the medicinal waters, of which there are two kinds—the cold chalybeate or iron spring, and the natural thermal water. Of the ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... small log-cabin, a few miles above "Cottage Island," reposing upon a rude bed, on the morning of the Chalmetta's disaster, was a young and beautiful female. She was pale and in tears, evidently suffering the most excruciating mental agony. An old woman, from whose bosom her half-civilized mode of life had not entirely banished those refined sympathies which belong by intuition to her sex, was ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... immediately set to work, cleaned and oiled it, and in the afternoon made some oil-skin covers for the lock and muzzle to keep the damp from it at nights. For the last day or two I had been far from well, whilst my inflamed hand, which was daily getting worse, caused me most excruciating pain, and quite destroyed my rest at nights. In the evening we again retired among the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... fairly cheerful, and your laugh is absolutely soothing; but you are pale, dreadfully pale, and pallor jars on my nerves, dear. Yes, I assure you, in the sensitive state of my poor nerves a pale face like yours is absolutely excruciating to ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... himself across the moat, beyond which a horse was waiting for him. He made no effort to deny his identity, but boldly avowed himself and his deed. He was brought back to the house, where he immediately underwent a preliminary examination before the city magistrates. He was afterward subjected to excruciating tortures; for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the "father of the country" was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer alive to intercede—as he had often done before—in behalf of those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... which would remain on into his waking time. They were not necessarily horrible things at all, but their clearness in the dream, and their total, if slow, disappearance as the actual world came back, became sometimes an excruciating torment. Who could say that they, or some equivalents, might not reach him out of the past ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... sickliness about his melodies despite their evidently FORCED unlikeness to familiar phrases, an utter ignorance of design everywhere apparent in his lengthened works...The entire works of Chopin present a motley surface of ranting hyperbole and excruciating cacophony. When he is not THUS singular, he is no better than Strauss or any other waltz compounder... such as admire Chopin, and they are legion, will admire these Mazurkas, which are supereminently Chopin-ical; that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... were all cast upon the shore, as they thought, dead men. Reaching Sfax they reported their adventures and offered prayers in gratitude for their extraordinary escape; but five days later all three began to suffer excruciating torment from internal burns, the skin upon their heads and bodies began to peel off, and they died in agony ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... hideously distorted and his stony eyes seemed changed into coals of fire. Every fibre of his strong nature was strained and tortured by the iron grip of his suffering. Every pulse of his body beat with a frantic rage for which no outlet was possible. His eyeballs burned with excruciating pain as he attempted to read again the letter he still held in his hands. He was one of those habitually calm men who become almost insane when they are angry, and in whose placid strength passion of any sort, when roused, finds its most dangerous material. For a full minute he stood speechless, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... pains of a peculiar nature, which we do not even wish to exchange but for a very real enjoyment, obtained in relieving our object. Even extremes in this class of our dispositions, as they are the reverse of hatred, envy, and malice, so they are never attended with those excruciating anxieties, jealousies, and fears, which tear the interested mind; or if, in reality, any ill passion arise from a pretended attachment to, our fellow creatures, that attachment may, be safely condemned, as not genuine. If ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... implements of war effectually, and at the same time blunted all those fine feelings and tender sympathies that are naturally excited, by hearing or seeing, a fellow being in distress. He could inflict the most excruciating tortures upon his enemies, and prided himself upon his fortitude, in having performed the most barbarous ceremonies and tortures, without the least degree of pity or remorse. Thus qualified, when very young he was initiated into scenes of carnage, by being engaged ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... South, church members are not only found on the Vigilance Committees, (tribunals organized in opposition to the laws of the states where they exist,) but uniting with the merciless and the profligate in passing sentence consigning to infamous and excruciating, if not extreme punishment, persons, by their own acknowledgment, innocent of any unlawful act. Out of sixty persons that composed the vigilance committee which condemned Mr. Dresser to be scourged in the public square of Nashville, TWENTY-SEVEN were members of churches, and one of them ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... override as rather uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. Little Penn delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against him and in favour of Long Jack, who told the most excruciating ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. Under that influence no one except Salters and Penn said anything about "idolatry," when the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle, and ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... There was an excruciating howl of agony and Amy was violently set upon, deposited on the nearer bed and pummelled until he begged for mercy. When quiet was restored Edwards asked: "Is 'Boots' coming ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... miles from camp, and I was wet and cold and exhausted, and the pain in my blistered hands was excruciating. But not soon shall I forget that ride down the shore with the sea so rippling and moon-blanched, and the boom of the surf on the rocks, and the peaks of the island standing bold and dark against the ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... an excruciating grimace. "My good fellow, spare me! That's just where the shoe pinches. I've broken faith with her already. But—damnation!