|
|
|
More "Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Any services of a similar kind that I can honestly and conscientiously render you—and none other would you accept—I shall be on my part delighted to offer. In the meantime, let me have your excellent advice as to the most efficient means of stifling the unreasonable murmurs that are rising among the people—and as touching M'Loughlin's and Harman's properties, I should be glad to see you, in order to consult upon what may or can be done for them, always compatibly with ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by her side, and pressed her cold hands in both her own. Mrs. Winstanley was very cold, although the log had blazed up fiercely, and the room seemed stifling to the traveller who had come out of ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the Quarries were the worst I saw in France. They were reasonably dry and roomy, but they had no ventilation except the tunnel entrance, and going back so far the air inside became simply stifling in ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... other, the interview was arranged. 'Little James' found his desire fulfilled at last. When he passed into the stifling, crowded prison den, where human beings were herded together like beasts, he never heeded the horrible stench or the crawling vermin that abounded everywhere. Rather, he felt as if he were entering the palace of a king. He paid no attention to the crowd ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... killed by a contact poison: that is, by spraying or washing the affected parts of the tree with a solution which acts externally on the bodies of the insects, smothering or stifling them. The standard solutions for this purpose are kerosene emulsion, soap and water, tobacco extract, ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... and there, Within the dark and stifling walls, dissent From every sound, and shoulder empty hods: 'The god's great altar should stand in the crypt Among our earth's foundations'—'The god's great altar Must be the last far coping of our work'— It should inaugurate the broad main stair'— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... having a fire at each end, the smoke of which, unable to find its way through the imperfect chimneys in the roof, rolled in cloudy billows above the heads of the revellers, who sat on low seats, purposely to avoid its stifling fumes. [Footnote: The Welsh houses, like those of the cognate tribes in Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, were very imperfectly supplied with chimneys. Hence, in the History of the Gwydir Family, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... bright red blaze which lighted up the horizon to the southward and cast a crimson glow far over the sea. This appearance was accompanied by a low growling sound, as of distant thunder, and at the same time the sky above us became black, while a hot, stifling wind blew around us ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... ably served and assisted by Mrs. Purcel and her daughters, continued to deal death and destruction on the parties outside, without being yet either fatigued or disabled. At length the terrible light of the roof that was burning over them, and the stifling heat which began to oppress them, startled the proctor into a state of feeling so awful, that it obliterated from his awakened conscience all external impressions of the dreadful havoc of human life which ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... shortcomings in his fiancee, but he did allow himself to wonder tentatively if he had spoken too soon: if she were not, perhaps, a trifle young to understand the meaning of the new claim. The daily interviews which he had been vouchsafed had been full of interest and charm, but they had not succeeded in stifling the doubt which had marred the first minutes of acceptance, for alas! it was when Pixie was the most affectionate that her lover was most acutely conscious of the subtle want. And then, as if there was not already enough worry ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... of a night without a moon, and the bugles waked them long ere dawn. A mist hung over all the levels, presaging heat. Column Forward! To-day was a repetition of yesterday, only accented. The sun girded himself with greater strength, the dust grew more stifling, the water was bad, gnats and mosquitoes made a painful cloud, the feet in the ragged shoes were more stiff, more swollen, more abraded. The moisture in the atmosphere weakened like a vapour bath. The entire army, "foot cavalry" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... them. It was a religion for the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long burden of forms; yet rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instance) the thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the almost stifling sense of health and delight in him, and relieved it as ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... off at a trot; Gerfaut followed his example, stifling a sigh as he darted a last glance toward the chateau. They soon rejoined the cart which carried several of the hunters, and which Monsieur de Camier drove with the assurance of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been hired by St. Victor, at once spread her sails; Mrs. Labadie conversed with the captain while the countess took the Queen below into the stifling crowded little cabin. It was altogether a wretched voyage; the wind was high, and the pitching and tossing more or less disabled everybody in the suite. The Queen was exceedingly ill, so were the countess and Mrs. Labadie. Nobody could be the least effective but Signora Turini, who ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... They see an army of three hundred thousand tramps eating bread by the sweat of other men's brows; the slums of great cities, cradles of infamy where children are trained to sin; the "fire-damp of combination trusts" stifling the working world; gambling brokers cornering the markets in the necessaries of life; the wages of working girls being such as to lead many from life's Eden of purity; a great battle on between labor and capital and in this combination ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... an afternoon of one of the last days of July. The sun has nearly finished his daily course, and is declining rapidly toward the horizon; still, his rays, though less ardent than at noontide, are hot enough to make the air close and stifling. At Grinselhof the last beams of the setting luminary play gayly over the foliage, gilding the tree-tops with sparkling light, while, on the eastern side of the dense foliage, the long, broad shadows begin ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... they had ploughed over some quarter of a mile of the hillside, fighting their way among the carriages that stood six deep along the rails and through a seething mass of ruffianism, in a stifling atmosphere polluted by the smell of ale and the reeking breath of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... these spoilers of my dinner; but if you come, never go! The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often; but every time it comes by surprise, that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening company I should always like, had I any mornings; but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company; but I assure you that is a ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... was hot and stifling," said Francis. "There are moments when my brain seems to whirl, and things go round. Did ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... where he had so often walked with Miss Hitchcock on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressed groups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rows of deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part of them in all practical ways—a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day to day, not knowing when ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... smoke had favoured them. Thick and stifling in the immediate vicinity of the waggons, it enabled them to slip unobserved through the ruck of savages. Many of these, still mounted, had seen them pass outward, but through the blue film had mistaken them for two of their own men. They perhaps knew nothing of there having been horses inside ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... removal of a stifling pressure. Amid a universal outgoing of the breath, Mary Leavenworth stood aside and Eleanore ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... length, his transient respite past, His comrades, who before Had heard his voice in every blast, Could catch the sound no more: For then by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... cruel enemy! What have I done to you that you should thus leave me with death in my soul? You do not know that, for months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow, that I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they should disturb your peaceful slumber. You are afraid, perhaps, to let yourself be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who adores you. Alas! Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she did not need many entreaties ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Her first act was to strike one hand across the other, as though to obliterate the kiss, then to draw off her glove, and drop it in the deepest of the fern, never to be worn again. Hateful! With that poor neglected wife pining to death in those stifling city streets, to be making sport in those forest glades. Shame! shame! But oh! worst of all was his patronizing pity for Miss Charlecote! Phoebe's own mission to Miss Charlecote was dreadful enough, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what he would infallibly be hanged for if he committed on the first of July; by which the greatest criminals may escape, provided they continue long enough in power to antiquate their crimes, and by stifling them a while, can deceive the legislature into an amnesty, of which the enactors do not at that time foresee the consequence. A cautious merchant will be apt to suspect, when he finds a man who has the repute of a cunning dealer, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... percentage of the value of the fuel employed is utilized. It is dirty, because of the dust and soot which result therefrom. It is unhealthy, because of the cold draughts which in its simplest form are produced, and the stifling atmosphere which pervades the house when the products of imperfect combustion insist, as they often do, in not ascending the flues constructed for the express purpose of carrying them off; and even when they take the desired course, they blacken and poison the external atmosphere with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... onward. And whither, she knew not. A cold numbness had chilled her senses, but still her feet drove her irresistibly onward. A dark current seemed to have seized her, she only felt that she was adrift, and she cared not whither it bore her. In spite of the stifling dullness which oppressed her, her body seemed as light as air. At last,—she knew not where,—she heard the roar of the sea resounding in her ears, a genial warmth thawed the numbness of her senses, and she floated joyfully among the clouds—among golden, sun-bathed ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking; the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the Tinker declares it a principle most mysterious, the undoubted object of religious awe, a perpetual witness of that God, whose image ([Greek: eikon]) it is; a principle utterly incomprehensible by the discursive intellect;—and moreover teaches us, that the surest plan for stifling and paralyzing this divine birth in the soul (a phrase of Plato's as well as of the Tinker's) is by attempting to evoke it by, or to substitute for it, the hopes and fears, the motives and calculations, of prudence; which is an excellent ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the green blinds came the noise of life and health and merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed, and therefore meaningless. Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling. Gregorio, swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow stairway hysterical words ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... as a preparation to these statements, I should like to strike a note of warning against the element of exaggerated and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly, because of the lack of humor in such presentations (a natural product of stifling imagination) and partly, because the strain of the abnormal has the same effect as the too frequent ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... began to sound as she crossed the hall, jacket dangling over her arm, and pushed open the door of a darkened room. The air within was stifling, she opened a window and thrust back the blinds, and at the same moment the ringing crack of a rifled cannon shattered the silence of dawn. Very, very far away ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... about thirty yards," said Rifle, loading as his father trampled out the burning embers, which were filling the place with a stifling smoke. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... through the gates of the city when the general rode up. There was a struggling and stifling crowd; cheers and shrieks. It was that moment of wild fruition, when the master is neither recognized nor obeyed. It is not easy to take a bone out of a dog's mouth; nevertheless, the presence of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... there was something irritating in the suspicion that she had laughed as if it were a huge joke—perhaps, even now, she was doubled up in her narrow couch, stifling the giggle ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the Indians to imprison antelope, thrust its long, high neck over the railroad embankment and against the open doors of the cattle-cars as they were rolled along the siding. Through the pen and up the jutting neck into the stifling, wheeled boxes, lowing in fright and advancing unwillingly, were driven the Dutchman's fat steers and the beeves belonging to the cattleman. When a long train was filled with them, a wildcat engine backed down from the station, coupled ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Palestine Boundary—we moved on 30th March to Khan Yunis, said to be the home of Delilah. The march was once more in the evening, and was very comfortable, except for the last mile or two when we got in between the high hedges of prickly pear, and had to march through about a foot of dust in the most stifling atmosphere. When we arrived we found that we were once more on the fringes of civilisation: we could buy oranges in unlimited numbers, and also fresh eggs—not the Egyptian variety, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but real pukka hen's eggs. Water also was less scarce ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... parlour pungent at all times with the odour of liquor,—but used only on rare occasions, most of The Palmetto's patrons preferring the even more stifling atmosphere of the bar-room,—the Wells Fargo Agent had been watching and waiting ever since he had left The Polka Saloon. On a table in front of him was a bottle, for it was a part of Ashby's scheme of things to solace thus all ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... mementoes from the distant fatherland, and possibly they served as sacred ornaments for the little cell. There were also several censers, lamps, and little silver plates and salvers. The air was stifling from the fumes of gas, and the heat was like that of a vapor bath. The priest took from the altar some pieces of red and white candied sugar, held them, praying, before his idols, sprinkled them with holy water, and handed them to us on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this, there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight gain that, in a country which has long been regarded as the very incarnation of truth-stifling despotism, any journal should be found to speak as the Golos recently spoke on the question of Russia's naval forces: "The Crimean war, which tried so severely the qualities of our army, cannot be said to have tested those of our fleet, inasmuch as it never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... and I "did" Tangier conscientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes until we fell off into a state of visionary stupor known as "kiff;" we paid our respects to the Kadi, exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... so. Go about it with the same determination that you would to make money or to learn a trade. There is a divine hunger in every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or enlargement. Beware of stifling this craving of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... incident. Annoyed at finding that her feelings could be consulted only by sacrificing those of another woman, Miss Dacre, quite confident that, as Lady Aphrodite was innocent in the present instance, she must be immaculate, told everything to her father, and, stifling her tears, begged him to make all public; but Mr. Dacre, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... medicine might keep down the agitations of his nervous system, released for a time at least from the tyranny of ailments which by a spell of wretchedness fix the thoughts upon themselves, perpetually throwing them inward as into a stifling gulf." ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... sleet, Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously Lifting his weight. And if he should let go, What would he find down there, down there below The curtain of the mist? What would he find Beyond the dim and stifling now and here, Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind? Oh, there were nameless depths: he ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... hesitated, choking with the rancid and stifling odors about them, they saw the figure turn its head with an effort. Then they saw that it was a man of about middle age, who was almost completely paralyzed. He could move neither his legs nor his body, but with the use of his elbows, ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... is Myrtilus. Fame inspires love, and what the world will not grant my master, in spite of his great talent, it conceded to the other long ago. And, besides, we are not starving; but Myrtilus is as rich as King Croesus of Sardis. Not that Daphne, who is stifling in gold herself, would care about that, but whoever knows life knows—where doves are, doves ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into our tent, or enter, if you can bear the stifling smoke and the close atmosphere. There, wedged close together, you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their fashion. We were also infested by little copper-colored naked ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a strange young gentleman, Master Shirley," replied Dan; "but your secret shall remain safe for me, though, if I was in your place, I think I should act differently:" and, stifling a laugh, he tossed ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... the doctor became wholly exhausted with the fatigue he had undergone, with the smoke and the fog, with the stifling, sulphureous air, with the tempestuous blasts, with the alternate extremes of heat and cold, and with the clamours, the lamentations, the agonies, and the howlings of the damned everywhere around him,—when, just in the nick of time, Beelzebub appeared to him again, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... There seemed a long delay at the end—long enough to make him break into a sweat of fear lest something should have gone wrong. Such thoughts come easily enough when you are lying full length in black darkness, in a hole just large enough to hold a man; in air so stifling that the laboured breath can scarcely come; with the dank earth just under mouth and nose, and overhead a roof that may fall in at any moment. The dragging minutes went by. Then, just as despair seized him, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the ages of seven and fourteen, learnt the five principal modern languages, to the degree necessary for reading, with due appreciation, the chief poetical compositions in each.) But they are to be taught all this, not only without encouraging, but stifling as much as possible, the examining and questioning spirit. The disposition which should be encouraged is that of receiving all on the authority of the teacher. The Positivist faith, even in its scientific part, is la foi demontrable, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail! Queen ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... various stifling dug-outs, in the firing trench or support-trench, overheated company commanders are dictating reports or filling in returns. (Even now the Round Game Department is not entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... of those times cluster around this old place," he said, violently stifling a yawn. He had risen early and run far. Hunger and slumber contended ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... on her horse and then swung himself up into the saddle. Together they raced for the scant shelter before the dark menace overspreading earth and sky. The sun was now hidden; but that brought no relief, for the heat was even more stifling and oppressive than before. The wind seemed like a blast of hot