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More "Numb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... felt weak, his hands numb. It was with an effort he refrained from dropping the revolver. Like his chums, Frank was a crack shot, for Mr. Temple early had accustomed them to the use of rifle and shotgun, and the previous summer ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... but thee must go out—thee is not a member." "But my father is a member." "Thee is not a member," and Susan felt as if the spirit was moving her and soon found herself in outer coldness. Fingers and toes becoming numb, and a bright fire in a cottage over the way beckoning warmly to her, the exile from the chapel resolved to seek secular shelter. But alas! she was confronted by a huge dog, and just escaped with whole skin though capeless ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... cell above, and indeed all the cells in that direction were flooded like my own. Of course it was no trouble for me to keep afloat; my only danger was that the intense coldness of the water would numb my body beyond recovery. Still, I had been accustomed to hardships of that kind before now, in the frozen North. At last the gentle roar of the waterfall ceased, and I realized my cell was emptying itself. When I reached my shelf again, I stretched my ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... broke when Thirlwell began his homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a winter journey in ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... huge lion, its hot breath upon his face, its rough tongue upon his cheek. The ape-man had often been close to death; but never before so close as this, he thought, for he was convinced that death was but a matter of seconds. His brain was still numb from the effects of the blow that had felled him, and so he did not, for a moment, recognize the lion that stood over him as the one he had so ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she had hardly slept, and now, though her body was numb with weariness, her mind kept up a feverish activity. She was bent on excusing Godwin, and the only way in which she could do so was by arraigning the world for its huge dishonesty. In a condition ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... became painfully aware of the terribly damp, cold wind searching out and chilling life, even to the very marrow of the bones. Then he remembered that he had come out in his dress boots, consequently his feet were wet and numb, and he had a fierce pain under his shoulder. A sudden, uncontrollable fear went to his ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... only speaks of Moses in the third person, but also bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, "Moses talked with God;" "The Lord spoke with Moses face to face; " "Moses was the meekest of men" (Numb. xii:3); "Moses was wrath with the captains of the host; "Moses, the man of God, "Moses, the servant of the Lord, died;" "There was never a prophet in Israel like unto Moses," &c. (34) On the other hand, in Deuteronomy, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... enough, for the sick child was a restless sleeper. But now she could hear nothing, not even the faint vibration of her sister's breath. The silence was absolute and appalling; it struck tangibly upon her sense, as the darkness struck upon her eye-balls and filled her with a numb, unreasoning terror. She slipped out of bed and struck a match. In another few seconds she was standing by Jeannie's white little bed, waiting for the wick of the candle to burn up. Presently the light grew. Jeannie was lying on her side, her white face ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... was pouring in through the screening and across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... indigestion and loss of sleep—something I often have," he lied. "A cup of coffee will set me up. Don't worry. I'm strong—head doesn't bother me at all this morning, except a numb feeling inside." ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... I thought the day was ours. The headlong Rupert Swept all before him, like the wind that bends The thin and unkind corn, his men were numb With slaying, and their chargers straddling, blown With undue speed, as they had hunted that Which could not turn again—e'en thus was Rupert, When round to meet his squadrons came a host Like whirlwind ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... minute particle that was on my nail makes my tongue tingle and feel numb," he remarked, still rubbing. "Let us go back again. I want ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... vanishing of the gleam of hope, the gloomy desperation that succeeded. The beautiful black brows met in a spasm of pain over eyes that stared at an abyss of ruin; her lips whitened, she wrung her hands unconsciously; and then, as if numb with horror, she leaned back in her chair, and her chin sank until it touched the black ribbon at her throat. When after a while she rallied, and forced herself to listen, a pleasant-faced young man was on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... baby, straining her ears for its faltering heart-beats, had no words. In a sort of numb terror she waved the woman off. It was no more than fifteen minutes later that the Malay came again; yet it seemed to Mrs. Ozanne that she waited hours with cracking ear-drums to hear once more the terms of the strange bargain. This time, the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... said Obed, with a characteristic squeeze of Lord Chetwynde's hand, which made it numb for half an hour afterward. "It's possible, my boy, for it's the actual fact. But still, I must say, you're about the last man I expected to see in these diggins. When I saw you in London you were up to your eyes in business, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... making one final effort to move up into the vacant niches, though conscious that her fingers and toes were so numb that she could not ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... revisionary interest. These subtleties naturally were beyond the experience of Skippy, in fact he was quite unable to reason on anything. His heart was swollen to twice its natural size, his pulse was racing, and the next moment with the wrench of the farewell, he felt in a numb despair, the light go out of the day, and a vast sinking weight rushing him down into chill ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... and faster, and Pierre's legs found it harder and harder to move themselves through the great drifts. They seemed heavy and numb, and he was growing oh, so tired! If he could but lie down to sleep until Christmas Day! But he knew that he must not do that. For those who choose this kind of soft and tempting bed turn into ice-people, and do not wake up in the morning. ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... time when I came to the end of the rope I threw myself back against it, and pulled hard. The skin of my breast stretched out as wide as your hand, but it would not tear, and at last all my chest grew numb, so that it had no feeling in it; and yet, little by little, as I threw my whole weight against the rope, the strips of skin stretched out longer and longer. All day long I walked in this way. The sun blazed down like fire. I had no food, and did not drink; ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... carried back upon the current instead of making headway against it. Fight as he would, he could feel that sliding, hopeless drag against which he was powerless to combat. His strength vanished ounce by ounce. His arms grew so numb with fatigue and cold that he could do nothing but move them up and down, dog fashion. On he went, down toward the stern ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... rope is wrapped around my body. Anyway it hurts like fun, and my arms seem all numb," he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... scarcely been a breathing spell for the onlookers in this rapid-fire game. Every inning had held them, one moment breathless, the next wildly clamorous, and another waiting in numb fear. What did these last few moments hold in store? The only answer to that was the dogged plugging optimism of the Denver players. To listen to them, to watch them, was to gather the impression that baseball fortune always ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... over this portage was a most miserable one. We were soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when going from sleep to waking—a long lane of half-numb life, before the open road of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... bruised. He bled from mouth and nose, but what was any other pain compared with the torture of his clenched fists? It made his arms numb to the elbow and sent currents of fire through his veins. His eyes kept on the thick throat of McTee. Though he was knocked reeling and half senseless, his stare never changed, and the wolf pack, with their heads jutting forward with eagerness ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... until the short twilight of the tropics darkened into night, and then, with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable sound, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... long time, and there was no sign of the wolves coming near us. It was very cold, but our furs kept in our warmth. By and by I fell asleep—which was not dangerous so long as I kept warm, and I thought the cold must wake me before it began to numb me. And as 'I slept I dreamed; but my dream did not change the place; the forest, the tree I was in, all my surroundings were the same. I even dreamed that I came awake, and saw everything about me just as it was. I seemed to open ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... creeping cloud, except when a heavier gust lifted it high in air and flung it out in a blinding swirl. Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the desolate fissure that was the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... mind, at first numb, was now going at lightning speed. Brought face to face for the first time with one of the greatest facts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I had not reckoned ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... to overwhelm them, there was a strange exhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shooting down its green side in a cloud of spray. One—two—three—each one seemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms were numb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wished at last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible aching weariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm had blown, roaring, past them, but the seas were still heavy ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... answering well. Her capacity to calculate also remained poor. When asked about the more inactive state, she said she had been afraid to stir. (What afraid of?) "I didn't know where to go or what to do." Further, she recalled that she had had a numb feeling in her tongue, could not speak quickly, and that her mind had felt confused and "she could not take in things." Further review with her of the earlier period of her psychosis showed that there was a blank for external events and ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... back awkwardly to her, and felt the grip of small, cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb. To him the living now will come And cross his threshold in the self-same way To clasp his hand and vainly try to say Words that shall soothe the heart that's stricken numb. ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... two Lambs. "This is the offering made by fire which ye shall offer unto the Lord: two lambs of the first year without spot, day by day, for a continual burnt-offering." (Numb. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... room. Lassiter's subtle forecasting of disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters's friendship. She had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter's friendship—that was more than love—it would endure, but soon he, too, would be gone. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the most soul-splitting crash you have ever heard and the sound as of a gale of wind shrieking through the telegraph wires. It will give you a little idea of what it was like under this bombardment. It seemed to numb one's very brain. What it must have been like in the German position is beyond me to conceive. We were certainly ...
— 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
... consigned to my bed, for how long, Heaven only knows. This is written while in a horizontal position, reposing on my right arm, which is almost numb from having supported me for some sixteen hours without turning over. Let me see if I can ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... extended his hand toward the bent figure that was about to shuffle past him. The withered hand of the white-faced clown rested in the strong grasp of the pastor, and his pale, little eyes sought the face of the stalwart man before him; a numb desolation was growing in his heart; the object for which he had gone on day by day was being left behind and he must stumble ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... of me?" he said, "My tempers are nothing; they are like a gust and it is over. I didn't mean what I said. When I think of my violin, that it is lost, gone forever perhaps, that my hands are so numb and so stiff, it makes me frantic. I feel as if I should go mad for a moment, locked in here; and I never could bear the dark, never; not when I was a child. I see things; sounds ring in my ears. I want to cry out, and storm, and fling myself against the walls; do ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... time when, in default of being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity becomes more than proverbially numb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... thou hast not felt the lapse of hours. For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls: 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, And numb the elastic powers. Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn-out life, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... answered, was I satisfied? For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification of my vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold presence of forms no longer of this earth began to oppress me. I grew cold and numb beneath their moveless aspect; and constant gazing upon eyes lighted up by no varying expression, pressed upon my tired senses with a more than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of dull stagnation through every limb, which held me bound where I sat, pulseless ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... he bought in the liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... crowding people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a great crowd of people ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort would ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... So, dazed and numb, I hent me up, and lo! coming arm in arm towards me were Otho von Reuss and his newly appointed Chief Justice and assessor—who but mine old friend Michael Texel! The Duke bent a searching look on me as I bowed low before him, but he saw only the tan of my ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... mansion, you told me to stick them over the door. I was afraid lest any one else should spoil them, as they were being pasted, so I climbed up a high ladder and was ever so long in putting them up myself; my hands are even now numb ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as the stars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would never appreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. And still there appeared to be hundreds of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... me, when I was weak and old? And warmed me, when I was numb with cold? And who, when I in poverty pined, Has shared ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... and Mrs. Ukridge petted Edwin and sewed, and Ukridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling Mose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write—and write—and write—and go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyes refused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come to feel that it was all for the best. A man must go through the fire before he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. What we lose on the swings ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... surely to grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Underhay. Long and anxiously did they watch the ebbing tide, and when it had gone out sufficiently to allow of two stout planks being laid across the channel, an active sailor ventured over with a light, and in a few moments stood by Eric's side. Eric saw him coming, but was too weak and numb to move; and when the sailor lifted up the unconscious Russell from his knees, Eric was too much exhausted even to speak. The man returned for him, and lifting him on his back crossed the plank once more in safety, and carried them both to the carriage, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... your brother has told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he does n't think at all of himself; he always looks out for one still poorer than he is, and then gives all away: and he 's always ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... had made gave Marie a curious sensation; Julia and the room and the red fire swam around her; her brain was numb and dizzy; she staggered and caught at ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... criminals on their way through the dark halls, crouching in fear at the sounds. Eleven o'clock struck, and then twelve with its continued uproar. It seemed a long time before one and then two sounded. Pendleton's limbs were beginning to feel loggy and numb because of the chill and the continued inaction. He had ventured to stir them a little, and was wrapping the heavy blanket more closely about himself, when he felt ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... reflected Hiram. "It was numb and useless when the half breed attended to it, but he was mistaken and so was I in thinking ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. Queer delight ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... to strike him dumb in consternation, her success must have afforded Sally intense satisfaction. Since she hadn't, her personal consternation was momentarily so overpowering as to numb her sense of appreciation. So that for the period of a long minute neither of them moved nor spoke; but remained each with a blank countenance reflecting a witless mind, hypnotised by the stupefaction ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... while had I sold it on that Wednesday in May when Ethel begged me, before the increased dividend turned out a mistake, I should have made money. But Philippi Sewers were threatened; Pasteurised Feeders had been numb since