—what else could I do? I didn't choose the part of virtuous hero. It was thrust upon me. The gods are making sport of me. I am lost in a labyrinth of virtue, and horribly—most ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... we derive great consolation from the promise of Jesus Christ, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church, our soul cannot but feel excruciating pain, upon considering how daring outrages against divine and sacred things daily flow from the unbridled licentiousness, the perverse effrontery and impiety of the press. Now in this pestilence of corrupt books which invades us on all sides, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... and I now found severe shooting pains, more racking than the sharpest rheumatism I had ever suffered, pervading my whole body. They increased until I suffered the most excruciating agony, as if my bones had been converted into red—hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a hammock might be spread on deck, on which I lay down, pleading great fatigue and want ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Frederick had gone when he had resigned the care of his ward to Miss Woodley, Dorriforth returned to his own apartment with a bosom torn by excruciating sensations. He had departed from his sacred character, and the dignity of his profession and sentiments; he had treated with unpardonable insult a young nobleman whose only offence was love; he had offended and filled with horror a beautiful young woman whom it was his duty to protect from those ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Jewry kept its peace during those dismal years. Yet, when the news of an impending general regulation of the Jewish legal status began to leak out, a section of Russian Jewry became astir. For to anticipate a blow is more excruciating than to receive one, and it was quite natural that an attempt should be made to stay the hand which was lifted to strike. Towards the end of 1833 the Council of State received, as part of the material bearing on the Jewish question, two memoranda, one from the Kahal of Vilna, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Ludgate Hill was alone enough to set them up in good copy for the night. But when the same man was brought before a magistrate and defied his enemy to mortal combat in the open court, then the columns would hardly hold the excruciating information, and the headlines were so large that there was hardly room for any of the text. The Daily Telegraph headed a column, "A Duel on Divinity," and there was a correspondence afterwards which lasted for months, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... assist her, keeping his eye on the pistol all the while. Weak as he was, he succeeded in sitting upon Miss Crouch's head while Linda attempted to secure her arms with the thick veil she had torn from her hat. He suffered excruciating pain when the furious Elinor bit him severely, but called out words of encouragement to the brave girl who ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blest, indeed, the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for His merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... how excruciating and remediless his grief must be, to be so cut off from all equal community of experience and destiny with mankind, to see all whom he loves, generation after generation, fading away, leaving him alone, to form new ties again to be dissolved, to watch his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... appeared for an instant in the background, through the red haze that was blinding him. He only knew he was fighting desperately, viciously, and against impossible odds. The satisfying crunch of his left fist against a leering green-bronze face was followed by an excruciating pain as one of his knuckles was driven back. Hardly knowing he had pressed the release of the ray, he was mildly astonished to see that two of the guards were enveloped in the blue vapor. Scintillant tiny sunbursts within the blue. Two less of those devils! ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... opposite disposition and who is righteous in acts, is born as a handsome man. The man who is endued with cruelty, goes to Hell, while he that is endued with compassion ascends to Heaven. The man who goes to Hell has to endure excruciating misery. One who, having sunk in Hell, rises therefrom, take birth as a man endued with short life. That man who is addicted to slaughter and injury, O goddess, becomes, through his sinful deeds, liable to destruction. Such a person becomes disagreeable to all creatures and endued with a short life. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... conduct, though the savages admired it, only made them the more anxious to conquer his spirit. Several produced their instruments of torture to tear his flesh, and to pull out his eyes and his tongue, indeed, I will not describe all the excruciating cruelties they were prepared to inflict; I well-nigh gave way myself with horror, though my nerves were pretty well strung, when a young squaw, who had been sitting in the shadow of one of the tents, sprang up, and darting between the warriors and old women, before ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... pastilles are placed upon the bald scalp of the head. These are then lighted, and allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent scars have been formed, the unfortunate novice being supported on both sides by priests who encourage him all the time to bear what must be excruciating pain. The fully qualified priest receives a diploma, on the strength of which he may demand a day and a night's board and lodging from the priests of any temple ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... duel back to her