air from an opened ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the freedom of the living spirit, whilst science is turning to problems which used to lie within the domain of unexplored religion. Religion will become scientific and science will become religious. The principles laid down by Darwin and Huxley have lost their power of stifling religious aspiration; the startling pronouncements in defiant materialism of Buechner and Haeckel now startle none but the ignorant. The anxiety to exclude scientific facts disappears with the realization that all truth, all knowledge, all reason, are subservient to the search for God. The struggle ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and business ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... listening, and now heard distinctly above the sounds nearer at hand a distant crackling roar and the thud of heavy branches falling. The interior of the cabin had now grown even dimmer—to a dark redness—and the smoke came billowing in at the window almost stifling her with its acrid fumes. Outside the window, when she struggled for freedom, she caught a glimpse of sparks, flying like meteors past the dim rectangle of her vision, small ones, larger ones, and then flaming brands ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to get away to himself; to hide his face in his arms, and give vent to the tears that were stifling him; to weep for his lost friend, and for this ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... going to get up when I heard your foot on the stairs. I feel stronger this morning, and I want to get out-of-doors. The house is stifling me. I have been listening so hard for the sound of her foot or her voice that when I try to listen I can't hear for the thumping of my heart in my ears. I want to be with her. I too am only a trouble to people. She and I will not be a ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... heat became stifling, the darkness more oppressive, but the cries and shouts were dying down; their volume was less great, their intonation less shrill; stupor and fatigue and exhaustion were having their effect. Trench bent his head again to his companion and now heard ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Eustace, "that were but poor policy. As things now stand with us, the heretics catch hold of each flying report which tends to the scandal of our clergy. We must abate the evil, not only by strengthening discipline, but also by suppressing and stifling the voice of scandal. If my conjectures are true, the miller's daughter will be silent for her own sake; and your reverence's authority may also impose silence on her father, and on the Sacristan. If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the window after his visitor had gone, and leaned out for some few minutes, letting the fresh air into the close, stifling room. Then he went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes, made some pretense at breakfast, went through his letters with methodical exactness. At eleven o'clock he set out upon ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fair as eye could see. The September sun rose in a haze of warm rays; promising, as Mrs. Randolph said, that the heat would be stifling by and by. Daisy did not care, for her part. They had breakfast earlier than usual; for the plan was to get on the other side of the river before the sun should be too oppressive. They had scarcely risen from the table when the Sandford party drove up to the door. These were to go ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than one room under a single roof. On the other hand, the dyed patterns on the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore (who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr. Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts Bay for liberty of worship in behalf ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Companies refused to lend the great highways of which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without a subvention, then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming. If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the sweater's den, or the stifling factory; if the seamstress could leave her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling, invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done, even if it did cost a few paltry thousands. Let the men ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... conversing in an undertone on the dangers of the sea, and the disagreeables of a fore-cabin, the mass of unfortunates below were cowering in their berths, rendered almost forgetful of the stifling atmosphere, and the wailing of sick children, by the fear of shipwreck, as they listened with throbbing hearts to the howling wind and rattling cordage overhead, and felt the tremendous shocks when the good ship ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... lips, and a liar who giveth ear to a naughty tongue." Yea, if we thoroughly would be clear from it, we must show an aversion from hearing it, an unwillingness to believe it, an indignation against it; so either stifling it in the birth, or condemning it to death, being uttered. This is the sure way to destroy it, and to prevent its mischief. If we would stop our ears, we should stop the slanderer's mouth; if we would ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... I said, from Westminster, and wearily enough I paced along the busy streets, exhausted by the stifling heat of the Vice-Chancellor's court, in which I had been patiently sitting since ten o'clock, vainly waiting for that 'occasion sudden' of which our old law-writers are so full. Moodily, too, I was revolving in my mind our narrow circumstances, and the poor hopes I had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... not the punishment be far greater than the sin? Would there not rise from every human heart an outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by means of memory, transformed life into an endless torment, destroying all activity or initiative in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word, stifling the present beneath the heavy nightmare ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... change, and the gloom, that brought with it the shadow of death, fell like a pall upon the post, stifling its life, and bringing with it a grief that those who lived there ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... and then desired me to try the chairs at the Chateau, and, if they were favouring repose, to inquire whether the place would be let furnished. Stifling an inclination to assault him, I laughed pleasantly and related my meeting with the engaging ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... silence followed. For some moments no one spoke. Her father, stifling a sigh, turned slowly, pushed a chair to the fire and settled into it, his rubber-encased knees wide apart, so that the warmth of the blaze could reach most of his body. Jack found a seat beside him, his mind on Ruth and her evident suffering, his ears alert for any ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that we did not reach our destination until about mid-day on the Wednesday, the journey having occupied nearly twelve hours. The heat was unbearable, and confinement within the carriages, the windows of which were kept sedulously closed by order of the military, thus rendering the atmosphere within stifling, speedily commenced to affect some of the passengers. Each compartment carried seven prisoners, and the eighth seat, one of the windows beside the door, was occupied by a soldier—the guard of the compartment—complete with loaded rifle and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... have stayed down in the plains through the hot season in stifling cantonments, and I have once or twice been in Indian cholera camps. Besides, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and worn with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that surged about him half-mad with religious fury. There were Hindus and Moslems to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Though I stand in the free clear air of heaven, I could not feel more choked and gasping were I in some close and stifling dungeon, hundreds of feet underground. I think that the brook must have got into my brain, there is such a noise of bubbling and brawling in it. Barbara, Roger, Algy, a hundred confused ideas of pain and dismay jostle each ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... there should be fire within the mountain, though there may be snow on its crest. Many a ship has been lost on the harbour bar; and there is no excuse for the captain leaving the bridge, or the engineer coming up from the engine-room, stormy as the one position and stifling as the other may be, until the anchor is down, and the vessel is moored and quiet in the desired haven. The desert, with its wild beasts and its Bedouin, reaches right up to the city gates, and until we are within these we need to keep our hands on our sword-hilts and be ready for conflict. 'He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... deceived me, he never told me I should be his wife; I never dreamed of it myself. It was only poor papa hoped for it. And even now I am not altogether unhappy; the memory remains to me, and however fearful the results ... I'm stifling here ... it was here I saw him the last time.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Hal? I do,—as well as this gushing sensibility will let me,—rocking in her arms and half stifling with her kisses, or delighting with her lullaby, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the west wing she rushed, stumbling over hose lines, battling against the stifling clouds of smoke which rolled down the corridor. The room was gained, the picture secured, and she turned to make good her escape, all other valuables forgotten. But even in that brief moment the smoke had become overpowering. Her room was dense. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... on the continent. The melancholy squares of water, divided by little paths of white salt crust, along which the salt-makers pass (dressed in white) to rake up and gather the salt into mulons; a space which the saline exhalations prevent all birds from crossing, stifling thus the efforts of botanic nature; those sands where the eye is soothed only by one little hardy persistent plant bearing rosy flowers and the Chartreux pansy; that lake of salt water, the sandy dunes, the view of Croisic, a miniature town afloat like Venice on the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... abroad, was better than the nervous waiting in his darkened room. Dreadful forces, forces of ruin and murder and disgrace, were abroad in the world of men; the menace of the low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... was buried alive. A stifling carcase blotted out the sun. His arms were pinioned, but his ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... woman he had felt beneath his throat a coil of snakes stifling him, but in his brain certain memories were sounding, as it were voices, the echo of something distant. This echo issued from that woman's features, changed and faded, though the same in which on a time he had fixed his eyes with rapture, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the contemplation of her charms. She complied with all; from belly to side, from side to back I turned her; she smiled as if pleased, curious, and astonished; and when I turned to quench my passion in her, she met me with an ardour less demonstrative, but more stifling and satisfying than Charlotte; it was a worry to think that I had twice fucked her, and seemed to have finished each time ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... whatever happens,' I said within myself; and truly I kept this resolution so well, and was so fully occupied in steadying my nerves and stifling the rebellious flutter of my heart, that when I was admitted into the hall and ushered into the presence of Mrs. Bloomfield, I almost forgot to answer her polite salutation; and it afterwards struck me, that the little I did say was ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... she hastily drew back, stealing a last swift kiss. Lawrence walked toward his bed. He heard a low, stifling little laugh, then all was still in the cabin. Claire had laughed for very joy at her love. He smiled tenderly. Dear little woman, she was indeed a wealth untold to him. What a life theirs would be after ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... could scarcely breathe, the wind and spray stifling him till he could turn by an effort a little aside. Then for long periods together, as they seemed, they were under water, as some wave leaped over them. In fact, after a few such experiences he was half insensible, and every struggle towards ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... name, but it died husky and low in her parched throat. She must fly—anywhere to be out in the air, for the atmosphere of that close chamber seemed stifling her. She caught up a shawl which lay on a table, and rushed from the room and from the house. A sudden thought, which seemed instinct rather than reason, had made her start thus madly away to search for old Ben, the honest protector of her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... a battle surely as desperate as ever was fought and which indeed no poor words of mine may justly describe. The enemy lay to windward and little enough could I see by reason of the dense smoke that enveloped us, a stifling, sulphurous cloud that drifted aboard us ever more thick as the fight waxed, a choking mist full of blurred shapes, dim forms that flitted by and vanished spectre-like, a rolling mystery whence came ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... marshal to a little village called Ebersdorf, on the bank of the river, and near the field of battle. At the house of a brewer they found a room over a stable where the heat was stifling, and was rendered still more unendurable from the odor of the corpses by which the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... 'Mademoiselle,' he answered, stifling with difficulty a burst of laughter. And after that he would not say another word, bad, good, or indifferent, though I felt the bed shake more than once, and knew that ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... whiskey-bottles, one empty, one nearly full, that Dr. Potts declared were not there when he left at one. On the mantel a phial of chloroform, which was also not there before. But a towel soaked with the stifling contents lay on the floor by Jim's rude pallet, and a handkerchief half soaked, half consumed, was on the chair which had stood by the bedside, among the fragments of an overturned ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagant blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria was encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was stifling his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancing with glee. Paolo and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave and unmoved, inscrutable, abstract. Then the youth came away to the doorway, with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting its ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Scout, whoever he is," Jimmie said, as they discussed the signals in the almost stifling atmosphere of the cabin, "is strictly next to his job! He's showing the way, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the unmixed monarchy of Philip II. in Spain; it was more absolute than that of Louis XIV., and yet it was far less regular and tranquil. How did Philip II. succeed in establishing absolute power in Spain? By stifling all activity in the country, opposing himself to every species of amelioration, and rendering the state of Spain completely stagnant. The government of Louis XIV., on the contrary, exhibited alacrity for all sorts of innovations, and showed itself favourable to the progress of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the western Panjab. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the Spaniards stand up your accusers— That there's a storm collecting over you Of far more fearful menace than the former one Which whirled you headlong down at Regensburg. And people talk, said he, of——Ah! [Stifling extreme emotion. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... In stifling noons when his back was wrung by its load, and the air seemed dead, And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead, Or in times of flood, when plains were seas, and the scrubs were cold and black, He ploughed in mud to ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... heavy on shore and sea that day, holding the Ethel and May in port. He disappeared into the stifling mist, and the girl sat and stared into that vacancy ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... already tried a way he knew for stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the sieve from ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... fire!" and Boss yelling: "Louis! Louis!" I jumped up, throwing an old coat over me, and ran up stairs, in the direction of Mrs. Farrington's room, I encountered Boss in the hall; and, as it was dark and the smoke stifling, I could hardly make any headway. At this moment Mrs. Farrington threw her door open, and screamed for "Cousin Eddie," meaning McGee. He hurriedly called to me to get a pitcher of water quick. I grasped the pitcher from the stand, and he attempted to throw the water on Celia, ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... he was reckoning up the years he would have still to work before he could retire.—Christophe saw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of family affection, which is so deep-rooted in France—deep-rooted, but stifling and destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... level pavement, but over broken rocks, up banks, through quagmires and brush—in short, across ground that would be difficult walking without any burden, and not in cool, clear weather, but through stifling swamps with no free hand to ease the myriad punctures of his body, face, and limbs whenever unsufficiently protected from the stingers that roam in clouds. It is the hardest work I ever saw performed by human ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nothing was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering action, yes, even the least hopeful, anything that would have been action, would have made the pain supportable; she could have drawn breath then, enough for life's purposes; now she was stifling. There was some mystery; there was something wrong; some mistake, or misapprehension, or malpractice; something, which if she could put her hand on, all would be right. And it was hidden from her; dark; it might be near or far, she could not touch it, for she could not find it. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... but Arthur, stooping forward, carefully examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his nostrils, yet he lingers there ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... both elbows on the rail, and looked out at the misty banks, puffing at his cigar. Then he dropped it hissing into the water, and, stifling a yawn, looked up and down the length of the deserted deck. It ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... lay, stretched out on the ground, While all the company gathered around; When, valiantly stifling his tears and his groans, He sadly ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... you, no; You Don with th'oaker face, I wish to ha thee But on a Breach, stifling with smoke and fire, And for thy 'No' but whiffing Gunpowder Out of an Iron pipe, I woo'd but ask thee If thou wood'st on, and if thou didst cry No Thou shudst read Canon-Law; I'de make thee roare And weare cut-beaten-sattyn: I woo'd pay thee Though thou ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... patch of thorns to a flat tableland that was part of the Ceza stronghold. By it, when I had gained sufficient strength, sometimes we used to climb to the plateau, and there take exercise. It was an agreeable change from the stifling atmosphere of the Black Kloof. The days were very dull, for we were as much out of the world as though we had been marooned on a desert island. Still from time to time we heard of the progress of the war through Nombe, for Zikali I ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... rush of stifling heat and smoke; he had to hold his breath and cover his face with his hands as he pressed forward. A little child lay there in a cradle. He stumbled over to it and groped his way back to the wall. The fire, now that it had access to the air, suddenly ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was younger and better-looking, and when her voice was stronger, Nikolay Petrovitch Kolpakov, her adorer, was sitting in the outer room in her summer villa. It was intolerably hot and stifling. Kolpakov, who had just dined and drunk a whole bottle of inferior port, felt ill-humoured and out of sorts. Both were bored and waiting for the heat of the day to be over in order ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wrote Diderot, "if religion had not bidden him trample under foot such poor weaknesses as these. He is a good Christian, who proves to me every minute of the day how much better it would be to be a good man. He shows that what they call evangelical perfection is only the mischievous art of stifling nature, which would most likely have spoken as lustily in him as ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... however, by a shrill squeak, as of some animal in the agonies of death; and then there was a second squeak, that seemed to be suddenly interrupted by the stifling of the creature's utterance! ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... small a percentage of the value of the fuel employed is utilized. It is dirty, because of the dust and soot which result therefrom. It is unhealthy, because of the cold draughts which in its simplest form are produced, and the stifling atmosphere which pervades the house when the products of imperfect combustion insist, as they often do, in not ascending the flues constructed for the express purpose of carrying them off; and even when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... late in the day and the atmosphere of the room had become stifling; but no one seemed to be conscious of any discomfort, and a general gasp of excitement passed through the room when the coroner, taking out a box from under a pile of papers, disclosed to the general gaze the famous white ribbon with its dainty bow, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, bore a disc containing a winged globe, and seemed to watch on the threshold of the tomb. Some fellahs lighted torches and preceded the two travellers, who were accompanied by Argyropoulos. The resinous flame burned with difficulty in the dense, stifling air which had been concentrated for so many thousands of years under the heated limestone of the mountain, in the labyrinths, passages, and blind ways of the hypogeum. Rumphius breathed hard and perspired in streams; the impassible Evandale turned hot and felt a moisture on his ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... lasted a whole week of industrious sittings. A pressman whom I knew told me, 'He's an idiot.' Which was possible. Before that I overheard once somebody declaring that he had a criminal type of face; which I knew was untrue. The sentence was pronounced by artificial light in a stifling poisonous atmosphere. Something edifying was said by the judge weightily, about the retribution overtaking the perpetrator of 'the most heartless frauds on an unprecedented scale.' I don't understand these things much, but it appears that he had juggled with accounts, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... though they were perfectly happy, and it was all one to them where they went or what they talked of. They walked and talked of how the sea was strangely luminous; the water lilac, so soft and warm, and athwart it the moon cast a golden streak. They said how stifling it was after the hot day. Gomov told her how he came from Moscow and was a philologist by education, but in a bank by profession; and how he had once wanted to sing in opera, but gave it up; and how he ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of the Apis, in the grim darkness beneath the Memphite desert, are, as all the world knows, monster coffins of black granite ranged in catacombs, hot and stifling ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... a fortune out of the speculation," said Potts, who was stifling with rage. "D—n them! who ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... and he tried to write some letters. Worse and worse. The place was stifling, and the pen almost melted in ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... way altogether under his privations, and he could no longer do the tasks required of him. Even the comfort of his companions' presence was now denied him, and in his wretched cell he lay patiently through the stifling days, counting the hours until the tramp of feet and clank of chains told of the return of his friends from their ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... whole day in our hiding place, suffering terribly from the heat, for the day was hot, muggy and breezeless, so that the still sultry air was stifling. We spared our water-bottles and made their contents last. Our bread we ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the length of one of those dry drives—where they never saw a water-hole for days, until the cattle went blind from thirst and sun-glare and wandered aimlessly over the baked earth lolling their tongues, moaning for drink, ignoring the red-eyed riders who spurred their famished ponies through the stifling dust-cloud and sought by shouts and flaming pistols to hold them to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... liberty unto" the multitudinous blasphemy of his day; you have made him free of its newspapers, its reviews, its magazines, its novels, its controversial pamphlets, of its Parliamentary debates, its law proceedings, its platform speeches, its songs, its drama, its theatre, of its enveloping, stifling atmosphere of death. You have succeeded but in this,—in making the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... above us like a black rope in the twilight. The water itself was covered with some clinging plants, and full of winding, ugly snakes which caused the whole pool to shine with a kind of uncanny light; while an overpowering odour, deadly and stifling, steamed up from it, and threatened to choke a man. What was worse than this was a close thicket bordering the pond on three sides, so that we must either swim for it or turn back the way we came. The latter course was not to be thought of. Already I could hear footsteps, and ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... recognized in him the hero of my life's dream. Oh, Guy! What a joy it will be to me if I can teach you to come to me, turning your back upon gaiety, and pleasure, and temptation, to sit by my side, when the voice of a more powerful tempter is stifling mine. What joy for me then!—but no, I am wrong!—it is not my gratification I have been sent to seek; this is a mere duty. If I had loathed you at this moment, my duty is still the same. Just now, it is not your sake nor mine—it ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... gone far before the heat and the stifling air drove him hack, and rushing back to his ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... told you. I will never see him—I don't care what happens—I will never, never, never see him again! Don't ask me his name! Don't ask me any more! Let's change the subject. Are you doctor enough, Godfrey, to tell me why I feel as if I was stifling for want of breath? Is there a form of hysterics that bursts into words instead of tears? I dare say! What does it matter? You will get over any trouble I have caused you, easily enough now. I have dropped to my right place in your estimation, haven't ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... when one more effort would have freed him. He felt himself sinking back. Over him was the sky, reddened now by the fire that raged below. Through the hole the pent-up smoke in the building found vent and rushed in a black and stifling cloud. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... about 250 miles by road from Irkutsk. The trip takes about a fortnight down stream, and three weeks in the reverse direction, but sand-bars frequently cause delays, rendered the more irksome by poor accommodation, stifling heat, and ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... "Stifling! How could it be anything else on an August night? Janet vows her fingers burned on the keys. But she played beautifully, of course, and the bishop had a little interval of being glad he was there. Poor man—I wonder if anything can be warmer than a ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... and leaned with both elbows on the rail, and looked out at the misty banks, puffing at his cigar. Then he dropped it hissing into the water, and, stifling a yawn, looked up and down the length of the deserted deck. It seemed particularly ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... she understand? Nothing. For a few minutes her brain seemed in too great a whirl to comprehend anything but that she was being carried on in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees, with as little volition on her part as if she were dead. Then the room grew stifling, and instinctively she went to the open casement window, and leant out, gasping for breath. Gradually the consciousness of the soft peaceful landscape stole into her mind, and stilled the buzzing confusion. There, bathed in the almost level rays of the autumn sunlight, lay the landscape she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was founded on deep passion, for after her sister's marriage with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister's companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and preserving an outward calm that had no doubt ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... went out by Jan's favourite way, the back, and plunged into a dark lane where neither ear nor eye was on him. He uncovered his head, he threw back his coat, he lifted his breath to catch only a gasp of air. The sense of dishonour was stifling him. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... convincingly two-storied dwellings had been exhumed, and others with ceilings in better condition than those of the earlier excavations; there were more all-but-unbroken walls and columns; some mosaic floors were almost as perfect as when their dwellers fled over them out of the stifling city. But upon the whole the result was a greater monotony; the revelation of house after house, nearly the same in design, did not gain impressiveness from their repetition; just as the case would be if the dwellings of an old-fashioned cross-town street in New York were dug out two thousand ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... looking peasant woman, who stared at her like something from another world, but at length showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal among her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moonlight, and there was no one in sight; but he noticed that a side door of the Cathedral was ajar. The sacristan must have forgotten to shut it. Surely nothing could be going on there so late at night. He might as well go in and sleep on one of the benches instead of in the stifling barn; he could slip out in the morning before the sacristan came; and even if anyone did find him, the natural supposition would be that mad Diego had been saying his prayers in some corner, and ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... chimney; for at night the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder, the coals being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs. Merrill seized a feather-bed and, tearing it open, threw it on the embers; the flame and stifling smoke leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both Indians came down, blinded and half smothered, and were killed by the big resolute woman before they could recover themselves. No further attempt was made to molest the cabin ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... traveller. Whether he approaches or leaves Mourzuk, he seems still to be traversing a level plain, and only finds his mistake by noticing the change in the nature of the ground, the presence of marshes, of green vegetation, and of a heavy, stifling atmosphere. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... an old and abandoned fountain in the park—the "Fountain of the Blind," so called because it once possessed miraculous healing powers. Pelleas and Melisande enter together. It is a stifling day, and they seek the cool tranquillity of the fountain and the shadow of the overarching trees—"One can hear the water sleep," says Pelleas. Their talk is dangerously intimate. Melisande dips her hand in the cool water, and plays with her wedding-ring ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... out. Gavrilo looked round. The restaurant was in an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... we are," said another boy, busy rubbing Ivan who lay with set teeth, stifling the pain of returning circulation in his ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... if by a vice, and he felt himself dragged towards the tree, while a stifling and sulphurous vapour rose around him. A black veil fell over his head, and was rapidly twined around his ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... very tight till I get there! Why do you have the stern so far away?" and, stifling several squeaks of alarm in her passage, Rose crept to the distant seat, and sat there holding on with both hands and looking as if she expected every wave ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... of her breath increased, she felt suffocated. The livid dawn, the crimson sunset, changed to gray; the atmosphere around her grew thick; there was a smarting sensation in her eyes, a stifling sensation in her throat. Mechanically, not knowing what she did, she began to grope her way to the door. But in that thickening atmosphere she did not know which was the door—her outspread arms clasped some heavy piece of furniture—the wardrobe. She leaned against, it exhausted, helpless ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... day on which her neighbors started from Green River to visit her, she was out in the pasture trying to fill her pail with blueberries. All the sunlight seemed to centre on her black figure like a burning-glass; the thick growth of sweet-fern around the blueberry bushes sent a hot and stifling aroma into her face; the wild flowers hung limply, like delicate painted rags, and the rocks were like furnaces. Mrs. Field went out soon after dinner, and at half-past five she was still picking; the berries ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... folded once and containing a line or two of writing hastily pencilled that morning at Belle Alliance. Maximian received it timidly and held it helplessly before his downcast eyes with the lines turned perpendicularly, while the pause grew stifling, and until ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... reaches his hostess, and wishes she were the "cannon's mouth," in order that his sufferings might be ended; but she is not. His agony is to last the whole evening. Tea-parties are eternal: they never end; they are like the old-fashioned ideas of a future state of torment—they grow hotter and more stifling. As the evening advances towards eternity he upsets the cream-jug. He summons all his will-power, or he would run away. No; retreat is impossible. One must die at the post of duty. He thinks of all the formulas of courage—"None but the brave deserve ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... she helped her down and held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... well known. The sudden perturbation of a guilty conscience, which overcame the Duc d'Orleans, seemed like an awful warning. He had scarcely commenced his inflammatory address to the Assembly, when some one, who felt incommoded by the stifling heat of the hall, exclaimed, 'Throw open the windows!' The conspirator fancied he heard in this his death sentence. He fainted, and was conducted home in the greatest agitation. Madame de Bouffon was at the Palais Royal when the Duke was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... would," said Fred; and then added, in a humorous vein, "I would like to run my clothes through a machine like that; and I don't know but myself too, after working all day in this stifling dust. I wonder if it would clean our jackets? I rather think they would have to run through more than once to remove ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... of Amy, and looked out also. The skies were very dark; a faint moaning wind stirred the tops of the leafless trees; but there was no rain. A dry volcanic heat pervaded the atmosphere—in fact we all felt the air so stifling, that Heliobas threw open the window altogether, saying, as he ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... to mistaken judgment. To the latter class belongs the loading and treatment of horses and mules. It would have been much better and safer, I think, to load these animals on vessels especially prepared for and exclusively devoted to them than to put them into stifling and unventilated holds of steamers that also carried troops. If, however, this was impracticable, it was manifestly best to load the animals last, so as to expose them for as short a time as possible to such murderous conditions. The mules, however, were loaded first, and held in the holds of the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... people; but the monks, fearing the result, began to shout, and the soldiers to clash their arms, and their clamor drowned the martyr's voice. Thus in 1529, the highest literary and ecclesiastical authority of cultured Paris "set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling on the scaffold the sacred words ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... masonry, torn and ragged where the stones had been forced apart; upon a heap of debris stood Wright's lantern, burning dimly, beside it his heavy drill and hammer. Catesby looked hurriedly about, but all was silent; the air was hot and stifling and the smoke from the lantern filled his nostrils. He turned to retrace his steps, with rough words for Wright upon his lips, when a faint sound fell upon his ears; an unearthly thing, which startled him and sent to his heart a thrill of superstitious terror. 'Twas a measured ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... of Tennessee, spring has a trick of dropping down on the world like a steaming wet blanket. The season that Johnnie Consadine went to work in the mills at Cottonville, May came in with warm rains. Stifling nights followed sultry, drenching days, till vegetation everywhere sprouted unwholesomely and the mountain slopes had almost the reek ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... God, I find in thy book that fear is a stifling spirit, a spirit of suffocation; that Ishbosheth could not speak, nor reply in his own defence to Abner, because he was afraid.[70] It was thy servant Job's case too, who, before he could say anything to thee, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... whoever he is," Jimmie said, as they discussed the signals in the almost stifling atmosphere of the cabin, "is strictly next to his job! He's showing the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... reflections upon the furniture; made two steps toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and disappeared, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of self-possession from my brain. And it was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The candle fell from my hands. I flung out my arms in ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... method of working, hounds should possess four points. They should have pluck, sound feet, keen noses, and sleek coats. The spirited, plucky hound will prove his mettle by refusing to leave the chase, however stifling the weather; a good nose is shown by his capacity for scenting the hare on barren and dry ground exposed to the sun, and that when the orb is at the zenith; (21) soundness of foot in the fact that the dog may course over mountains during ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... window up!" she warned Sandy. "I know it's stifling, but I can't have the dust coming in. Why don't you go on in ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... the morning—the time when the officers, the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin, fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fill overlooking the Flats. It was a heavy train, and a train that was helping to make history—a combination of freight, passenger, and "cattle." It had averaged eight miles an hour on its climb toward Yellowhead Pass and the end of steel. The "cattle" had already surged from their stifling and foul-smelling cars in a noisy inundation of curiously mixed humanity. They were of a dozen different nationalities, and as the girl looked at them it was not with revulsion or scorn but with a sudden quickening ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... For some moments no one spoke. Her father, stifling a sigh, turned slowly, pushed a chair to the fire and settled into it, his rubber-encased knees wide apart, so that the warmth of the blaze could reach most of his body. Jack found a seat beside him, his mind on Ruth and her evident ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... will have one good effect," said Ormiston laughing; "if they clear the air and drive away this stifling atmosphere." ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... passes and tracks. We camped for the night by the Lake of Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee. Next day we hired a boat and went round the lake. Towards night there was a glare behind the mountains, as if some town in the neighbourhood was on fire. We could not sleep in consequence of the stifling heat, and flies and mosquitoes were numerous. The day after I went off to the hot baths of Hamath, or Emmaus. They were salt and sulphuric. In the middle of the bath-house was a large marble basin, through which the water passed, with little rooms around. Here people bathed for bone-aches. The ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... examining his hand ... "always blood! why have they put his bloody shirt upon me? Already, without that, I swim in blood.... Why do I not drown in it?... How cold the blood is to-day!... Once it used to scald me, and this is no better! In the world it is stifling, in the gave so cold.... 