June; Pollyopolis Heat, Light, Power, Paving, Pressing, and Packing was going to pass its quarterly dividend; and Standard Egg had gone down from 63 to 7 1/8. My million dollars on paper now was worth in ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... we had occupied Tarrano during them. Georg was through the balcony doorway and beyond our sight. Elza was standing motionless, too frightened to move. I felt myself growing numb, weighted to the floor as though my feet had taken root. My arms were hanging like wood; fingers tingling, then growing cold, dead to sensation. And a numbness creeping up my legs; and spreading inward from my arms ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the wholesome flesh decay, And the willing nerve be numb, And the lips lack breath to say, "No, my ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... follow thee, While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw, A holy calm descends like dew upon me, I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise, I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses; Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me, Floating and basking ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... a great part of it was fancy, and even now I can't get it into shape, for everything was so dull and dreamy and confused. All I can tell you more is, that I woke up once, feeling a little more sensible, and began to feel about me. Then I knew that my sword was by my side and my hand numb and throbbing, for the sword-knot was tight about my wrist. I managed to get that loosened, and after a good deal of difficulty sheathed my sword, after which I began to feel for my revolver, and got hold of the cord, which passed through my hand till I felt that it was broken—snapped ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... that the end of the world for which she had so fondly prepared would come, but as the days wore on she sank into a numb despondency. When she thought of the loss of her property, she groaned and turned her face to the wall. And Samuel Anderson sat about the house in a dumb and shiftless attitude, as do most men upon whom financial ruin comes in middle ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. He admitted that Wordsworth was "a genuine man, but intrinsically ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... or store or mill near by. In doing this, they not only injure their tender growing bodies, but indirectly, they drag down the father's wage ... The home becomes a mere rendezvous for the nightly gathering of bodies numb with weariness and minds drunk with sleep." And if they survive the factory, they marry to perpetuate and multiply their ignorance, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly Sperry fell ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... back door to return the civilian suit and recover the cavalry blouse and trousers left hanging in Rafferty's room. He could hear the lieutenant moving about overhead. He had to strike a light; he struck several matches; found the clothes, slipped out of the "cits" and into his own. He was cold and numb. He knew there was liquor on the sideboard in the middle room. The craze was on him, and he risked it. He struck more matches and threw the burning stumps to the floor, drank his fill, then stumbled away, intending ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... unendurable. In the first place, Nelson could not imagine a man making such a declaration; it was new to his entire experience and contrary to his code. It was unconservative, therefore it staggered him. It was, in fact, a phenomenon so unique as to leave him numb. He told himself that it must have been the act of a madman or a fool. Under no circumstances could he conceive of himself warning an enemy of his intentions; on the contrary, when he undertook to crush a rival he went about ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... all over his bright little face. Wherever he can find a strip of ice to slide across, he goes with a rush and a whoop. Sometimes there is only a raw turnip and a piece of corn pone in his pocket for dinner. His feet and fingers are always numb with cold by the time he reaches the school house, but his eyes still shine, and his whistle never loses its note ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is of no use to talk to me. I hear what you say, of course; but it does me no good. My heart is numb." ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... glanced about her. She could no longer see the shelter she had left, and she stood alone in the midst of a tremendous desolation of rock and snow, with the valley yawning, a vast dusky pit, beneath her feet. It was appallingly lonely, and she was numb with cold, while, since she was sure that she could not climb back to her companions unassisted, there was only one person on whom she could rely, and that was the packer, who had insisted on her doing what he thought fit. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... oval-shaped thing of dull metal, with great curving cuts of glass-like substance in its blunt bow, like staring eyes; a lifeless, staring thing, stretching far into the curtain of gloom behind. How long it was, Keith could not tell; at first his numb brain refused to grasp it and reduce it to definite, sane standards of size and length. The cold weeds of the sea-floor kelp beds swayed eerily over and around it. From its bow, he saw, peculiar knobs jutted, the function of which he guessed ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... to him that during his five days' devotion to "Overdue" he had not heard from Brissenden nor even thought about him. For the first time Martin realized the daze he had been in, and he felt shame for having forgotten his friend. But even the shame did not burn very sharply. He was numb to emotions of any sort save the artistic ones concerned in the writing of "Overdue." So far as other affairs were concerned, he had been in a trance. For that matter, he was still in a trance. All this life through which the electric car whirred seemed ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... my pallet. I looked around in a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she was a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... locked and the boy turned disconsolate to his companions. It was the hour when, at home, their fathers would send them lovingly to bed, when their mothers would tuck them comfortably under the covers and kiss them good-night; and here they lay, clad in tatters, numb with cold, pinched with hunger; pictures of misery and woe. Heart-rending were the sighs, bitter the complaints, in which the poor lads ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... one of the chief's many slaves; but she had repulsed the Onondaga pagan. As Ragueneau looked, the girl fell dead with her skull split by the chief's war-axe. The Hurons on the lake now knew what awaited them; and a cry of terror arose from the children. Then a silence of numb horror settled over the incoming canoes. The women were driven ashore like lambs before wolves; but the valiant Hurons would not die without striking one blow at their inveterate and treacherous enemies. They threw themselves together back to back, prepared to fight. For a moment this show ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... moan and ever it giveth this answer: "My heart it is numb with the cold of the love that was born of the Summer— I come from the garden all white with the wrath and the sorrow of Winter; I have kissed the low, desolate tomb where my bride in her loveliness ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An' creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... every one around him, but his memory was still clouded, and his thoughts sadly confused. He had partially recovered his articulation, though his speech continued to be thick and at times unintelligible. His limbs also had been partly freed from the thraldom of paralysis, but were still heavy and numb, as though they had long worn chains. He clung to Madeleine more eagerly than ever, and seemed to be disturbed and uncomfortable except when she was near him. He had a vague consciousness that she was the medium through which all good flowed in to him, and often repeated, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... be fascinated by any special route leading towards it, and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers' requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy apathy of the British manufacturer and tradesman is an old story, which has evoked comments ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that had the anguish of a farewell in them, the color suddenly flushed all over her blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sigh ran through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... "Numb-head!" muttered the sheriff, pounding on the side of the cabin with his whip-stock. "Come out and show yourself! We know you're in there, and it's no ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wry face at the interruption, but after a moment's pause he took the card, put on his pince-nez, and, uttering a groan, rose, in spite of the pain in his back, to his full height, rubbing his numb fingers. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... a lope to a walk an' then he put his nose to the ground an' fairly shuffled along. I was wearin' sheepskin with the wool on, but after a time the needles began to creep in an' I grew numb as a stone, while my flesh seemed shook loose from my bones, an' it hurt me to breathe. Oh, Lord, but it was cold! If it hadn't 'a' been for the kid I'd have gotten down an' walked alongside the pony, but as it was, he was out o' the wind an' sleepin' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... how different! An educated woman, this; one who has learnt a good deal about herself and the world. She is 'emancipated,' in the true sense of the hackneyed word; that is to say, she is not only freed from those bonds that numb the faculties of mind and heart, but is able to control the native passions that would make a slave of her. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and dreaded by us all ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and at last he began to wonder if even his splendid constitution would stand a night of this exposure, bound hand and foot, without serious results. He lay awake for hours, suffering in body but rejoicing in heart. At last, numb with cold, he sank into a half-doze. He was aroused by sounds at the door—the cry of a key turning an unoiled lock and the creak of rusty hinges. Then the welcome gleam of a lantern flooded to him along the frosty floor. The visitor was Bill Brennen. He stooped above the sailor and squinted ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... shot missed, but he immediately followed it with another. It struck, for my right foot felt as if it had been hit with a club, and grew numb. Four more shots came in quick succession. One of them—which I cannot tell—struck the same foot and broke the bridge, as I knew from the immediate loss ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... my place, Fred," he said as they came in for their turn at bat. "My arm is numb and I ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... my lad," said the doctor, laying his hand upon his patient's forehead. "It feels numb and dead from ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... renown over all Sicily, and those spoils hanging in thine house?' Thereat he: 'Desire of glory is not gone, nor ambition checked by fear; but torpid age dulls my chilly blood, and my strength of limb is numb and outworn. If I had what once was mine, if I had now that prime of years, yonder braggart's boast and confidence, it had taken no prize of goodly bullock to allure me; nor heed I these gifts.' So he spoke, and on that flung down a pair of gloves ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... ashore with him, or go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on Darrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, after frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answered cheerfully: "No—luckily I had on my new boots," he began to feel that human intercourse would still be tolerable ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... destined to produce a horror of great darkness, and a cup of trembling of which all the nations should drink, hardly affected Hogarth at the time. He did, indeed, shoot an interested glance at the old man, but the next moment his mind, numb that morning, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... "They are numb," he said, in surprised apology to his host. A moment later he shivered violently, beads of sweat burst out on his forehead, and the color swept from his face. He started up, staring wildly about him; he tried ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... not his wind that was weak, it was his feet—his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... of his straining shoulder blade ran down his arm, which throbbed painfully. His twitching, struggling fingers, straining against the weight which was forcing them open, clutched the rim. They were burning and yet seemed numb. Oh, if he could only wipe his palm and that rim with a dry handkerchief! He tightened his slipping fingers again and again. The muscles of his arm smarted as from a blow. He tightened his lips—and that seemed ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... room to run and slide, Denny fell to the floor and commenced to creep through the narrow space between the trampling guard's bulk and the wall. He felt his left arm and shoulder go numb as he was crushed for a fleeting instant against the wood partition. Broken, he thought dimly. The collar-bone. But still he ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... all they could. The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that forced ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his," exclaims the truth-compelled and reluctant prophet, Numb. xxiii. 10. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... sorrowing child in her arms, to comfort her if she could, to reassure her if she had the power. But a strange icy feeling had gradually invaded her heart, even whilst she listened to the simple unsophisticated talk of Jeanne Lange. Her hands felt numb and clammy, and instinctively she withdrew away from the near vicinity of the girl. She felt as if the room, the furniture in it, even the window before her were dancing a wild and curious dance, and that from everywhere ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... were getting numb. She had been sitting on them in correct Japanese fashion all this time. She was proud of the accomplishment, which she considered must be hereditary, but she could not keep it up for much longer than half an ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... close, and she consented to fix a day for their wedding. The last of October was the moment selected, and the selection was almost all that was wanting to Bernard's happiness. I say "almost," for there was a solitary spot in his consciousness which felt numb and dead—unpervaded by the joy with which the rest of his spirit seemed to thrill and tingle. The removal of this hard grain in the sweet savour of life was needed to complete his felicity. Bernard felt that he ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... feet and untied with pearl-gray fingers the great white satin ribbon which restrained them in the pew. Sylvia caught her aunt's eye on her, its anxiety rather less well hidden than usual. With no effort at all the girl achieved a flashing smile. It was not hard. She felt quite numb. She had been present only during one or two painful, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... courage as I might attain by deadening myself to the danger I was in by inflicting intense pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that mark on my hand; it was where, in my agony, I bit out a piece of flesh with my relentless teeth, thankful for the pain, which helped to numb my terror. I say, I was but just concealed when I heard the window lifted, and one after another stepped over the sill, and stood by me so close that I could have touched their feet. Then they laughed and whispered; my brain swam so that I could not tell the meaning of their words, but I heard my ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Minerva, the village poetess, Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, And all the more when "Butch" Weldy Captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. Will some one go to the village newspaper, And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— I thirsted so for love I hungered ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... is Jane Whitly!—well, never mind the name!