mind. It would have been considered inquisitive even at Tilling to put direct questions to the combatants, and (still hoping for the best) ask them point-blank "Who won?" or something of that sort; but until she arrived at some sort of information, the excruciating pangs of curiosity that must be endured could be likened only to some acute toothache of the mind with no dentist to stop or remove the source of the trouble. Elizabeth had already succumbed to these pangs of surmise and excitement, and had frankly gone home to rest, and her absence, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... the mysterious words, Mariette lost herself in conjectures and suppositions, fully convinced that so short a letter, after a prolonged absence, must inevitably bring unexpected news. In her poignant perplexity Mariette endured torments and excruciating torture, to which the uneducated are continually exposed. To hold in our grasp, and beneath our eyes, the few lines that bring us joy or sorrow, and be unable to penetrate the secret; to be under the necessity of asking a stranger to read these ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... submitted in some alarm,—and led him towards the rear, as he supposed to be slaughtered. There, Lieut. Speke, who could scarcely breathe from the pain of the blow, asked a captor to tie his hands before, instead of behind, and begged a drop of water to relieve his excruciating thirst. The savage defended him against a number of the Somal who came up threatening and brandishing their spears, he brought a cloth for the wounded man to lie upon, and lost no time in procuring a draught ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... same pursuit, discovered the properties of gas; Geber made discoveries in chemistry which were equally important; and Paracelsus, amidst his perpetual visions of the transmutation of metals, found that mercury was a remedy for one of the most odious and excruciating of all the diseases that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... consideration. Dismal reflection! Mr Methusaleh looked up to one of the hotel windows to get rid of it. The boy was inexperienced, and might be in the hands of sharpers, who would rub their hands and chuckle again at having done the "knowing Jew." Excruciating thought! Mr Methusaleh visibly perspired as it came and went. The boy himself was hardly to be trusted. He had been the plague of Mr Methusaleh's life since the hour of his birth—was full of tricks, and might have schemes to defraud his natural parent of his hard-earned cash, like any stranger ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the first object destined for destruction. He was small, and of a beautiful black, and had been used to the parlour; and being absent about an hour, came reeling home in the agonies of death; and in about a quarter of an hour after, died in the seemingly most excruciating tortures. Suspecting some villany, I ordered him to be opened, but found everything perfect and entire; I then directed him to be skinned, and coming to the loins, found the traces of a table-fork, which was ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... within my grasp. How painful was the distance at which they now appeared! My present debility was felt with intolerable impatience. To love and to be unable to heap happiness on the object beloved, was a thought that assailed me with excruciating sensations! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... bed, perceptibly affected them, and my voluntary ideas were every minute passing, more or less transformed into vivid spectra. I had leeches repeatedly applied to my temples, and a blister behind my ear—and my eyes are now my own, but in the place where the blister was, six small but excruciating boils have appeared, and harass me almost beyond endurance. In the meantime my darling Hartley has been taken with a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice; and this greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these changes, and humiliations, and fears, the sense ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... First of all came his head. The pain of the wound was an ache, a dull ache that sharpened into shooting pains if he moved. Still, he told himself that it might be worse. There was much worse pain in the world. It could not be called unbearable or excruciating. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... see her, she held her head rather higher than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity that was never ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... enacted in the subterranean cells, but I never imagined anything half so terrible as this. In various parts of the room I saw machines, and instruments of torture, and on some of them persons were confined who seemed to be suffering the most excruciating agony. I paused, utterly overcome with terror, and for a moment imagined that I was a witness to the torments, which, the priests say, are endured by the lost, in the world of woe. Was I to undergo such tortures, and which of those infernal engines would ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... God's saints rejoiced in tribulation, and, like Stephen, when put to death with excruciating torments, have prayed for their enemies. Bunyan's fear was, when threatened to be hung for preaching Christ, that he should make but 'a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder.' He was, however, comforted with the hope that his dying speech might be blessed to some of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... notorious character, the daughter an impudent, cynical little runabout who, on certain occasions, would fill their rickety abode with her chatter about affairs concerning the "man" of so-and-so or such-and-such. And thus things were going when the old man took it into his head to fall ill. An excruciating rheumatism attacked both his legs, rendering him incapable of moving about, and confining him to an old, lame armchair that was balanced by a complicated arrangement of old boxes that could never be got to remain steady. The illness became chronic. The daughter helped ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... youth had received a ball in his breast. Feeling himself hit, he