'Tis dreadful to be a corpse. Fool that I am, I sought death. O, let me live but for one little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... children may be born to erstwhile rural parents and may come to adult years with only a scant sense of the peace and beauty that can be found a few miles away, and often with little sense of anything else but the crumbling, teeming, stifling, noisy, sooty slums where they live—the other side of the monumental splendor along the Federal riverfront. Not all urban frustration is an outgrowth of the physical environment by any means, but much is. And this frustration, plus the pattern ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... we had been drawn, partly by the antiquarian attractions which the place possessed, and partly by the beauty of the scenery. The weather had been rather against us. The day had been dull and murky, the heat stifling, and the sky had threatened mischief since the morning. At sundown, these threats were fulfilled. The thunderstorm, which had been all day coming up—as it seemed to us, against the wind—burst over the place where we were lodged, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... back to the hotel—through the back door, where the smoke was not so stifling—because I thought that sahib would perhaps have taken refuge there. I did not find sahib, but I found these clothes, and thought it better to put them on than to ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the teepee stifling, in spite of the wide-open door flap. He was restless; the mosquitoes tormented him, too. He began to envy Kiddie, lying in the cooler air. So much so that at about two o'clock in the morning ho got free of his sleeping bag, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... articles of furniture that evidently did not belong to the room, and a disorder of trunks and travelling articles, formed the whole of her surroundings. Under some former regular inhabitant, the stifling little apartment had broken out into a pier-glass and a gilt table; but the gilding was as faded as last year's flowers, and the glass was so clouded that it seemed to hold in magic preservation all the fogs and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... leaving by the 8.50 train, and we were not the only ones to leave Christmas behind, for hundreds of men were returning to the Front. Heartbreaking scenes were taking place, and many of the brave women-folk were stifling their sobs, in order to give their men a pleasant send-off, possibly for ...
— 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
... with the spread of canal irrigation in the western Panjab. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But in the latter half of it cooler ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... don't play cards on Sunday; I don't ever play for money; and I'm stifling for breath already in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... course we each had a candle—leading the way down a long passage about five feet high. At length the passage widened out, and we were in the tomb-chamber: I think the hottest and most silent place that I ever entered. It was simply stifling. This chamber is a square room cut in the rock and totally devoid of paintings or sculpture. I held up the candles and looked round. About the place were strewn the coffin lids and the mummied remains of the two ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... church—in church. In spite of father's unbelief and mother's indifference, at the time I married I was as simple—ay, in my heart, as devout—as any girl in a parsonage. The other thing hadn't soaked into me. Whenever I could escape from our stifling rooms at home, and slam the front door behind me, the air blew away uncertainty and scepticism; I seemed only to have to take a long, deep breath to be full of hope and faith. And it was like this till ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... there's a fire a-head," said the conductor; and after obeying this commonplace direction, many of the passengers returned to the slumbers which had been so unseasonably disturbed. On, on we rushed—the flames encircled us round—we were enveloped in clouds of stifling smoke— crack, crash went the trees—a blazing stem fell across the line—the fender of the engine pushed it aside—the flames hissed like tongues of fire, and then, leaping like serpents, would rush up to the top of the largest tree, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Stifling, therefore, his feelings, he crept forward to the cave, which was so near the spot where the body was found that the smugglers might have heard from their hiding-place the various conjectures of the bystanders concerning the fate of their victim. But nothing could be more completely ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting," said Virginia, stifling a yawn. "I hope to see something more of him; he's a new sort and worth studying. And—oh, father, is there any chance that we'll have that house-party at our San Blanco estate next Spring? I mean—of course you've promised that. What I meant was, will ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... was then suspended and stoned. But their humour, like the odor and smoke of gunjah, (hasheesh) was become stifling. So, we lay our chobok down; and, thanking them for the entertainment, we struggle through the rolling reek and fling ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... beware of stifling the truth, of making it a prisoner, and detaining it in unrighteousness, like those spoken of, Rom. i. 18. "For which cause God them up to uncleanness and vile affections, and they became vain in their imaginations, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... from passing over the wires, whether in cipher or in clear. But an enterprising, prescient, and masterful staff perceived ere long that their powers could be developed and turned to account in other directions with advantage to the State, notably in that of stifling the commercial activities of the Central Powers in the Western Hemisphere. The consequence was that within a very few months the cable censorship had transformed itself to a great extent out of an effective shield for defence into a potent weapon of attack. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... therefore no just conception of rights. Women are as ambitious, as self-assertive, as are men. They deal more naturally with abstractions, and are more tenacious of purpose. They are impatient of hindrance, and it is inconsistent with facts to infer that they have been "stifling generous impulses for their own larger freedom," at the dictation of their own sons. The executive power and wisdom of these sons they feel to be the very thing they most desire for them, a reward for their own abounding faith and love. Privileges, Expediencies, and Immunities are their Rights. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... see nothing from which such a shadow should fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense of danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the worst property of fear. I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... was needed. The sovereignty of the end must yield, if necessary, before the sovereignty of numbers. A cause like that of slavery is only defended in the heart of a democratic nation, by teaching it contempt of scruples, and the stifling of the conscience. Every thing is allowable, every thing is good, provided that we succeed in our ends! This is the rule which it designs shall prevail in political contests. A single question, seeing nothing but itself, determined to spare nothing, offering ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... received by the defenders. In all that horrible din of battle, the shrill yells of the savages, the hoarse shouts of the settlers, the boom of the cannon overhead, the cracking of rifles and the whistling of bullets; in all that din of appalling noise, and amid the stifling smoke, the smell of burned powder, the sickening sight of the desperately wounded and the already dead, the Colonel's brave wife had never faltered. She was here and there; binding the wounds, helping Lydia and Betty mould bullets, encouraging ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... very skilfully made a concealed trap-door, which communicated with the storeroom. He had been doing this while I was waiting in the swamp. The storeroom opened upon a piazza. To this hole I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling; the darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I could sleep quite comfortably on one side; but the slope was so sudden that I could not turn on my other without hitting the roof. The rats and mice ran over my bed; but I was ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... this inexplicable paralysis. Despite the hoarse roaring of the breakers, despite the shrieking and whistling of the wind, despite the dust constantly being deposited on their bodies, and entering ears, mouth, and nostrils,—despite the stifling sensation one would suppose they must have felt, and which should have awakened them,—despite all, they continued to sleep. It seemed as if that sleep was to ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... woke before dawn. The room was stifling from the heat of the stove, and she could smell the bear. There was a faint glimmer of dawn, and the dark walls showed the window frames in a wan blue outline. Somewhere close by an old elk was bellowing: you could tell it was old ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... stifling a smile at this specimen of Mynheer Krause's eagerness for intelligence. He very gravely walked up to him, looked all round the room as if he was afraid that the walls would hear him, and then whispered for a few seconds into ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Mrs. Chatterton was saying to herself in the other room; "what good could it do? Oh! this vile air is stifling. Will no one come to say she is better?" And so the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... began it," said Daisy, stifling a pang of compunction, for she really liked him very much, else why should she ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... with the bellowings of the storm without, rendering the scene awful beyond description. All rushed pell-mell for the street. The crackling flames burst through the broad windows on the side of the judges' platform, rolling a dense volume of smoke and stifling heat into the interior of the building. In the wild excitement and terror, the prisoners were forgotten. They stood in the box where they had received sentence. The flames were rapidly approaching them. Sumpter turned ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... restored Janina's health almost entirely. On the eighth day she felt strong enough for a walk. She was longing for the fresh air, the verdure unsoiled by city dust, the sunlight, and the vast open spaces. She felt that the city was stifling her, that here, at every step, she had to limit her own ego and continually struggle against all the barriers ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... She had known he was less rich; but half!