—this is Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... as if Don Jose's dagger plunged into my heart, not Carmen's. That sounds high-flown, but I mean it—a sudden, sick, cold sensation, as if everything was numb. Lady Ver turned round pettishly to Christopher. "What on earth is the matter ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... flew together to the Villa Morla, a notorious abode of illicit lovers. It was here that the enraged Pedro caught up with them and killed Enrique with a look. Isabella Angelica was then taken against her will to join the Court. At last at Madrid. For two years, Dr. Polata tells us, her heart was numb with anguish; then gradually the life at Court, still at Madrid, began to take effect on her malleable character. She became intensely vicious: much of the sweetness portrayed in Enrique's portrait vanished, leaving her expression cross and occasionally ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... beyond the power of imagination to picture such a plight. Each girl hugged to herself the conviction that with her at least would remain immortal youth; that happen what might to the rest of mankind, no length of years could numb her own splendid vitality and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... intensely to remember the truth always, because the truth is bound up with Marie, and Marie with the truth. Why need I be shy now about her? Why should I hesitate, under the fear of my own later timidity, of saying exactly now what I feel? God knows what I do feel! I am confused, half-numb, half-dead, I believe, with moments of fiery biting realisation. I'm neither sad, nor happy—only breathlessly expectant. The only adventure I have ever had in my life is not—no, it is not—yet ended. And I know that Marie could not have left me like ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... at a gallop towards the dawn. The dawn lay cold about Minden Cottage as we came in sight of it; and at first, noting that all the blinds were drawn, I thought the household must be asleep. Then I remembered, and shivered as I rose from my seat, cramped and stiff from the long journey, and so numb that Jim the guard had to lift me down to the porch. Miss Plinlimmon, red-eyed and tremulous, opened the door to me, embraced me, and led ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... can remembah, hoein', pickin' cotton and othah chohs 'round the fahm. We didden have much clothes, nevah no undahweah, no shoes, old ovahalls and a tattahed shirt, wintah and summah. Come de wintah, it be so cold mah feet weah plumb numb mos' o' de time and manya time—when we git a chanct—we druve the hogs from outin the bogs an' put ouah feet in the wahmed wet mud. They was cracked and the skin on the bottoms and in de toes weah cracked and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... of the biggest army we had ever seen, and the biggest army beleaguered Belgium had ever seen, and one of the biggest, most perfect armies the world has ever seen. We watched the gray-clad columns pass until the mind grew numb at the prospect of computing their number. To think of trying to count them was like trying to count the leaves on a tree or ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... uncertain time between night and morning she awoke; her face and the pillow were damp with the tears of sleep. She was numb from the drawing of tight clothing, and with a great mental pain and a confused sense of sadness, that weighed on her like a tangible thing. Her mind groped uncertainly for a moment; then, with a great rush, the past night and the things before it returned ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... cannons' thunder, Whistling shot and bursting bomb, When my brothers fall around me, Should my heart grow cold and numb?" But the drum Answered, "Come! Better there in death united, than in life ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Philip bitterly envied him—envied his life, envied his approaching death; for was he not wrapped round with that woman's tender love, and is not such love stronger than death? Philip had felt as if his own heart was grown numb, and as though it had changed to a cold heavy stone. But at the contrast of this man's lot to his own, he felt that he had yet the power of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... the bad taste—or perhaps it was misfortune—to blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid blow. He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth bursting from his ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the world. Once more the mighty Fletcher doth arise, Roab'd in a vest studded with stars and eyes Of all his former glories; his last worth Imbroiderd with what yet light ere brought forth. See! in this glad farewel he doth appear Stuck with the Constellations of his Sphere, Fearing we numb'd fear'd no flagration, Hath curl'd all his fires in this one ONE: Which (as they guard his hallowed chast urn) The dull ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... torments, being convinced that Barbara was dead and buried in that new-made grave beneath the trees. He could not speak, he could scarcely stand, and yet a picture began to form in his numb mind. He saw himself seated in the dark in the Treasure-house at Bonsa-Town; he saw a vision in the air ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... slowly through Juve's mind, he felt an intense desire to sleep come over him, his limbs suddenly became numb and heavy; and then ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... found she had overslept, necessitating haste upon her part. As to that, the temperature of the room did not admit of leisurely dressing. She had no adequate name for the feeling of the water. And her fingers grew so numb that she made what she considered a disgraceful matter ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... him flat 'n' plain as if he was n't goin' to marry Tilly, he need n't count on spendin' the winter as their company. Well, he says you can maybe realize what a shock that was. He says his nose was just smashed numb 'n' his sleep was full o' grabbin' at 'em in his dreams 'n' now it looked like all was for nothin' a tall. Still he says he scraped up a smile 'n' a cheerful look 'n' told Old Pearson as he was more 'n willin' to marry Tilly for his winter's board ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... moments that followed the escape of the drug were the most horrible of his life. The discovery struck old Dr. Kent, Glora and Alan into a numb, blank confusion. They stood transfixed, staring with cold terror. The fly was scurrying along the floor close against the wall Already it was as large as Alan's hand. It ran into the corner, hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its wings were droning with an audible hum. It reared ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... and numb with cold and weak from an illness of some duration, did not raise an arm to ward off the blow, nor was he even prepared to dodge. The iron rod crashed down upon his head. His legs crumpled up; he dropped in a heap at the top of the steps and rolled ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up to ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... without some surprize at the gross blunders that ingenious men have been forced into by endeavouring to reconcile this appearance with the ordinary Principles of optics. Since the writing of which there hath been published in the TRANSACTIONS [Numb. 187. P. 323] another paper relating to the same affair by the celebrated Dr. Wallis, wherein he attempts to account for that phenomenon which, though it seems not to contain anything new or different from what had been said before by others, I shall nevertheless consider ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers' requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy apathy of the British ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... archers drove back the crowding people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... broke again into a canter, and it was long before the reins of the riders brought them to another pause. The day was bitterly cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff. It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead. Gradually the heavy atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... huddled up in the midst of other horses and of buggies under the shed near the store, told that court had probably already convened. Hands numb, the boy hitched the old mule to the only rack left under the shed, then made Buck lie down under the buggy. Heart pounding, he went up on the store porch with his mother and pushed the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Tex was dead or alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... rubbed his eyes, and tried to stretch his limbs, now numb with the damp dullness of the night. Potts had run to him and was asking the "matter," with ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... October when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper's mail, there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it, calling it a "queer little letter," and he took it up slowly as though his deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it he looked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever did look at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight into hers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her a mute ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... ravages of time made no difference. Could not Love work miracles! He loved her more than he had ever loved her in the olden days. He felt a mad hunger for her. Passion would give them back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap to branches grown numb in the winter's cold. Let her say "Yes," and on the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their slumbering past, the awakening of their souls to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... true indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more confident. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... chapel he had erected for his private devotions, first tortured him like fiends, and then, dispatching him, flung his body into a pit. His daughter, following them, clung fast to her father, and, though her heart bled and her brain grew numb between the gashes and the groans, she still cheered him with her passionate endearments; and, holding before his eyes a cross of gold that always hung on her bosom, inspired him to die like a brave man and a Christian. After ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... for bare life they were. I turned sick as I paused to listen; no answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes. Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker—faster, faster! I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move about, but I dared not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood still and shouted again; but my voice was getting choked with tears, as I thought ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... did not understand that there are times in life when imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagination. Still less did he feel that, when we perversely refuse to apply our active faculties to the catholic interests of the world, they turn morbidly into channels of research the least ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his wife. "She has surely been bewitched by Goody Walford, whom she met in the woods. When she first came home, she could not speak. Her breathing troubled her, but later she complained that her back was as a flame of fire and her limbs numb with cold. Goody Walford told her that she would take a long journey but would never return, and then the witch seemed to vanish in the shape of a cat. My wife has since ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... shouting, "Hello, Weary!" in a dozen different keys, and each time her blood jumped. Her eyes had not tricked her, then—though it was not the first time she had trembled to see a sorrel horse gallop down that hill, and then turned numb when came disillusionment. Would those children never start home? By degrees their shrill voices sounded further away, and the place grew still. But the schoolma'am ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... little space while they were lacing me. At the end of the first hundred hours' bout I was worn and tired, but that was all. Another bout of this duration they gave me, after a day and a night to recuperate. And then they gave one hundred and fifty hours. Much of this time I was physically numb and mentally delirious. Also, by an effort of will, I managed to sleep away ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... about her. She could no longer see the shelter she had left, and she stood alone in the midst of a tremendous desolation of rock and snow, with the valley yawning, a vast dusky pit, beneath her feet. It was appallingly lonely, and she was numb with cold, while, since she was sure that she could not climb back to her companions unassisted, there was only one person on whom she could rely, and that was the packer, who had insisted on her doing what he thought fit. When he came ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... tops of the highest mountains were covered with snow. It might be a week or two yet before the snow fell over the country as a whole, or it might be only a day or two; for the wind was blowing from the north, biting cold, and making us feel numb and drowsy. So my father decided that it was time to make our homes for the winter. He had already fixed upon a spot where a tree had fallen and torn out its roots, making a cave well shut in on two sides, and blocked on ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... reckon the distance: twenty-five yards away another direct hit. Crash! only twenty yards. Fifteen yards! We have only five minutes to live. Thoughts of God and home and parents rush through the mind; yet they are only numb feelings. Crash! ten yards; one more and then comes 'ours.' But no, the next boom was in the trench behind, and in the same manner that trench was ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... lay for the most part down the flat along the Chilcoot River. In fact, we crossed this stream again and again. In places there were bridges, but most of the crossings were fords where it was necessary to wade through the icy water above our shoe tops. Our legs, numb and weary, threw off this chill with greater pain each time. As the night fell we could only see the footpath by the dim shine of its surface patted smooth by the moccasined feet of the Indian packers. At last I ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... armpits in a snowdrift. He struggled out and staggered on once more. In the mad buffoonery of that cutting wind he scarce could stand upright. His parka was frozen stiff as a board. He could feel his hands grow numb in his mits. From his fingers the icy cold crept up and up. Long since he had lost all sensation in his feet. From the ankles down they were like wooden clogs. He had an idea they were frozen. He lifted them, and watched them sink and disappear in the clinging snow. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... head again upon his bosom. Hour after hour they sat, and the light swells of the sea heaved them aimlessly to and fro, and the sun burned them, and the spray drenched their limbs. At last Leonard Clare roused himself and looked around: he felt numb and faint, and he saw, also, that her strength was ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... recreation before a bite is touched. The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe reassurance. "He's coming back,—coming back ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the very blood sluggish with sorrow. She grew pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more than she could bear. A trembling took her, an access of trembling which she could not check. At such times, if others were about her, she would sit vacant and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... men coming out to drive the cattle in to milking looked blinking up at the mountain, stood a moment before their numb minds understood what their senses were telling them, then ran shouting back to the farm houses, throwing open pasture gates and knocking down lengths of fence as they ran. Some, with nothing but fear in their hearts, ran straight to the barns and mounting the best horses fled down the roads ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... have seen the coming of death, resistless and horrible, with clearer vision than was ours as that group of savages pronounced our doom. It was by exercising the greatest effort of will that I conquered the dread sense of utter hopelessness which seemed to numb my every faculty; for, although I was to be tortured to the end, and perish at last in utmost physical agony, yet before that moment came there still remained a duty to be performed for one I loved. For that I must retain mind and strength to act ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... overwhelm them, there was a strange exhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shooting down its green side in a cloud of spray. One—two—three—each one seemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms were numb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wished at last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible aching weariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm had blown, roaring, past them, but the seas were still ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... crawled out of the brook and started toward home. His little round body and his sturdy little legs were not warm now, as they had been when he sat down beneath the tree to get cool. For the mountain brook was ice-cold; and Cuffy felt quite numb from standing in it so long. But cold as he was, his face felt like fire. And for some reason, which Cuffy couldn't understand, he could hardly see to pick his way through the shadows ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... without hearing his own voice. He was trying to open the locket but his hands were numb and trembling. When at last he did open it he could not see the child face within, for now even the star-light was shut off by ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to her, and felt the grip of small, cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the tantalization of looking ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... me, like a sea; And like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... numb with the sudden dropping of Life's big responsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energy enough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Until after the funeral Vic had been subdued, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the thermometer keeps ranging between 60 deg. and 70 deg., three times a-day. What refreshment in the very sound—Soaking! Old bones wax dry—nerves numb—sinews stiff—flesh frail—and there is a sad drawback on the Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the approach of rain. Look but at those ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... moonlit passages were theirs however, who in that stormy December night first trod that pleasant shore, but rather the sternest realities of life and death, as with numb and icy fingers they struck a light and sheltered the feeble blaze loth to catch upon the wet twigs ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... first incarcerated in the wall, he should be committed to it in the presence of all the brethren, the chief reading the burial service as the live body was sepulchred. Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed in all his extremities, like one ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... subscriber never asked any rebate, or requested a prize volume of poetry with a red cover, because he had paid for another year; but he simply warmed his numb fingers, so that he could loosen his overalls and lower one side enough to let his hand into the pocket of his best pantaloons underneath, and there he always found the smooth wallet, and inside of it there was always a $2 bill, that had been ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and her Musical acquaintances told about Shopan and Batoven he would sit back so quiet that often he got numb below the Hips. He was afraid to move his Feet for fear some one would notice that he was still in the Parlor and ask him how he liked Fugue No. II, by Bock. He had never heard of any of these People, because they did not carry Tontine Policies with ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... may believe me if you like, but when a fellow's almost starving it isn't disagreeable to keep quiet. Yes, one gets numb amidst silence; it's like an inside coating that stills the gnawing of the stomach a bit. Ah, that Chaine! You haven't a notion of his peasant nature. When he had spent his last copper without earning the fortune he expected by painting, he went into trade, a petty trade, which ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... he said to himself, in spite of the hand which held the sheet, at which the sail snatched and tugged, beginning to ache, and the other which grasped the rudder feeling numb. For the moment, too, he forgot that the sun did not always shine, and that the sea rose angrily, and that there were such things ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... from the seat of the carriage, and was so cold and numb that he couldn't walk, while Mrs. Graham had to be carried into the house by Ted and placed before ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... oncoming horde in numb despair, knowing that his nearly-paralyzed body had no chance in flight. Then, just as the hybrids were nearly upon him, he heard Ruth's ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... pretended to Prophecy by possession of a Spirit; but from the voyce of God; or by a Vision or Dream: Nor is there any thing in his Law, Morall, or Ceremoniall, by which they were taught, there was any such Enthusiasme; or any Possession. When God is sayd, (Numb. 11. 