fell bark involuntarily two paces, and dropped upon one knee: but he still remained firm, endeavoring to cover me with his body. You may conceive my rage and despair, whilst all my efforts to disengage myself were paralyzed by the excruciating pain in my thigh. Powerless and disarmed, I witnessed for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... general truths, that cakes Were to be bought at four a-penny, And that excruciating aches Resulted if we ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... of my descendants, will have ceased to be a memory! And yet - and yet - one would like to leave an image for a few years upon men's minds - for fun. This is a very dark frame of mind, consequent on overwork and the conclusion of the excruciating ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cuddling her brother round the neck with one hand and punching him as hard and as fast as he could with the other. The unfairness of it maddened her, and the next moment Master Hardy's head was drawn forcibly backwards by the hair. The pain was so excruciating that he released his victim at once, and Miss Nugent, emitting a series of terrified yelps, dashed off in the direction of home, her hair bobbing up and down on her shoulders, and her small black legs in an ecstasy ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... awoke, but a strange brightness seen through what seemed blurred eyes. A moment passed before his mind worked clearly, and then he had to make an effort to think. He was dizzy. When he essayed to lift his right arm, an excruciating pain made him desist. Then he discovered that his arm was badly swollen, and the hand had burst its bandages. The injured member was red, angry, inflamed, and twice its normal size. He felt hot all over, and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... back and lit a fire in the sheet-iron stove. As the circulation that meant life flooded back into her chilled veins Sheba endured a half-hour of excruciating pain. She had to clench her teeth to keep back the groans that came from her throat, to walk the floor and nurse her tortured hands with fingers in ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... home late one night from the Star, feeling pretty done up. Whatever it was, a violent fever seemed to have come on me suddenly. I thought nothing of it, at first, because I soon grew better. But while it lasted, I had the most intense shivering, excruciating pains in my limbs, and delirious headache. I recall, too, that I felt a peculiar soreness on the ear. It was all like nothing ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... which the imperialists were completely defeated and all the fruits of their former victories torn from their hands. In the following year Tilly had his thigh shattered by a cannon-ball at the battle of the Lech, and died in excruciating agonies. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... being of Mademoiselle Zoe Pradille and deprived her of the power of walking, of kneeling, of reading and listening to reading and of eating without excruciating pain. Expert medical treatment was secured at home and a thorough test was made of health resorts, all without avail, until at last the pilgrimage was made to Ars and the novena was said, resulting in a complete cure as attested to by a physician who had known the case ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... with innocent mirth. However excruciating the effort, he had produced a remark in English. He retired, repeating between spasms of enjoyment: "Oh, I sink so. Awe ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... many will not understand. Yarry positively began to fail under the restraint he imposed upon himself. His wound caused him agony, and profanity would have been his natural expression of even slight annoyance. All day long grisly oaths rose to his lips. Now and then an excruciating twinge would cause a half-uttered expletive to burst forth like a projectile. A deep groan would follow, as the man became rigid in his ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... that he had an aneurism of his aorta, and that he must be prepared to have it break and kill him any minute. His preparations were accordingly all made, and personally I fully anticipated that he would fall dead before I left. He put up a wonderful fight against excruciating pain, of which I was frequently a witness. But the days went by and nothing happened, so I returned to town and another young doctor took my place. He also got tired of waiting and suggested it might be some spinal trouble. He induced them once more to visit London and see ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... from the left had found him. A ball had entered his left arm at the elbow, had travelled down the side of the bone, tearing away muscles and nerves of the forearm and lodging itself in the palm of his hand. His pain was excruciating. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... a foot in depth, all laid one way, smooth and springy, and so sweetly odorous that the air seemed intoxicating. Helen and Bo opened their baggage, and what with use of the cold water, brush and comb, and clean blouses, they made themselves feel as comfortable as possible, considering the excruciating aches. Then they ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of which the credulous, in all ages, have been the dupes. Is it not at the time of a man's dissolution that he is the least capable of judging of his true interest? His bodily frame racked, it may be, with pain, his mind is necessarily weakened or chafed; or if he should be free from excruciating pain, the lassitude and yielding of nature to the irrevocable decrees of fate at death, unfit a man for reasoning and judging of the sophisms that are proposed as panaceas for all his errors. There are, without doubt, as strange notions as those of religion; but who knows that body and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... down again with the scurvy. The effect of these nuts alone, in checking this disease, is astonishing: Many whose limbs were become as black as ink, who could not move without the assistance of two men, and who, besides total debility, suffered excruciating pain, were in a few days, by eating