—"maybe less!" The cuirass of steel, whalebone, kid, and linen which molded her body to a fashionable figure seemed to be closing in on her heart and lungs with a stifling clutch. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... man, "a wicked doer who giveth heed to false lips, and a liar who giveth ear to a naughty tongue." Yea, if we thoroughly would be clear from it, we must show an aversion from hearing it, an unwillingness to believe it, an indignation against it; so either stifling it in the birth, or condemning it to death, being uttered. This is the sure way to destroy it, and to prevent its mischief. If we would stop our ears, we should stop the slanderer's mouth; if we would resist the calumniator, he would fly from us; if we would reprove him, we ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... feeling of affection for his children came over him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble, staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him. Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again. After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... in the Summer Garden on a seat under a tree, and his mind dwelt on the matter. It was about seven o'clock, and the place was empty. The stifling atmosphere foretold a storm, and the prince felt a certain charm in the contemplative mood which possessed him. He found pleasure, too, in gazing at the exterior objects around him. All the time he was trying to forget some thing, to escape from some idea that haunted him; but melancholy thoughts ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... desperate effort, he disengaged himself with the loss of both his shoes; thus labouring on, with infinite pain and difficulty he reached the land. The whole troop of spectators were now incapable of stifling their laughter, which broke forth in such redoubled peals, that the unfortunate hero was irritated to an extreme degree of rage, so that, forgetting his own sufferings and necessities, as soon as he had struggled to the shore, he fell upon them in a fury, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... (e.g. a language or operating system interface) has actually been codified in a ratified standards document. The existence of these standards documents (and the technically inappropriate but politically mandated compromises which they inevitably contain, and the stifling language in which they are invariably written, and the unbelievably tedious bureaucratic process by which they are produced) can be unnerving to hackers, who are used to a certain amount of ambiguity in the specifications of the systems they use. (Hackers feel that such ambiguities ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... of standing," cried Dorian Gray, suddenly. "I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here." ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... sergeant," said Mr. Billings, and, bending low, he stepped into the cell. The atmosphere was stifling, and in another instant he backed out into the hall-way. "Sergeant, was it by the commanding officer's order that O'Grady ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... unjust! The thought of it was stifling the breath in his nostrils, it was pressing the blood out of his heart! They were waiting for the answer, and why should he not speak? What profit was there in silence when it would be ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... "I am stifling," said the dying man, rolling round his ghastly eyes. "How hot it is! Open the window; I should like to see the light-daylight ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... complied with all; from belly to side, from side to back I turned her; she smiled as if pleased, curious, and astonished; and when I turned to quench my passion in her, she met me with an ardour less demonstrative, but more stifling and satisfying than Charlotte; it was a worry to think that I had twice fucked her, and seemed to have finished each time ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... her every evening, sitting in the stifling, ugly house, and poured out his soul as if it were a libation to a goddess. She sometimes answered by telegraph, sometimes by a perfumed note. He schooled himself not to feel hurt. Why should Babette write? Does a goldfinch indict epistles; or a humming-bird ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... sultry, the stifling heat of the upper chambers oppressed her and the ceaseless, rasping whir of the cicala smote her with weariness, but she resisted the attempt of her ladies to detain her in the cooler atmosphere of the voto, for in ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... "Heavens!" exclaimed John, stifling the note in his hand and stalking tragically around the room. "Can it be possible that I have nursed a frozen viper? An ingrate? A wolf in sheep's clothing? An orang-outang in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... and winning manners, combined with a fund of information on subjects not usually popular with the young, could not but strike so discerning a judge as the Countess de Circourt as indicating not a common personality. She feared lest so much talent and promise would be suffocated for ever in the stifling air of a small despotism. Cavour himself drew a miserable picture of his country: science and intelligence were reputed "infernal things by those who are obliging enough to govern us"; a triumphant bigotry trembled alike at railways and Rosmini; Cavour's aunt, the Duchess de Clermont Tonnerre, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... her room in the west wing she rushed, stumbling over hose lines, battling against the stifling clouds of smoke which rolled down the corridor. The room was gained, the picture secured, and she turned to make good her escape, all other valuables forgotten. But even in that brief moment the smoke had ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... woman! She ought to have been laid in a quiet little nest hours ago, instead of being exposed to the close, hot, stifling air of the theatre through all the long hours ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... the park, the last vegetation on the continent. The melancholy squares of water, divided by little paths of white salt crust, along which the salt-makers pass (dressed in white) to rake up and gather the salt into mulons; a space which the saline exhalations prevent all birds from crossing, stifling thus the efforts of botanic nature; those sands where the eye is soothed only by one little hardy persistent plant bearing rosy flowers and the Chartreux pansy; that lake of salt water, the sandy dunes, the view of Croisic, a miniature town afloat like Venice on the sea; and, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... he and those with him plunged into the stifling smoke to battle with the fierce flames in their stronghold. They smothered them with clods of earth and buckets of sand. They cut away the blazing woodwork with keen-edged wrecking axes torn from their ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... as the grinding proceeded. The gunners worked in their shirts or stripped to the waist. Sweat streaks mapped the faces of the men who came out of the trenches. Stifling clouds of dust hung over the roads, with the trucks phantom-like as they emerged from the gritty mist and their drivers' eyes peered out of masks of gray which clung to their faces. A fall of rain came as a blessing to Briton and German alike. German prisoners worn with ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... casks. By and by fumes of brandy began to fill the air, and climb to where I lay, overcoming the mouldy smell of decayed wood and the dampness of the green walls. It may have been that these fumes mounted to my head, and gave me courage not my own, but so it was that I lost something of the stifling fear that had gripped me, and could listen with more ease to what was going forward. There was a pause in the carrying to and fro; they were talking ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... his wholly unaccustomed weakness the doctor sat, a convalescent in his own hospital in Toul, one stifling July day. To his physical debility was added the dragging distress of mind which comes at times to those who are far away and receive no word from home. No letters had reached him for weeks. Removed ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... fond of "artistic writing," a typically Parisian product, a style which in ordinary times seems to "powder puff" the emotions, but which, amid the convulsions of the war, exhibits a certain heroic elegance. The narrative is terse, gloomy, stifling; but there come episodes of repose, which break its unity, and by these the tension is relieved for a moment. Few readers will fail to appreciate the charm, the discreet emotion, of these episodes, as for instance in the chapter "On Leave." But three-fourths of the book deal with ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... opened a little way the door of the passage, from which a blue stifling smoke immediately made its way into the room, and called out to Fleda, whose little voice was heard faintly responding from ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the city deserted by the natives. We hear nothing of Milton's impressions of the place, but of the men whom he met there he retained always a lively and affectionate remembrance. The learned and polite Florentines had not fled to the hills from the stifling heat and blinding glare of the Lung' Arno, but seem to have carried on their literary meetings in defiance of climate. This was the age of academies—an institution, Milton says, "of most praiseworthy effect, both for the cultivation of polite letters and the keeping ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... fastened pine cases protected by glass, in which were collections of butterflies and beetles arranged in a manner that awoke admiration even in those who knew nothing of entomology. But to-day the room was stifling, and even the stiff beetles on their pins seemed to droop in the fierce glare of the sunshine ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... while she resumed: "At home my cousins and I do all kinds of things that the ladies whom you know have done for them. We do our own work, for one thing," she continued, with a sudden treacherous misgiving that what she was saying might be silly and not heroic, but bravely stifling her doubt. "My cousin Virginia is housekeeper, and Rachel does the sewing, and I'm ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