25.) to take from the Spirit that was in Moses, and give it to the 70. Elders, the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided. The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man, mean a mans spirit, enclined ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... against everything human or divine that could have any possible hand in his defeat, Leyden gathered superhuman strength out of his desperation and tore loose his knife hand. His other hand, at Vandersee's throat, had grown white and numb from its own efforts that had not changed the Hollander's expression one bit; but now, in a last swift up-stroke of the knife, the cornered rat ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... and to see that they were carried out. (60) I say he alone, for if anyone during the life of Moses was desirous of preaching anything in the name of the Lord, he was, even if a true prophet, considered guilty and a usurper of the sovereign right (Numb. xi:28) [Endnote 30]. (61) We may here notice, that though the people had elected Moses, they could not rightfully elect Moses's successor; for having transferred to Moses their right of consulting God, and ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... been hovering over me for hours closed down now and enveloped all my senses. Everything was unreal. For a time I was quite numb. But then, as I began to realize and to visualize what it was to mean in my life that my boy was dead there came a great pain. The iron of realization slowly seared every word of that curt telegram upon my heart. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... for a winter to come, I shall be glad of a home and a crumb, When my frail form out of doors would be numb, And I in the snow-storm should die. Summer is lovely, but soon will be past. Summer has plenty not always to last. Summer's the time for the ant to make fast Her stores ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... something unforeseen Disturbs the mind that else had been serene. Joy, grief, desire or fear, whate'er the name The passion bears, its influence is the same; Where things exceed your hope or fall below, You stare, look blank, grow numb from top to toe. E'en virtue's self, if followed to excess, Turns right to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears of the relatives, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... away from old Kentucky, surrounded by a lot of numb-skulls who couldn't mix a fancy drink to save their lives, who know nothing of that prismatic, rainbow-hued fountain ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly weary, to respond ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... door in time to hear the tail-end of the sentence, crept back to bed feeling numb and dazed. So even his father thought he was ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... every girl to be born under conditions which will make possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of the same with a piece of stale cake or a cookie to help out. Nature calls aloud for nourishment and there is no answer. The girl enters her teens, finds a "job," goes to work, ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... window-pane thinking of her lover when the stranger passed; and she opened the door to the clergyman's knock. There could be no mistaking who this girl was, and the clergyman's heart was numb as he ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... night, as soon as it was dark, I crawled out, and worked my way to the foot of the ravine. At first I was so stiff and numb I could hardly move hand or foot, but as I crawled along, the blood began to warm up, and soon I was able to walk. I crept cautiously along the bluffs until I had cleared the ravine, and then, striking out on the open ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... day of the month was kept with burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Vide Numb. x. 10. and xxviii. 11. In imitation of the Jews, the calends, or first days of the month, and the fourth and seventh of the week, were sacred ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to go, alas, ere he was to begin that sturdy battle for the right for which his countrymen and ours will always bless him. I gave him my hand with a better will than I had ever done anything, and we pressed our fingers numb. And his was not the only hand I clasped. And honest Jack Comyn ordered more wine, that they might drink to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quick work for Ida's experienced hands to get them into the life-boat; and so nearly frozen were they that she was obliged to rest on her oars, at the same time rubbing their numb limbs as well as she could. Then she rowed for shore faster than she had ever rowed but once before, and, as she ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the woman been touched by the fringe of that magnetic wave of passion even as it rose to its utmost height, nearly sweeping the man off his feet, and in its final retreat leaving him with quivering nerves and senses bruised and numb? Did something of the man's suffering, of his love and of his despair appear—despite his efforts—upon his face and in the depth of his glance?—and thus made visible did they—even through their compelling intensity—cause that invisible barrier ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... shocked. It is a peculiar case. Not once in a score of years do we find such a case. Every nerve is numb, every muscle relaxed, and whether he will live or die depends on arousing him from ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the powers of darkness and cold. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... required; for the Russians themselves were frozen, and obliged to disperse before night into the neighbouring habitations, which they durst not quit until it was completely daylight. They then recommenced their pursuit of us, but without making any attack; for with the exception of some numb efforts, the violence of the temperature was such as not to allow either party to halt with the view of making an ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... maketh ever more moan and ever it giveth this answer: "My heart it is numb with the cold of the love that was born of the Summer— I come from the garden all white with the wrath and the sorrow of Winter; I have kissed the low, desolate tomb where my bride in her loveliness lieth And the voice of the ghost in my heart is the voice ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... and head were released. But her hands and feet were numb. Still feeling as if she were in some dreadful dream she saw the beam of the headlights picking out the winding trail, flashing on trees by the wayside, shining on wet rocks, heard the chatter of the creek over stones and the labor of ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... to secure any great amount of sleep. Their hard resting-place prevented such a thing. After a nap of possibly half an hour Frank would awaken to find one of his legs numb under him, while his muscles fairly ached with the severe strain to which ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... little estray by the arm, and hurried her along. Poor little Jennie! her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground, they were so cold and numb. She didn't much care even if she was being taken ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... a nervous vibration seemed to seize upon her whole body. She cleared her throat sharply. It was like a premonitory click of machinery before motion, and Lois waited, numb with fear, for what she might say. Suppose she should suddenly suspect, and should cry out, "Is this ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... guided his horse close to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy with snow. To his surprise, it was a girl's despairing face that looked up at him. She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... mostly gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... tea-party seemed to Adam, whose faculties were at their utmost intensity, like a terrible dream. As for poor Mimi, she was so overwrought both with present and future fear, and with horror at the danger she had escaped, that her faculties were numb. However, she was braced up for a trial, and she felt assured that whatever might come she would be able to go through with it. Sir Nathaniel seemed just as usual—suave, dignified, and ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Numb fingers groped anxiously for the harp on his back. It still seemed intact in its leather case. He didn't care about the sodden wadmal breeks and tunic that hung around his skin. The sooner they rotted off him, the better. The thought of the silks and linens of Croy ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... sudden pain at the site of impaction of the embolus, and the pulses beyond are lost. The limb becomes cold, numb, insensitive, and powerless. It is often pale at first—hence the term "white gangrene" sometimes applicable to the early appearances, which closely resemble those presented by the limb of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... his Intelligencer Numb. 3. has given us a vindication of Mr. Gay, and the Beggars Opera; he observes, 'that though an evil taste be very apt to prevail both in Dublin and in London; yet, there is a point which whoever can rightly touch, will never fail of pleasing a very great majority; so great that the dislikers, out ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... and command to Moses, in the choice of magistrates, supreme and subordinate; and discovers, that people are not left to their own will in this matter. It is God's direction, that the person advanced to rule, must be a man in whom is the spirit; Numb. xxvii, 18; which Deut. xxxiv, 9, interprets to be the spirit of wisdom, (i.e.) the spirit of government, fitting and capacitating a man to discharge the duties of the magistratical office, to the glory of God and the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... restless sleeper. But now she could hear nothing, not even the faint vibration of her sister's breath. The silence was absolute and appalling; it struck tangibly upon her sense, as the darkness struck upon her eye-balls and filled her with a numb, unreasoning terror. She slipped out of bed and struck a match. In another few seconds she was standing by Jeannie's white little bed, waiting for the wick of the candle to burn up. Presently the light grew. Jeannie was lying on her side, ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... The eyes of the whole world are upon you. It is now imperative that in the battle with our most hated foe we shall not grow numb, and that we shall at last break his arrogance. Already he is growing pliable, (muerbe.) Numerous officers and men have surrendered voluntarily, but the great decisive blow is still to be struck. Therefore you must persevere to the end. The enemy must ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... us laugh at what many would have considered the hardships of our lot. She taught us not only to accept the circumstances in which we found ourselves, but to win from them courage and strength. When we came in shivering from our work, through a snowstorm, complaining of numb hands and feet, she would say cheerily, "But it doesn't make you any warmer to say you are cold;" and this was typical of the way she took life generally, and tried to have us take it. She was constantly denying herself for our sakes, ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to the next turn!" exclaimed Tom prayerfully. He was sitting waist-deep in water, and his teeth were chattering. He was becoming numb again, but there was no opportunity for exercise now. The old flatboat seemed ready to slide from under him at ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... of blood are mentioned in the law of Moses, Numb. xxxv. 19. In the Roman law also, under the head of "those who on account of unworthiness are deprived of their inheritance," it is pronounced, that "such heirs as are proved to have neglected revenging the testator's death, shall be obliged ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... leaving her as a suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has us we are numb to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for the hands of the sailors were numb with cold, the ropes stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind snatched at the tackle and ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... with her nose as he strove, with numb fingers, to repair the damage. The bells were still, and the silence of the winter night was oppressive. The dry rustle of some dead leaves that still clung forlornly to a ghostly beech by the wayside sounded loud and startling. All at once the doctor was conscious of another ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... of the swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... clamber out was impossible, for every time he tried the thin ice would break afresh under his hands and submerge him again in the bitter cold of the moving stream. Over and over he tried to pull himself to safety but without success. Then suddenly he felt himself becoming numb and helpless. His teeth chattered and he could no longer retain his hold on the frail support that was keeping his head above water. He was slipping back into the river. He was not going to ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... almost numb to sensation. The coolness that had condensed round his soul last night had hardened into ice; he scarcely realised what was going on, or how great was the catastrophe into which his life was plunged. There lay the roofs before him—he ran his eye ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... men into slavery, but rather it shall call forth to the light of heaven a new, richer soul of life out of the ruins of a storm-tossed civilization. It shall, it must, it will conquer new provinces for the majesty of the noble German spirit (Deutschheit) that never will grow chill and numb, as the Roman did. Otherwise—and even though unnumbered billions flowed into the Rhine—the expense of this war would ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... reaction from the intense feeling which had possessed him that morning. When he had at first returned to his cell his mind was intensely alive, and a thousand plans were flashing through his brain, a thousand questions occurred to him which demanded an answer. Now, however, that numb, dull feeling which ever follows such experiences possessed him. After all, what mattered? Mary Bolitho could never be his wife, and if Fate had decided upon his death, die he must. Indeed, he did not seem to care very much. It seemed as if, for the time being, his nature had become almost ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... was engrossed with stifling the ache he had begun to think was dead because it had grown numb, bowed his head without speaking his assent and rose ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... damp. Then Daniel sank down. He tried to reach a hand to the water, but could not. The black veil had woven a compact mass before his eyes. There was a terrible throbbing in his head, but his arms were numb. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... last, to find her dead body lying there, cold and pale in the lightning flashes that broke against the windows. He found me alone with my dead sister, numb with sorrow, dead ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Gray, holding his numb hands to the blaze. "We left here early in the night and worked on a wrong trail till midnight. Then a train-man out at the Junction gave us a clue, and we got a couple of bloodhounds and traced Wilson as ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... delay, But give it, (I don't mean to be ironical,) A prominent position in the CHRONICLE. My wife and children cry to me for corn With feeble earnestness and chirp forlorn, My eye is dim, my heart within me pines, My claws so numb I scarce can scratch two lines, My head—no more will I your feelings harrow, But sign me, Truly yours, Till death, All Souls' ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... with every deep breath he drew, was shaking off his dizziness, was regaining his strength. The spirit within him, with all of the battering he had received, was still unbroken. And Conniston himself felt his right arm growing numb to the elbow. In a very few seconds he would be like a rag doll in the other's big, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... People! sleeping unabashed! Liest thou like a hound when it was lashed? Thou liest! thine own blood fouling both thy hands, And on thy limbs the rust of iron bands, And round thy wrists the cut where cords went deep. Say did they numb thy soul, that thou didst sleep? Alas! sad France is grown a cave for sleeping, Which a worse night than Midnight holds in keeping, Thou sleepest sottish—lost to life and fame— While the stars stare on thee, and ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... learning and better judgment when he was young than our author, but was certainly inferior to him in his appearance in life; and, 'tis thought, greatly inferior to him in every respect. He was author of a pretty Copy of Verses in the VIIIth Vol. of the Spectators, Numb, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... sank on the stone I had my supreme wrench, and it left me numb, hard, in a cold sweat. "Don't betray me! I'll forestall him! He's planned nothing for to-day," I whispered hoarsely. "Sally—you dearest, gamest little girl in the world! Remember I loved you, even if I couldn't prove it your way. It's for his sake. I'm to ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... arrowy fire extorting feverish groans Shot stinging through her stark o'er labour'd bones. —With backward gaze, lock'd joints, and step of pain, Her seat scarce left, she strives, alas! in vain, To teach their limbs along the burning road A few short steps to totter with their load, Shakes her numb arm that slumbers with its weight, And eyes through tears the mountain's shadeless height; And bids her soldier come her woes to share, Asleep on Bunker's [iv] charnel hill afar; For hope's deserted well why wistful look? Chok'd ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... not, and some moments afterwards she saw that the way was clear ahead. She wondered whether they would stop before they reached the bottom of the dale and how far it was. The round sheepfold in the first field looked no larger than a finger ring. She was getting numb and the rush of bitter air took ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Point Island, beat heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning. The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... she moves, The pitying Dryads shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek succeeds, And pearls ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it, for be ye well assured," and so forth. She did not even hear them; for the numb, dead feeling which crept over her, chilling her blood, and making her hand, which Richard took in his while he fitted the wedding ring, so cold and clammy to the touch, that Richard felt tempted to hold and chafe it in his own warm, broad palms; but that was not in accordance ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... speechless, as if numb with the horror of his misfortune, he rode with fettered hands between the two officers, incapable of fleeing, as they had even bound a cord around his arms, each end held fast by ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... managed to secure any great amount of sleep. Their hard resting-place prevented such a thing. After a nap of possibly half an hour Frank would awaken to find one of his legs numb under him, while his muscles fairly ached with the severe strain to which they ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... sun was shining brilliantly and the air was full of the chirping of birds. I felt stiff and uneasy from sleeping in my clothes, and my foot was numb from Bock's weight. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... old church she recognised and lots of landmarks. And then suddenly they drive past some lodge gates, and there—in the middle of the road—stands a dreadful man smoking a cigar with a band round it. All the glory has gone from the drive, and the girl feels numb and sick and mad ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... whose limbs were numb from the long carry, obeyed with alacrity. But returning hurriedly with the water, he was met at the door by his perverse master, who took the glass from his hands with the curt announcement ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, "Boatswain on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... asked not counsel of the mouth of the Lord."—Josh. ix: 14. This counsel Joshua was expressly commanded to ask, when he was ordained some time before, to be the executor of God's legislative will, by Moses. Here is the proof—Numb. xxvii: 18-23: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thy hand upon him; and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight. And thou shalt put some of thine honor ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... back of his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... disappeared in the darkness. The raw air was full of coal smoke and a smell of freshly-cut boards. The captain and the top sergeant had disappeared. The men sat about, huddled in groups, sinking as far as they could into their overcoats, stamping their numb wet feet on the mud-covered cement of the floor. The sliding doors were shut. Through them came a monotonous sound of cars shunting, of buffers bumping against buffers, and now and then the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... aliquot frustra antehac tentatae, cum censura brevi Doctrinae Wallisianae de Motu, London 1671 in 4to. There is an account of this book in the Philosophical Transactions, Numb. 72, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... stiff and weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... uncle. His mother then called him by name for the first time in those terrible hours, and bade him bid his father good-night. As he went mechanically to do so, his father seemed to keep Hal's hand in his own numb fingers, and to look most imploringly, the mother's hand on to Harry's. The mother, as the hands met, said, "Hal will take care of me, dear," and Hal exclaimed, "I will." Then they knew they were right in their interpretation as the sick face brightened and ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... his head, rubbed his eyes, and tried to stretch his limbs, now numb with the damp dullness of the night. Potts had run to him and was asking the "matter," with dilated eyes ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of his day! There was no opera now! That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it. Ah! the wonderful singers! Gone! He sat watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at his heart. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to be thanked ourselves, to cheer, to succour, to do some little good ourselves while yet we may. There is a joy in giving generously, just as there is in receiving generously. Yet, there are many moments in each man's life when no gift can numb the dull ache of the inevitable, when nothing, except getting away—somewhere, somehow, and immediately—can stifle the unspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instance can we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... [the Israelites who were delivered from Egypt] my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them' (Eze 20:12). Ceremonies were commanded to be performed as the Sabbath worship, which cannot now be observed (see Lev 24; Numb 28: Neh 13:22; Eze 46:4). The Jewish Sabbath was 'a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ' (Col 2:16,17). The shadows have fled away; we possess the substance. The covenant of Moses was written on stone—the new covenant is written on our hearts (Heb 8:9,10). Bunyan ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that rank of pontifical writers, it seems, by their exorcisms and conjurations approve of it, having forged many stories to that purpose. A nun did eat a lettuce [1249]without grace, or signing it with the sign of the cross, and was instantly possessed. Durand. lib. 6. Rationall. c. 86. numb. 8. relates that he saw a wench possessed in Bononia with two devils, by eating an unhallowed pomegranate, as she did afterwards confess, when she was cured by exorcisms. And therefore our Papists do sign themselves so often with the sign ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... people's intellects. To the Protestant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand each other—their centres of emotional energy are too different. Rigorous truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of a mutual ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper's mail, there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it, calling it a "queer little letter," and he took it up slowly as though his deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it he looked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever did look at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight into hers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her a mute ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... husking corn. The wind was keen, and the stalks, from recent rain, were wet, and filled with ice. His scanty clothing scarcely afforded any protection from the cold, and his hands soon became so numb that he could scarcely use them; but, if he stopped one moment to rap them, or breathe upon them, in the hope of imparting some warmth, the farmer who was close at hand, in warm woollen clothes and thick husking gloves, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... in his soul still believes in something like an all-beneficent God. But such an experience gives that 'somehow' and 'somewhere' an unmerciful drubbing with iron fists. And I have come from the sinking of the Roland with a spot in my soul deaf and dumb and numb. It has not awakened to life yet. The brutalisation is so extreme that while it is still fresh in one's mind, one would as soon express belief in God or man or the future of humanity or in a Utopia, or anything else of the sort, as give utterance to something that one knows to be a vile deception. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... sons of Sorrow come Only wishing to be numb: Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies, Our breasts are soft as silken roses, And our hands are tenderer Than the breaths that scarce can stir The sunlit eglantine that is Murmurous with hidden bees. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep Your tired ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... I saw by the stick on thee breast, thee was tied so tight and fast, it would be an hour's work to cut thee loose—thee captivators lying by all the while; and, secondly, I knew, by the same reason, thee limbs would be so numb thee could neither stand upon thee legs, nor hold a weapon in thee hand, for just as long a time; and, besides, I feared, in case thee should discover there was help nigh at hand, thee might cry out in thee surprise, and so alarm these sleeping captivators. And so, friend, I ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... in ordinary, began to assuage the violence of my suffering, and to-numb my feeling of them. My health returned to me, though I still retained an air of grief, dejection, and languor, which taking off from the ruddiness of my country complexion, rendered it rather more ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... her eyes full of tears, and kissed him nervously, as though asking pardon, for in spite of her honest attempt to be cheerful, she felt sad enough to give up altogether. She recalled the joy she had promised herself at seeing her parents again, and she was surprised at the coldness that seemed to numb her affection, just as if, after constantly thinking of those one loves, when at a distance and unable to see them at any moment, one should feel, on seeing them again, a sort of check of affection, until the bonds of their life in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... solitude also began even to numb the powers of his mind. He was fully aware of this, and tried to shake it off, for he shuddered more at the thought of mental than of physical decay. Among other things, he took to talking more frequently to Brownie, but although the pup was, in many respects, a most valuable and sympathetic ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... and obliged to disperse before night into the neighbouring habitations, which they durst not quit until it was completely daylight. They then recommenced their pursuit of us, but without making any attack; for with the exception of some numb efforts, the violence of the temperature was such as not to allow either party to halt with the view of making an attack, or ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... nebulous grotesques. I used to sit down knowing so well what I had to say; now I strive to invent, and never come at anything. Suppose you pick up a needle with warm, supple fingers; try to do it when your hand is stiff and numb with cold; there's the difference between my manner of work in those days and what ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... window of her room, and by the light of it she saw that the clock which stood upon the mantelpiece pointed to half-past eleven. She had slept for nearly twelve hours, and felt that, notwithstanding the cold and exposure, save for stiffness and a certain numb feeling in her head—the result, perhaps, of the unaccustomed brandy—she was well and, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they made, They found Miss Jenny sore afraid, Or Jenny's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... And all the time the voice seemed to be getting farther away. But it wasn't. It was just getting weaker. In a few more steps I come on the nag deep in a snowdrift up to its shanks and there slumped over in the saddle was Dyke. His feet were froze fast in the stirrups. He was numb and nigh speechless. I wropt my shawl around him and hurried, back to the house, heated the fire poker red hot and with it I thawed Dyke Garrett's boots loose from them wooden stirrups." Aunt Sallie sighed. "Of course no mortal can tell when salvation will take holt on their heart ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... his wind that was weak, it was his feet—his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Thus he spake with tears, and all of them that had knowledge of ships agreed thereto; but the hearts of all grew numb, and pallor overspread their cheeks. And as, like lifeless spectres, men roam through a city awaiting the issue of war or of pestilence, or some mighty storm which overwhelms the countless labours of oxen, when the images of their own accord sweat ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... other's bodies for the whole time. We suffered from thirst. I had a craving for canned peaches. Twice a drizzle came on, wetting the pontoon. We turned on our stomachs and lapped up the moisture, but the paint came off, with salt, and nauseated us. Our limbs grew numb. From time to time the wreckage from torpedoed ships would pass. Two full biscuit-tins came close enough to swim for, but by then in our weakened state we knew that we would drown if we tried to get them. We did haul in a third ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... arrange such splendid games in Beneventum that I cannot wish thee ill. Make a pair of boots for the sphinx, whose paws must grow numb during night-dews; after that thou will make sandals for the Colossi which form the alleys before the temples. Each one will find there a fitting occupation. Domitius Afer, for example, will be treasurer, since he is known ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... know whether Tex was dead or alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp claws dug solidly through the bark. Here and there ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would wish to find in his ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the sea ran even higher, and at night it became very cold; but still they did not dare to leave off baling for an instant, though their legs and arms were numb with fatigue ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to take my place, Fred," he said as they came in for their turn at bat. "My arm is numb and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... there was a tomb-like silence. He never moved a muscle of his face. The chill of the smile in his eyes deepened, and seemed, as it was bent upon her, to numb her faculties. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... ingratiatingly with her nose as he strove, with numb fingers, to repair the damage. The bells were still, and the silence of the winter night was oppressive. The dry rustle of some dead leaves that still clung forlornly to a ghostly beech by the wayside sounded loud and startling. All at ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... in the manner the Lord desired it, what will be the punishments for those who, by a godless system of education, abolish religion? If God slew twenty-four thousand men of the Israelites for having fallen into fornication (Numb. xxv.), with what punishments will He visit those who add, to the sin of fornication and adultery, even the crime of child-murder! Numberless child-murders are committed daily in the land. Assuredly the voice of these innocent victims will cry to ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... dun-colored among the dreary rocks. The wet turf creaked under my heavy boots, the black-thorn scraped and grated against knee and elbow. Over all lay a strange light, pallid, ghastly, where the sea spray whirled across the landscape and drove into my face until it grew numb with the cold. In broad bands, rank after rank, billow on billow, the rain burst out across the endless moors, and yet there was no wind to drive it at ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... complete the work which the latter had left unfinished: the complete inventory of the prodigious wealth of vegetation, of the innumerable species and varieties which Fabre and he collected together, on the slopes and summits of Monte Renoso, often botanizing "up in the clouds, mantle on back and numb with cold." (3/10.) ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... having skin for man's abuse, Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet, Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth Between the vivid lips; a vassal set; And numb, of formal value. Are we true In nature, never natural thing repents; Albeit receiving punishment for due, Among the group of this world's penitents; Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft Cravenly, while the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who was to become his second wife—his one real wife, as his friends reckoned—the whole man ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... passages were theirs however, who in that stormy December night first trod that pleasant shore, but rather the sternest realities of life and death, as with numb and icy fingers they struck a light and sheltered the feeble blaze loth to catch upon the wet twigs ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... imagine a man making such a declaration; it was new to his entire experience and contrary to his code. It was unconservative, therefore it staggered him. It was, in fact, a phenomenon so unique as to leave him numb. He told himself that it must have been the act of a madman or a fool. Under no circumstances could he conceive of himself warning an enemy of his intentions; on the contrary, when he undertook to crush a rival he went about it slyly, secretly, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... white muslin, surrounding the pale, wan wistful face, with the large, longing eyes, yearning for one more touch of the little soft warm child, whom she was too feeble to clasp in her arms, already growing numb in death. Many a time when Molly had been in this room since that sad day, had she seen in vivid fancy that same wan wistful face lying on the pillow, the outline of the form beneath the clothes; and the girl had not shrunk from such visions, but rather cherished them, as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fist lashed out and caught the animal face in a lashing blow. His knuckles felt numb as ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... that something savours well; We note a numb relief withheld before; Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell Of Time ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... didn't have any too good a time of it where he sat, astride a frail branch. The young beech did not, as yet, reach the high branch-canopy, so the boy couldn't get over to another tree, and he didn't dare to come down again. He was so cold and numb that he almost lost his hold around the branch; and he was dreadfully sleepy; but he didn't dare fall asleep for ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... believer in the productive powers of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled funny; but it used to fill him with sorrow to see many of his best controversial ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... shut the door quickly after him, and waited, a grim sentry, under the tree, with his face towards Dublin. Father Time had not blunted the white gentleman's perceptions, touched his ear with his numb fingers, or blown the smoke of his tobacco-pipe into his eyes. He was keen of eye, sharp of hearing; but neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and so he turned, after a few minutes, and glided away, like a white ghost, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up to my ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... "Numb my hands with palsy, Rack my feet with gout, Hunch my back and shoulder, Let my teeth fall out; Still, if Life be granted, I prefer the loss; Save my life, and give me Anguish on ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... were quite numb with the cold. Ah! a little match might do her good if she only dared draw one from the bundle, and strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers at it. She drew one out. R-r-atch! how it spluttered ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... prisoner's countenance; the vanishing of the gleam of hope, the gloomy desperation that succeeded. The beautiful black brows met in a spasm of pain over eyes that stared at an abyss of ruin; her lips whitened, she wrung her hands unconsciously; and then, as if numb with horror, she leaned back in her chair, and her chin sank until it touched the black ribbon at her throat. When after a while she rallied, and forced herself to listen, a pleasant-faced young man was on the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head—was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's arm that was ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the lights that closing his eyelids had not changed. He still could not hear. He'd been deafened by the sounds that had dazed and numbed him. He moved, and he knew it, but he could not feel anything. His hands and body felt numb. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... over this, I became quite numb with the terror of it; and I might well have deduced from this fact, that my 'last conviction' was eating into my being too fast and too seriously, and would undoubtedly come to its climax before long. And for the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a thousand times no! Surely Fate could not deal a blow like that: Nature itself would rise in revolt: her hand, when it held that tiny scrap of paper last night, would have surely have been struck numb ere it committed a deed so appalling and ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... barrier that had reared itself between Miriam and her kind suddenly crumbled and fell. Warm tides of human sympathy and love came into her numb heart and ice-bound soul. The lines in her face relaxed, her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist of tears. Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed of saying for more than a quarter of ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... of his squalid clerkship were all leisure now, but there was nothing at all near home on the other hand, for his imagination, numb and stiff from its long chill, to begin to play with. Voices from far off would quaver to him therefore in the stillness; where he knew for the most recurrent, little by little, the faint wail of his wife. He ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... there, gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated it. As it was, the skipper wondered vaguely ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... turned up in the jersey and cap and boots I had bought him. And then his education began. On first entering my studio he was numb with surprise, a moving and speechless ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... me without fee, being a friend of our prosperous days, lived "on the other side." It was winter, and many a time I crossed the frozen river, carrying a lace pillow as big as myself, till my hands were numb with cold. But I persisted, afraid as I was of cold; and when I came to Vitebsk I was glad of my one accomplishment. For Vitebsk had not yet seen "Russian lace," and I was an acceptable teacher of the new art, though I was such a mite, because there was no other. I taught ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... that the sheep went, otherwise he had no chance of recovering it. The man led him to a grey stone, and said he was sure she took the brae (hill side) within a yard of that. 'Chieftain, come hither to my foot, you great numb'd whelp!' said John. Chieftain came—John pointed with his finger to the ground, 'Fetch that, I say, sir—bring that back—away!' The dog scented slowly about on the ground for some seconds, but soon began to mend his pace, and vanished in the darkness. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... winter advanced and the air grew frosty and the snow and ice came, the work in a good many ways was harder. And yet everything considered I don't know but what I'd rather work outdoors at zero than at eighty-five. Except that my hands got numb and everything was more difficult to handle I didn't mind the cold. There was generally exercise enough ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... the waste area, taking deep breaths, resting, my mind numb. Then gradually it was borne in on me that the Plaza itself looked rather more empty-sided than it should. A cold hand gripped my heart. I began to skirt the smouldering embers of the shanties and wooden warehouses, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... the bridle and threw it, keeping the end of the rein in his hand. Gilbert tried to grasp it, but his hands were too numb. He managed, however, to get one arm and his head through the opening, and relaxed his hold on ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in the other an undivided orange, evidence enough of an extraordinary occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Ishmael saw some fragments of the wreck that had been tossed upon the rocks and left there by the retiring waves. Among them was a long spar. This he directed the men to drag up upon the deck. The men, who were weak from hunger and numb from cold, could scarcely find power to obey this order. But when they did, Ishmael took off his own shirt and fastened it to the end of the spar, which he immediately set up in its position as a flag-staff. They had no glass, and therefore could not sweep the horizon in search ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary success with a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, in his letter to the celebrated Robert ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... a lifetime and more. An old shepherd at Pyecombe, talking confidentially on the subject of crooks, complained that the new weapon as sold at Lewes, although nominally on the Pyecombe pattern, is a "numb thing." The chief reason which he gave was that the maker was out of touch with the man who was to use it. His own crook (like that of Richard Jefferies' shepherd friend) had been fashioned from the barrel ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... heard that Fire-drakes could fly; indeed, he had never believed in them at all, till the night before. For a moment he was numb with terror; then he flew down like a stone to the very bottom of the hill ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... tackle upon the rock, and by a strong effort stemmed the current and reached the shore. The boat was a hundred yards above, and when I arrived there my teeth were chattering with the cold, my feet were numb with bruises, and the black flies were making the blood stream down my back. We hastened back with the boat, and, by wading out into the current again and holding it by a long rope, it swung around with my companion aboard, and was held in the eddy behind the rock. I clambered up, got my clothes ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... How numb and cold he was! Could he hold out until daylight? Yes, he would. He would see the sunlight once more. He dared not move, nor even change his position, for fear lest he should lose sight of the star and not be able to ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... And like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was comforted, and bless'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Guns and bayonets were propped against the wall. The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—with bare legs that looked blue and numb in the cold—the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted and peculiarly ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... against the storm from sky to sky, As down the dark blood-rusted chain-locked planks Of labouring galleys the dark slave-guards ply Their knotted scourges, and the red flakes fly From bare scarred backs that quiver and heave once more, And slaves that heed not if they live or die Pull with numb arms at many a red-stained oar, Nor know the sea's dull crash ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... that the ship seemed to be screaming in every timber. I could have only lain there for a few seconds, for no human clamour had mingled with the sound of the ship's agony when I staggered to my feet. My head was aching furiously, and my right wrist was numb from the fall, but my senses had now come back to me, and I knew that some great calamity had befallen the ship. In desperation I pulled myself together and ran with all speed, heedless of the darkness, to the ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lawn, and there was not a creature stirring to chase it. Now the night is bitter cold, with no sounds outside but the cracking of the porches as they freeze tighter. Even the north wind seems grown too numb to move. I had determined to convert its coarse, big noise into something sweet—as may often be done by a little art with the things of this life—and so stretched a horse-hair above the opening between the window sashes; ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... that way makes me shudder. It would be to limit your larger uses, your wider mission, merely to numb a selfish grief born of a ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... that was on my nail makes my tongue tingle and feel numb," he remarked, still rubbing. "Let us go back again. I want to ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... His brain was numb. His body was without feeling. He never knew just when he was led from his mock throne, nor by whom, nor where he was led to. He did not hear the jeers and howling of the blood-infuriated Chaldeans, nor the commands given him by his captors, nor the words ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... of the pack was doubled, and he rapped them till his hand was numb before he and Ione got by. Their vines drew out thin, but held until they were firmly tied about the safe. They went back after ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... suppose a great part of it was fancy, and even now I can't get it into shape, for everything was so dull and dreamy and confused. All I can tell you more is, that I woke up once, feeling a little more sensible, and began to feel about me. Then I knew that my sword was by my side and my hand numb and throbbing, for the sword-knot was tight about my wrist. I managed to get that loosened, and after a good deal of difficulty sheathed my sword, after which I began to feel for my revolver, and got hold of the ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Lassiter's subtle forecasting of disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters's friendship. She had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter's friendship—that was more than love—it would endure, but soon he, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... last, when all the people of the city were numb with terror, and incapable of further emotion (save only for Phorenice who still had nerve enough to show no concern), what had been threatened came to pass. The capstone of the throne slid out till ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... as of steam escaping. I started to turn into this passage but was met with such a blast of cold air that I dared not face it for fear of being frozen. Stamping my feet, which were fast becoming numb, I made the rounds of the chamber, and examined the dead miners that were tumbled ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... poetess, Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, And all the more when "Butch" Weldy Captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. Will some one go to the village newspaper, And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— I thirsted so for love I hungered ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... ceased to flow, the heavy sobs were stilled, her aching and bruised body felt numb with the pain in her heart. But outwardly she was more calm. She rose from her knees, and hiding the small cross in the bosom of her gown, she drew forth the letter and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that had gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... meeting, and before it, we were aware of the fate which has overtaken us. We heard it in our hearts, that numb restlessness, that vague disquietude, that prophetic echo which never dies out of ears attuned to the music of destiny ... Love you less, you who are the source of all joy to me? Evelyn, my heart aches and my brain is light with grief, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... with impressive dignity till the straightening of numb muscles inspired an agonized, "Ouch!" and a stiff wriggle. It was every bit Berta's fault, and she evidently didn't care a snap. She would show people whether they could walk all over her and never say boo! She ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... striding away, disappeared, while Ida shivered as she glanced about her. She could no longer see the shelter she had left, and she stood alone in the midst of a tremendous desolation of rock and snow, with the valley yawning, a vast dusky pit, beneath her feet. It was appallingly lonely, and she was numb with cold, while, since she was sure that she could not climb back to her companions unassisted, there was only one person on whom she could rely, and that was the packer, who had insisted on her doing what he thought fit. When he came back she had put ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... their own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are now recalled to ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Bess's isms that she brought home from college—civic purity, and all that impractical rot that these intellectual women get, and he says he began hunting for some one to run in to fill the vacancy caused by the declination of E. Brassfield. He was knocked numb when he found out that you were out for the place. You must have said something to him, you know. Now what in the name ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... no one would suppose her to be in the ordinary sense of the word an invalid; for she was rosy, her eyes were bright, her appetite was good, and she had plenty of strength. Nevertheless there was a certain part of her being which was numb and cold and half-dead. She was not frightened about anything; but she knew that she had behaved as no right-minded or honorable girl should have done. Verena's words that afternoon had roused her, and had given her a ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... number of expensive, expendable platforms in the opening hours of the conflict if our response is to be timely and induce shock. Awe is not achieved if the enemy is permitted to gain experience in being attacked; at best you may make them numb. Alternatively, reusable long-range survivable systems provide needed flexibility to alter the Deep Strike plan as it unfolds. The food chain of weapons systems ranges from the most valuable systems such as ballistic missiles, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... right hand was held in a vice of iron. Now his numb arm gave way, slowly, inevitably. He ground his teeth and cursed. His curse was half a prayer. For answer there was the unearthly chuckle just below his ear. His hand was moved back, down, around! He was helpless ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... frequently, For 'tis his daily Malady, More, it has such reviving power 'Twill keep a man awake an houre, Nay, make his eyes wide open stare Both Sermon time and all the prayer. Sir, should I tell you all the rest O' th' cures 't has done, two hours at least In numb'ring them I needs must spend, Scarce able then to make an end. Besides these vertues that's therein. For any kind of Medicine, The Commonwealth-Kingdom I'd say, Has mighty reason for to pray That still Arabia may produce Enough of Berry for it's use: For't ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... my cap and then through my head," said Lannes. "Oh, not through my skull, or I wouldn't be talking to you now. I think it glanced off the bone, as I know it's gone out on the other side. But I'm losing much blood, John, and I seem to be growing numb." ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... do except to sit still; and Findlayson sat still under his macintosh till his helmet became pulp on his head, and his boots were over-ankle in mire. He took no count of time, for the river was marking the hours, inch by inch and foot by foot, along the embankment, and he listened, numb and hungry, to the straining of the stone-boats, the hollow thunder under the piers, and the hundred noises that make the full note of a flood. Once a dripping servant brought him food, but he could not eat; and ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... see; and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago—I had been there a year then—I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I've been to the little cascade, and held it under the icy cold water as it fell. The numb chill seems to have done ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... arm'd my timid soul, "And agony has numb'd the throb of fear; "Taught a weak heart its terrors to controul, "And more to court than shun ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... the staircase. He turned just in time to parry Colden's sword, which the major had picked up and made shift to hold in his wrapped-up, wounded hand. Harry saw that an opportune stroke might send the sword from his enemy's numb and weakening grasp, and his heart swelled with anticipated triumph, until he heard Colden's ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... dismayed to find how happy she was at the release. Her feet, unaccustomed to sitting still so long, were numb, and little prickles were running up and down her legs. She hurried as fast as she could into Mamsie's room, feeling in need of all the ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... was far advanced. A cold wind was beginning to moan among the almost leafless trees, and George West's teeth chattered, and his ill-clad limbs grew numb as he walked along the fields leading to Millwood. "Lucky it's a dark night; this fine wind will fan the flame ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... winter to come, I shall be glad of a home and a crumb, When my frail form out of doors would be numb, And I in the snow-storm should die. Summer is lovely, but soon will be past. Summer has plenty not always to last. Summer's the time for the ant to make fast Her stores ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... next turn!" exclaimed Tom prayerfully. He was sitting waist-deep in water, and his teeth were chattering. He was becoming numb again, but there was no opportunity for exercise now. The old flatboat seemed ready to slide from under ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... sensation of impending death. Usually during the exertion and excitement, sudden onset of agonizing pain in the region of the heart and a sense of constriction, as if the heart had been seized in a vise. The pains radiate up the neck and down the arm. The fingers may be numb. The patient remains motionless and silent, the face usually pale or ashy with profuse perspiration. Lasts for several seconds or a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... I know it well Lord Warwick, blame me not, 'Tis loue I beare thy glories make me speake: But in this troublous time, what's to be done? Shall we go throw away our Coates of Steele, And wrap our bodies in blacke mourning Gownes, Numb'ring our Aue-Maries with our Beads? Or shall we on the Helmets of our Foes Tell our Deuotion with reuengefull Armes? If for the last, say ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... getting numb. She had been sitting on them in correct Japanese fashion all this time. She was proud of the accomplishment, which she considered must be hereditary, but she could not keep it up for much longer than half an hour. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... property. After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary success with a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, in his letter to the celebrated ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Propositiones aliquot frustra antehac tentatae, cum censura brevi Doctrinae Wallisianae de Motu, London 1671 in 4to. There is an account of this book in the Philosophical Transactions, Numb. 72, for the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... effort, and suddenly—incredibly—there burst upon Thyrsis' sight an apparition. Sick at heart, numb with horror, dazed—he scarcely knew what it was. It happened so swiftly that he had hardly time to see; but something leaped forth something enormous, supernatural! It came—it came—there seemed never to be an end to it! He started to his feet, staring, crying out; and at the same moment the doctor ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... would not slight. Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they know it. The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his mother's hand. She ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked over the precipice, and just ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... but when we know that hundreds are rendered homeless every day, and countless thousands are killed and wounded, men and boys mowed down like a field of grain, and with as little compunction, we grow a little bit numb to human misery. What does it matter if there is a family north of the track living on soda biscuits and turnips? War hardens us to human grief ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... been Mr. Reardon's. For fully half an hour he lay there, gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... more letters addressed to "Dear C.," bearing no signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... back into his face but receded when he saw Terry standing by him. Still faint and sick he struggled to his feet, leaning against the trunk of the banyan and stamping his feet weakly to restore the still numb legs. Terry helped him hobble over to where the Bogobos, who had come up at the shots, were grouped about the dead monster. Lindsey, kneeling to examine the head of the great reptile, struck a match to point out the jagged wounds that had shattered ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and turned in time to guard his head with his right arm. It felt numb and he was half dazed by a shock of pain, but he struck savagely with his left hand and his knuckles jarred on bone. The other's stick dropped, and when they grappled Festing was relieved to feel his arm was ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... thought the day was ours. The headlong Rupert Swept all before him, like the wind that bends The thin and unkind corn, his men were numb With slaying, and their chargers straddling, blown With undue speed, as they had hunted that Which could not turn again—e'en thus was Rupert, When round to meet his squadrons came a host Like whirlwind to the wind. There was a moment that the blood-surge roll'd Hither and thither, while ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... mingled incapacity and unworthiness. Before she left the cottage, it was spring time in her soul; it had begun to put forth the buds of eternal life. Such buds are not unfrequently nipped; but even if they are, if a dull, false, commonplace frost close in, and numb the half wakened spirit back into its wintry sleep, that sleep will ever after be haunted with some fainting airs of the paradise those buds prophesied. In Mercy's case they were to grow into spiritual ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... upon the floor of the landing. "My feet are cold and numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily. "The woman struggled ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... should have been split in two; and, though his face did not show it, it must have been surprising to Carse that she wasn't. With one flick of the wrist he wrenched the Star Devil out of her plunge and sent her scudding, a hundred feet up, over the jungle rim. Friday was gaping. Harkness, still numb from the dive, foolishly staring; and then the brigand bared her ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... think that I owe you no explanations, but I shall say this: the evil courses that you deplore were adopted, not vindictively, but in the effort to numb the agony that you had made me suffer. You but ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the boys had been fully occupied by their athletic games; but as the ground became one series of frozen humps, hands grew numb, and feet cold, the interest in them subsided; and yet the love of misrule, so much stronger in a boys' than in a girls' school, grew more active ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... In his rage-maddened heart was no room for gratitude to the ape-man. He recalled only the fact that Tarzan had laid this painful indignity upon him. He would be revenged, but just at present his legs were so numb and his head so dizzy that he must postpone ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his hand toward the bent figure that was about to shuffle past him. The withered hand of the white-faced clown rested in the strong grasp of the pastor, and his pale, little eyes sought the face of the stalwart man before him; a numb desolation was growing in his heart; the object for which he had gone on day by day was being left behind and he must stumble forth into ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... probably make no effort to learn of his whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the willows; his bare hands and wet feet were fast becoming chilled and numb. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 'run into' the dark green of the sashes, both colours being wet at the same time, each man having two pots of paint and two sets of brushes. The wind was not blowing in sudden gusts, but swept by in a strong, persistent current that penetrated their clothing and left them trembling and numb with cold. It blew from the right; and it was all the worse on that account, because the right arm, being in use, left that side of the body fully exposed. They were able to keep their left hands in their trousers pockets and ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Wings in mourning veils, dark as crepe, And feasts on afterglow of Trust, On cauldrons tossed to crafty Death That froths dank pomp and guidons bright, Unto a height, where falt'ring eyes, Betrayed by crystals numb in dust, Gasps at the sight with startled breath As vapours green, war with the light, Faint as the sunset's golden dyes. All mounts of bone are tombs of weal, Each scree, a temple of king Doom; And runnels that the suns do shun, Are pools where ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... "It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, 305 When the frost flowers deg. the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... easy prey, we said, to our gunners, archers and swordsmen. All was in readiness for the attack—and yet no word was ever given. No trumpet sounded, though the men were drawn up ready. We all stood to arms; but the sight of that dazzling white figure seemed to close the lips of our commanders, to numb the limbs of our soldiers. I can say no more. When the chance was gone—the hour passed—we gazed into each other's face as men awaking from a dream. We cursed ourselves. We cursed the witch who had bound us by her spells. We vowed to redeem and revenge ourselves another ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, Why, nothing ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for want of a better simile, to the anguish in the eyes of a dying doe. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... was one thing that they knew quite well: the water was almost colder than they could bear, at first. If their feet hadn't grown numb, after a time, so that there was no feeling in them at all, they wouldn't have been able to stand there so still ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... were many exceptions to this rule. There were some of the upper classes remaining, described in the certificates which all the emigrants were obliged to procure, like Sir Nicholas Comyn, of Limerick, 'who was numb at one side of his body of a dead palsy, accompanied only by his lady, Catherine Comyn, aged thirty-five years, flaxen-haired, middle stature; and one maid servant, Honor M'Namara, aged twenty years, brown hair, middle ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... longer job than he had expected it to be, for my pal was tired and numb. But the grave was made at last, upon the very summit of ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my God, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... this time were numb with cold. We had been ascending steadily, and Byfield's English thermometer stood at thirteen degrees. I borrowed from the heap a thicker overcoat, in the pocket of which I was lucky enough to find a pair of furred gloves; and leaned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sick, numb, he glanced at Naida, who was still staring silently, and hitched his rifle half up to his shoulder. But he did not look down the sights yet. Although it was time, and more than time, that he fired, he would not do it until the last possible second, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... fluttering heart and heaving and clamoring lungs—plunging forward under the weak urging of his heavy master, responding now through force of habit—feeling that because he was in motion he must continue in motion. It was a numb, mechanical effort, involuntary and apart from him, as much apart from his control as was the beating of ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... had died away as suddenly as it had come. She felt numb and yet excited. She leaned forward and once more laid ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... tap of the bell, no less surely to grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from helmet and coat, high upon ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... hundred Mohawks fell on the Hurons encamped under shelter of Quebec, butchered without mercy, and departed with shouts of laughter that echoed below the guns at Cape Diamond, scalps waving from the prow of each Iroquois canoe. Quebec was thunderstruck, numb with fright. The French dared not retaliate, or the Iroquois would fall on the colony at Onondaga. Perhaps people who keep their vision too constantly fixed on heaven lose {99} sight of the practical duties of earth; but when eighty Onondagas came again ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Yale boat was one who seemed to be growing blind and numb. In his heart he was praying for strength as earnestly as he would have prayed for the salvation of his soul. Only a few moments more—he must ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it proves that it is property. The children of Israel were required to purchase their first-born out from under the obligations of the priesthood, Numb. xviii. 15, 16; Exod. xxxiv. 20. This custom is kept up to this day among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their first-born were, or are, held as property? They were bought as really as were servants. So ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a tent in Otago (New Zealand) during a severe winter, we were perfectly numb with cold at nights, until we adopted the Maori plan, which is to dig a hole about a foot square in the clear, to cover the bottom with a stone or stones, and to fill it at night with red-hot cinders from the camp ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... now began to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... of sheep was steady and continuous. The current was swift and the men's bodies ached and grew numb in the intense cold, but they stood their ground. Only in one place was the water too deep to work, and here they lost a few terror-stricken animals who turned aside from the chain ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... smoking-room, where my friend was consuming large cigars; I envied him his occupation, but rejected all his invitations to join him. After a time he came out and wrapped me up in half a dozen rugs on a seat. By the time we reached Dublin I was numb to the heart, and knew I was in for a ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the whole thing begin to seem queer. As evidence that I must have been awake, I recalled afterwards that my arm had been made numb by the pressure of my head upon it while lying down, and now ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Nelson could not imagine a man making such a declaration; it was new to his entire experience and contrary to his code. It was unconservative, therefore it staggered him. It was, in fact, a phenomenon so unique as to leave him numb. He told himself that it must have been the act of a madman or a fool. Under no circumstances could he conceive of himself warning an enemy of his intentions; on the contrary, when he undertook to crush a rival he went about ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... off and break their useless necks. It grew silent and much cooler as the night ran out, but Rags still sat immovable, shivering slightly every now and then and cautiously stretching his stiff legs and body. The arm that held the child grew stiff and numb with the light burden, but he took a fierce pleasure in the pain, and became hardened to it, and at last fell into an uneasy slumber from which he awoke to pass his hands gently over the soft yielding body, and to ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... had finished and sealed the letter, she sat motionless with a numb feeling in hands and brain, trying to realize what she had next to do. To go, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... weight on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws. The girl drew out her numb leg. She straightened herself, swayed, and clutched blindly at him. Next moment her body relaxed and she was unconscious ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... of unhappy things, She knew not of the evil days to come, Forgotten were her ancient wanderings; And as Lethae'an waters wholly numb The sense of spirits in Elysium, That no remembrance may their bliss alloy, Even so the rumor of her days was dumb, And all her heart was ready ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the site of impaction of the embolus, and the pulses beyond are lost. The limb becomes cold, numb, insensitive, and powerless. It is often pale at first—hence the term "white gangrene" sometimes applicable to the early appearances, which closely resemble those presented by the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... City. Down with property. Addington had learned to distrust one sort of individual, and she instantly believed she could trust the other individual who was as unlike him as possible. Because Dives had been numb to human needs, Lazarus was the new-discovered leader. And the pitiful part of it all was that though Addington used the alphabet and spoke the language of "social unrest", it did it merely with the relish ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a mile away ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unsympathetic. And when his own wife had said to him, in accents almost of reproach, "Oh, David, David, how could you take such a time as this to be sick, with all the worry of moving and furnishing and Rosy's wedding and everything else?" he felt as bare and chill and numb as a naked sailor cast ashore on some ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... murmur filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the warmth of ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone—not at first, but after a little bit—I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... evils of frail life fill the old: Their wasted limbs the loose skin in dry folds Doth hang about: their joints are numb'd, and through Their veins, not blood, but rheums and waters flow. Their trembling bodies with a staff they stay, Nor do they breathe, but sadly sigh all day. Thoughts tire their hearts, to them their very mind Is a disease; their eyes ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... The rider's hands grew numb and he dropped the reins over the horn and shoved his hands in his pockets. Unaccustomed to riding he grew weary and, despite the storm, he drowsed, to awaken with a start as gusts of wind swept against his face. He raised his dripping hat and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... small hours of the morning a weary commuter, numb from the cold and the cramped position in which he had tried to sleep, crawled out of the train and floundered through the heavy snow-drifts to the nearest telegraph station. This is the message he handed to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... rifle and shot the paddler dead; and a second later one of his companions coming up, killed in like fashion the Indian in the bow of the canoe. The third Indian, stunned by the sudden onslaught, sat as if numb, never so much as lifting one of the rifles that lay at his feet, and in a minute he too was shot and fell over the side of