these nuts, although at sea, so far recovered as to do their duty, and could even go aloft as well as they did before the distemper seized them. For several days about this time, we had only faint breezes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... at first intense, the tendons of the legs and arms being dreadfully strained, and the spinal column bent so as nearly to be broken in two. The shoulder-blades forced into close contact, pressed the vertebrae inwards, and caused excruciating pains along the lumbar vertebrae, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... for a short time. The standing position was not long maintained—profuse perspiration set in, and the alternations of position became more rapid and violent, till plunging and rolling were added to the other signs of excruciating pain. I was also told that the groaning of the poor animal was almost constant, and at times so loud and prolonged as to amount ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... some enterprise full of danger, I laid in my provisions, I loaded my weapons, I collected every means of attack and defence; I inured my body to the most violent exercises, my soul to the bitterest trials; I taught my arm to slay, my eyes to behold excruciating sufferings, and my mouth to smile at the most horrid spectacles. Good-natured, confiding, and forgiving as I had been, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or rather, immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the path that was opened to me. I overcame every obstacle, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fatal there," he adds consolingly; "but the Russian soldier is so badly fed." The little man seems rather disappointed at my diagnosis of my case—the effect due to a new and tight boot which I had not been able to change since leaving Ispahan. Notwithstanding, I cannot put foot to ground without excruciating pain. Spreading the rugs out on the dirty earthen floor, I make up my mind to twenty-four hours here at least. It is, perhaps, the dirtiest post-house we have seen since leaving Teheran; but moving under the present circumstances ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... grasped both of the Professor's arms at the wrists and was slowly twisting them in a grip of iron. Kell's face went white, the lips writhed back over toothless gums, the eyes closed in the supreme effort to withstand the excruciating pain. Then— ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... unfortunate rencontre, forty-seven Spaniards were killed, and many wounded, five of whom died on board. The wounded men endured excruciating pain while in the boats, in consequence of their wounds being wet with sea water, which caused them to swell much. All the people cursed the pilot Alaminos for bringing them to this place, who still persisted that this country was an island. They called ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... They found no wady other than stone-dry. By day they slept, by night pushed forward. Day by day they grew weaker and less rational. The increasing nerve-strain that possessed them was companioned by the excruciating torture of their bodies racked by the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... poisoned arrow in any of the limbs, the part is quickly cut out, and his life is sometimes saved; but if the wound happens to be in the body, where it cannot be easily excised, he resigns himself quietly to death without a murmur, though he frequently lingers for four or five days in excruciating agony. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... the shop to work, where I soon learned to make nails, and worked with him in this way until his death, which occurred on the fifth of October, 1804. For two or three days before he died, he suffered the most excruciating pains from the disease known as the black colic. The day of his death was a sad one to me, for I knew that I should lose my happy home, and be obliged to leave it to seek work for my support. There being no manufacturing of any account ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... and the children lay rolling in its bottom, drinking the waters of bitterness; and their cries, mixed with the roaring of the waves and the furious north wind, increased the horrors of the scene. My unfortunate father then experienced the most excruciating agony of mind. The idea of the loss which the shipwreck had occasioned to him, and the danger which still menaced all he held dearest in the world, plunged him into a deep swoon. The tenderness of his wife and children recovered ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the utmost, whilst agonising wrenches were given of the most fearful character, as the screws and ropes of the horrid instrument were set in motion. Not a word did he utter; scarcely a groan escaped from his bosom, though every limb was suffering the most excruciating torture; the blood gushed from his nostrils and mouth, his eyes well nigh started from their sockets. His physical nature at length gave way, though his courage did not fail him. He fainted. Death would have been a happy release, but his torturers ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... keep the temperature sufficiently high. The bath should be continued for several hours—the longer the better. Thus the pain and swelling will be greatly reduced, and the tenderness which, in the beginning, is so excruciating, will largely disappear. The next step is to properly support the injured parts in order that unnecessary movement may be prevented, thus avoiding further tearing of the ligaments. This may be accomplished by means of various splints—the most popular being those made of plaster ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... clan, he shall lose his wife and children; only the posts of his house shall remain, only the walls of his house shall remain, only the small posts and the stones of the fireplace shall remain; he shall be afflicted with colic, he shall be racked with excruciating pains, he shall fall on the piercing arrow, he shall fall on the lacerating arrow, his dead body shall be carried off by kites, it shall be carried off by the crows, his family and his clan shall not ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... expounded the sand dance. Then suddenly, it would be a long "Hush!" with uplifted finger and glowing, supplicating eyes; "he's going to play 'Auld Robin Gray' on one string!" And throughout this excruciating movement,—"On one string, that's on one string!" he kept crying. I would have given something myself that it had been on none; but the hearers were much awed. I called for a tune or two, and thus introduced myself to the notice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suffered from incapacity with an appalling sense of misery and general apprehension of coming evil. I passed sleepless nights and was troubled with irregular action of the heart, a constantly feverish condition, and the most excruciating tortures in my stomach, living for days on rice water and gruel, and, indeed, the digestive functions seemed ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of short duration. A little illness of which no one took account, had ended all for the unhappy wife, had been the beginning of a joy beyond words for the other two. She had kept her bed for two days, suffering from a nervous attack, accompanied by excruciating neuralgia, and had died quite suddenly from the bursting of a vessel ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... now experienced eternity; while, in case there is no hereafter for us, we shall just be equal. Again I repeat it, let me have the side where I take no risks when viewed from the skeptic's standpoint, and where I can "repose in a paradise of illusions," in preference to the skeptic's excruciating doubt. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... allowed me to lift my own luggage into it as well as I could? What it would not take I told the man in charge I would send for as soon as possible. There was no sleighing yet, and that drive was the most excruciating thing I ever endured over corduroy roads through wild and dark forests, along interminable country roads of yellow clay mixed with mud till finally we reached the house of the chief member of society in my district ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... grand seigneurs among violinists. His rendering of romantic works, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Bruch, was exquisite—I have never, never heard them played as beautifully. On the other hand, his Bach playing was excruciating—he played Bach sonatas as though they were virtuoso pieces. It made one think of Hans von Buelow's mot when, in speaking of a certain famous pianist, he said: 'He plays Beethoven with velocity and Czerny with expression.' But to hear Sarasate play romantic ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... cause of the poor Gipsy children; but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one with time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue. Sir, a few weeks since our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant's life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children, dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells—if ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and clear, but we could not sleep at all, from the pains of having eaten. We suffered the most excruciating torments, though I in particular did not eat a quarter of what would have satisfied me; it might have been from using a quantity of raw or frozen sinews of the legs of deer, which neither of us could avoid doing, so great was our hunger. In the morning, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... alone makes the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity, is all but excruciating to Doubt. And many besides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded consciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of Nature. Therefore we must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the language of the present, but quality of correspondence. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... intrepidity of the sufferers. Some of the martyrs were obliged to pass, with their already wounded feet, over thorns, nails, sharp shells, &c. upon their points, others were scourged till their sinews and veins lay bare, and after suffering the most excruciating tortures that could be devised, they were destroyed by ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... grew daily more conscious of a great peace and happiness—peace and happiness such as he had never known since his boyhood's days. He, who had found the ways of modern society dull to the last point of excruciating boredom, was not aware of any monotony in the daily round of the hours, which, laden with simple duties and pleasures, came and went softly and slowly like angel messengers stepping gently from one heaven to another. ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... know whether I like it,' she mused languidly; 'beautiful as it is, it is only a reproduction of bygone splendour, and it is painfully excruciating now. For my own part I would much rather have the shabbiest old house which had belonged to one's ancestors, which had come to one as a heritage, by divine right as it were, instead of being bought with newly made money. To my mind it would rank higher. Yet I doubt if anybody nowadays sets a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... most eminent physicians of the time. Their various prescriptions were followed to the letter, but in vain. One ordered a very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; a third constructed a little rack, modelled on those employed by the Holy Inquisition, on which young Hercules was stretched, with excruciating torments, for half an hour every morning and evening. In the course of the next three years Hercules gained perhaps two inches. After that his growth stopped completely, and he remained for the rest ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... shut on Oliver, he threw himself, shaken, on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works more than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks! It was madness. Besides being dangerous to health, it would be excruciating discomfort. And to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom! It was intolerable; and Doggie remained justly indignant ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various |