the canoe, but grasped the gunwale with one hand, keeping himself afloat. Young Wetzel, in the bottom ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... came upon us, recognized the doctor, shrieked, and set off for help, lashing his mules into a mad run. But Alicia never moved, and I huddled beside her, numb and silent, looking at the white face upon her knees. With all the impatience wiped out, it was a fine face, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... also drank whiskey which he bought in the liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were and ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... with all the worry, numb'd, dead, Sank my body, upon the bed reposing, 15 This, O humorous heart, did I, a poem Write, my tedious anguish ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... the attack be sustained indefinitely? Grim as were results of sun-fishing on the rider, they were hardly less vitiating for the horse. The forelegs of Alcatraz began to grow numb below the shoulder; his knees bowed and refused to give the shock its primal snap; to the very withers he was an increasing ache. He must vary the attack. As soon as that idea came, he reared and flung ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... hearing his own voice. He was trying to open the locket but his hands were numb and trembling. When at last he did open it he could not see the child face within, for now even the star-light was shut off by a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... whirled faster and faster, and Pierre's legs found it harder and harder to move themselves through the great drifts. They seemed heavy and numb, and he was growing oh, so tired! If he could but lie down to sleep until Christmas Day! But he knew that he must not do that. For those who choose this kind of soft and tempting bed turn into ice-people, and do not wake up in the morning. So he ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... himself assuring the officer that he had not been mistaken, but it was not his own voice that reached his ears, and when his caller had gone he found himself sitting limply in his chair, numb with horror at his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... words, the princely youth Leaps on the scaly back that slumbers, still Unconscious of his foot, yet not for ruth, But numb'd to dulness by the fairy skill Of that sweet music (all more wild and shrill For intense fear) that charm'd him as he lay— Meanwhile the lover nerves his desperate will, Held some short throbs by natural dismay, Then down the serpent-track ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... reduced the third stage of a $5,000,000 rocket to junk was evident to him only as a brilliant blue-white flash, a hammer-like shock through the antennae support that left his wrist and forearm numb. Then a violent wrench as a long cylinder, expelled from the split hull, caught the loop of his life line and dragged him in till he clashed hard against it, the suddenly increased tension or a sharp edge parting the line close to the anchored end. He clawed blindly for a hold, found ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... You might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded Whig, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... chattering during sleep (in the case of a child). 1081: chilly every afternoon at three or four o'clock, she feels a shivering, worse during warmth; chilly creepings across the back, the hands feel numb; an hour after, feverish heat, with rough cough, hot cheeks and hands, no thirst; these symptoms pass off gradually, but she feels heavy and prostrated. 1089: chill after a heat of thirty-six hours. 1090: sudden chilliness, afterwards heat and sweat. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... excited emotions which he had thought could never be revived. The ashes gave forth a lingering flame at the first murmurings of that voice. Who has ever felt himself return to youth and purity after growing cold and numb with age and soiled with impurity? Suddenly, Wilfrid loved as he had never loved; he loved secretly, with faith, with fear, with inward madness. His life was stirred to the very source of his being at the mere ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... now commands the multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Afanasief, may fairly be derived from kost', a bone, for changes between st and shch are not uncommon—as in the cases of pustoi, waste, pushcha, a wild wood, or of gustoi, thick, gushcha, sediment, etc. The verb okostenyet', to grow numb, describes the state into which a skazka represents the realm of the "Sleeping Beauty," as being thrown by Koshchei. Buslaef remarks in his "Influence of Christianity on Slavonic Language," p. 103, that one of the Gothic words used by Ulfilas to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... November Novembro. Novice novulo. Noviceship noviceco. Novitiate provtempo. Novitiate (place) novicejo. Now nun. Nowadays nuntempe. Nowhere nenie. Noxious malutila, venena. Nozzle nazeto. Nude nuda. Nudity nudeco. Null nuliga. Nullify nuligi. Numb rigidigi. Numbness rigideco. Number (quantity) nombro. Number numero. Numeral numero. Numerical nombra. Numerous multa. Numerously multege. Nun monahxino. Nuncio nuncio. Nunnery monahxinejo. Nuptial edzigxa. Nurse ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and regret as the darkness fell. She did not stir from her post. The damp of the mist was unnoticed, the chill of the air. She was waiting for that return which was to claim her to an earthly hell, than which she could conceive no greater—waiting like the condemned prisoner, numb, helpless, fearful lest the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... dead, suppose he should drown in the filthy water in the bottom of the boat? Carefully, she worked the frightened animal to the farther end of the boat, and swiftly made her way to the limp form of the cowboy. She realized suddenly that she was numb with cold. Her hat, too, floated in the bottom of the boat, and her rain-soaked hair clung in wet straggling wisps to her neck and face. Stooping over the injured man she twisted her fingers into the collar ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... generally is, is a most terrible exposure. There is no kindly parental provision for the poor, thoughtless, delicate young creature,—not even the shelter of a dressing-room with a fire, at which she may warm her numb fingers and put on her skates when she arrives on the ground, and to which she may retreat in intervals of fatigue; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appliances of hot-house ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.—Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... his right hand, crooked his index finger. There was a sudden, smashing pain against his hand and a loud roar. The gun was in his hand—half the fingers were numb—and smoke curled ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as the stars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would never appreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. And still there appeared to be hundreds ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more than she could bear. A trembling took her, an access of trembling which she could not check. At such times, if others were about her, she would sit vacant and speechless, smiling faintly for courtesy; her eyes would brim over, the great ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... gauge showed two hundred feet. Already the three people were numb from the vibration; they hardly felt any sensation at all, save one of great weight pressing inwards. The compartment was fairly cool and the air good—kept so by the automatic air rectifiers and the insulation, which shut out the heat born ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... silver grots, or giant range Of sapphire columns, or fantastic bridge Athwart a flood of crystal. On a ridge 240 Now fareth he, that o'er the vast beneath Towers like an ocean-cliff, and whence he seeth A hundred waterfalls, whose voices come But as the murmuring surge. Chilly and numb His bosom grew, when first he, far away, Descried an orbed diamond, set to fray Old darkness from his throne: 'twas like the sun Uprisen o'er chaos: and with such a stun Came the amazement, that, absorb'd in it, He saw ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... Thirlwell began his homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Molly from whom the years had taken more than their toll, giving but little in return. He could not think beyond this fact, as yet. And he felt nothing, nothing at all. Both heart and mind lay mercifully numb under the anaesthetic of ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... am wounded, mortally I think. The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... and hearts are weary, Souls are numb with hopeless pain; For the footfall on the threshold Never ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... attainment of the goal with respect to each "dimension" of feeling. Striving is tense, attainment brings the feeling of release. Striving is often excited, but fatigue and drowsiness (seeking for rest) are numb, and self-assertion may be neutral in this respect, as in "cool assumption". Reaching the goal may be excited or not; all depends on the goal, whether it be striking your opponent or going to sleep. On the other hand, reaching the goal is practically always ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the years to come, When he shares of Sorrow's store,— When his feet are chill and numb, When his cross is burdensome, And his heart is sore: Would that he could hear once more The gentle voice he used to hear— Divine with mother love and cheer— Calling from yonder spirit shore: ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... smell without the use of any other organs; but you are to know, that this learned problematist was brother to him, who, preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford, took his text out of the history of Balaam, Numb. xxii., "Am I not thine ass?" Dear Sir, pardon ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Near the center of the yard several men had built a charcoal fire. Peter was tempted to warm his hands, but immediately gave up the idea: these very men had seen him in the Garden! He walked back and forth in the shadows, but it did not help much: his feet were getting numb. He wished he had never come into the courtyard. If he tried to get out, the woman ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... gods be numb; Though human effort, plot, and plan Be sifted, drifted, like the sum Of sands in wastes Arabian. What king may deem him more than man, What priest says Faith can Time resist While THIS endures to mark their span - This monument in ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... reference was made to the subject in either of the papers. Surgeon Reyburn told me, as he was passing a corner where a group of secessionists were discussing the subject quite freely, that one man said, "Why don't Savage do something about that soup-house affair, and not be a numb-head, and let that woman wind him around her finger like that?" Another said, "If I'd lied once over that old soup-house, I'd lie again, before I'd hold still and take all that" He changed his soup-house policy for a little while; but the complaints among secession ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Antelope were closed while he chanted the dirge. He sang it over and over, pausing between the lines, and straining as it were every sense lest he might not catch the rapt whisper of her spirit, but only the distant howls of coyotes answered him. His body became cold and numb from sheer exhaustion, and at last his knees bent under him and he sank down upon the ground, still facing the teepee. Unconsciousness overtook him, and in his sleep or trance the ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... quailed before that look, the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. It made him numb and sick, and when he rose he staggered; for, though tall, he was slender and had little strength. The weight on his chest became a pain and fixed on his throat, to choke and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold; the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months; and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... know why Lord Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the night for a space swooned into a numb and desolate silence. Then in the field behind, the last corncrake harshly called; a shepherd whistled on his dogs; a cart rumbled over the cobbles, making for the shed. The sound of the river as it came to him among the alder-trees ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... just about to break upon her sight, as though a music divinely beautiful was just about to burst upon her ear. But the light was not for her eye; the music was not for her ear. The radiance and the harmony came from herself, from within her. The intellect was numb. Only the heart was alive on this wonderful midsummer's morning, and it was in her heart that the radiance shone and the harmony vibrated. Back in his place once more, high on his throne, the love that she believed ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... built of rough logs, the chinks once closed with mud which had fallen away. The door stood open, and his entrance into its darkness was followed by the scurrying of many little feet. Bassett unstrapped his raincoat from the saddle with fingers numb with cold, and flung it to the ground. He uncinched and removed the heavy saddle, hobbled his horse and removed the bridle, and turned him loose with a slap ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sort an age of transition, but our own is characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopes have grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be in store for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organic power. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive part of a man's life, which it has been, and will be again. The work of destruction is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... drew stung in his lungs; his bare shoulders and arms and the exposed section of thigh between kilt and boot were numb. He could only move on stiffly, pushed ahead by his guards when he faltered. He guessed that were he to lose his footing here and surrender to the cold, he would forfeit the battle entirely ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... chimed softly in his ear. Ravdin forced his attention back to the landing operation. He was still numb and shaken from the Warp-passage, his mind still muddled by the abrupt and incredible change. Moments before, the sky had been a vast, starry blanket of black velvet; then, abruptly, he had been hovering over the ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... looked it, which was all that the half-hysterical girl by his side could ascertain by an occasional timid glance. The fact lent her a sort of courage to persevere to the end, and she signed her maiden name for the last time with a numb confidence in the man whom she had, so to speak, bargained for as a husband ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, and there he stopped to repair his dress. He was only about midway of the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... shone two long, obliquely set, pale eyes, ablaze with devilry and malice. The thing, after the nature of all terrifying phantasms, was endowed with hypnotic properties, and directly its eyes rested on me I became numb; my muscles slept while my faculties remained ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... determined to keep it; and yet she knew she would not keep it. She argued passionately with herself, a prey to an inward dread; for no matter how firmly she forced resolution upon resolution, they all seemed to melt in her soul like snow on a blazing fire. Then, determined to rid herself of a numb sensation of powerlessness, and achieve the end she desired, she said, 'I'll tell you, Emily, what I'll do. I'll not stay here; I will go away. Let me go away, dear, and then it will be ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... stopped; the snowshoe slipped from beneath her arm; one numb hand groped for the log door-casing in support; the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... the little estray by the arm, and hurried her along. Poor little Jennie! her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground, they were so cold and numb. She didn't much care even if she was being taken ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... unpleasant symptoms of which he had complained two hours earlier, but his general condition was also greatly improved, the swelling of the injured limb had subsided, the flesh had recovered its natural colour, the numb feeling had almost disappeared, and now all that remained to remind him of his disagreeable and perilous adventure of the previous night was the smarting and burning sensation of the cauterised wound itself, which he endured ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... himself again by moving about, for he felt as tired as a horse when it stops and refuses to go further in spite of the whip, and its master sees that it must be fed before it can work again. The foot in the boot with a hole in it had already grown numb, and he could no longer feel his big toe. Besides that, his whole body began to feel ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful mood—and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others—not from any unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was terrible—in the dead of night, when no one saw it. With a strange perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, the only sights she cared to see, were the circumstances which gave confirmation to the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... abruptly. "Do you think I have not watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is numb. 'Heavy as frost,' Wordsworth said, and that's the weightiest figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change him. In three months she has him well started. Isn't it a pity that the worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick's very volatility ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... some new hateful character. For soon enough this conviction that the will would triumph grew to something monstrous, a parent of monstrous fancies. Worst of all, when I felt no actual pain, but only unutterable weariness of body and soul, when feet and legs were numb so that I knew not whether I trod on dry hot rock or in slime, was the fancy that I was already dead, so far as the body was concerned—had perhaps been dead for days—that only the unconquerable will survived to compel the dead ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... deck. He was in a sort of panic. But deep down within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, "Boatswain on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
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