"Acrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... applied with safety but emollient clysters and fomentations, and to drink copiously of camomile tea, or any other diluting liquor, till the spasms be relieved, and the nature of the disease more clearly understood. Persons who are subject to the bilious cholic in particular, should abstain from acrid, watery and oily food, especially butter, fat meat, and hot liquors: and pursue a calm and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... shapeless shack. The hoofs of El Sangre bit into the dust, choking and red in daylight, and acrid of scent by the night. All was very quiet except for a stir of voices in the distance here and there, always kept hushed as though the speaker felt and acknowledged the influence of the profound night in the mountains. Someone came down the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... town gardens; but it may regain its popularity in verse as it has in cultivation. In farm gardens it has always flourished, and every autumn has "gone to bed with the sun and with him risen weeping," and has given forth in the autumn air its acrid odor, which to me is not disagreeable, though my old herbal calls its "a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... there still remained a quantity of the spinal marrow which they had not been able to extract. This, although putrid, was esteemed a valuable prize and the spine being divided into portions was distributed equally. After eating the marrow, which was so acrid as to excoriate the lips, we rendered the bones friable by burning ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... thoughtful, so forgetful of self, and so affectionate in her sympathy. He hung upon her lips in silent admiration, yet it was impossible for him to determine whether this sisterly affection from Barbara was pouring balm or acrid lye upon his wounds. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have done credit to a mind-reader, Brock knew that attack was imminent. To him the wind that blew across the river October 12th was laden with omens of war. The air seemed charged with the acrid smell of burnt powder. The muffled beat of drums, the smothered boom of artillery, the subdued clash of steel meeting steel, the stealthy tramp of armed men, seemed to ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... her, the reins in her hands, the stirrup at her foot. She moved in her saddle. The blood tingled in her veins fiercely, bitterly, as if it had become suddenly acrid. She felt as if her face were scarlet, as if her whole body flushed, and as if the flush could be seen by her companion. For a moment she was clothed from head to foot in a fiery garment of shame. But she faced Androvsky with calm eyes, and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... about the floor, but they had been trampled under foot and their beauty had suffered, their freshness was marred, and their perfume, rising acrid from bruised petals, greeted him unwholesomely after the fresh morning air, and rendered the atmosphere faint and oppressive. The stand with the flower pots, much disarranged, stood as he had left it when he pulled it roughly aside to get at the grate, and the fire had ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... why he should not have them too. I hesitated a little, but as he pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau's books; and it so chanced that I used the word "acrid" for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my idea of Jerrold's way of looking at men and books. It was not quite what I meant; but, in fact, he often is acrid, and has written pages and volumes of acridity, though, no doubt, with an honest purpose, and from a manly disgust at ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eternity of which we know, and need to know, so little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann. Yet to Mr. Matthew Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a grudge. The day is perhaps not far off when people will begin to count "Moll Flanders," ay, or "The Country Wife," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... structure for its formation, and that is to be found, not in the bowels, but only at the inlets and outlets of the digestive canal. The actual deposit at the outlet of the bowel is indeed exceptional, though the edges are often red and sore from the irritation produced by the acrid motions, and this irritation sometimes extends to the skin over the lower part of the baby's person, which becomes rough, and covered ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... Dr. West, touching the past, had not been without its fruits in Sibylla's mind. It lay and smouldered there. Had Lionel been attached to Lucy?—had there been love-scenes, love-making between them? Sibylla asked herself the questions ten times in a day. Now and then she let drop a sharp, acrid bit of venom to him—his "old love, Lucy." Lionel would receive it with ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... wave of desperation—it seemed a hot wave—surged through Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... with a bit of wood from the wreckage of the door, sufficed to set the phosphorus ablaze. Stern heaped on a few tiny lumps of sulphur. Then, coughing as the acrid fumes arose from the sputter of blue flame, he applied the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... blotched and mildewed with damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, yellow teeth of glass, whitened soot—all the decay and rubbish of a generation of neglect littered the place and filled it with an acrid odour. From one of the rooms we looked forth through a little discoloured window upon a patch of forlorn weedy garden, where the very cats glowered in a depression that no surfeit ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... comprehending Torpenhow's special correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... of the poppy family (Papaveraceae) with brittle stems, yellowish acrid juice, pinnately divided leaves, and small yellow flowers that includes the celandine. Preparation of celandine (Chelidonium majus) ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the shriek of the shells and the whine of the bullets came shriller than before. All around them the twigs were dropping, while the acrid powder smoke rolled in through the trees and burnt their eyes and throats. Again came men in blue retreating and among them an officer on horseback, wheeling his animal madly around among them and shouting encouragement ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... His acrid smile cut her sentence in two. "That's about the third time you've mentioned their loyalty. Me, I don't see it. Sebastian owns land under the Valdes grant. He didn't want me to take it from him. Mr. Pablo Menendez—well, he had private ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... dancing-school was being debated, to have heard her express disapproval of girls who frittered away their time and health in the pursuit of what she called "vain pleasures." I had not conversed with her on the subject, but I had obtained an intimation from her short and acrid manner on the one or two occasions when we had met of late that she was quite aware of what was going on, and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... uneasily, yet at the first streak of dawn it was in motion. It was an endless procession, in which every man was for himself. I can see them now, bent under their burdens, straining at their hand-sleighs, flogging their horses and oxen, their faces crimped and puckered with fatigue, the air acrid with their curses and heavy with their moans. Now a horse stumbles and slips into one of the sump-holes by the trail side. No one can pass, the army is arrested. Frenzied fingers unhitch the poor frozen brute and drag it from the water. Men, frantic ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of Nature oppressed me. The thousand odors, spicy, acrid, aromatic, honeyed, that an autumnal dew expressed from every herb, through that sense that is the slave of association, recalled my youth, my boyhood, the free and careless hours I knew no more, when, on just such mornings of hazy and splendid ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... inaudible in the noise of the train, but for a long time he goes on muttering, sighing and clearing his throat.... The cold air in the railway van grows thicker and more stifling The pungent odor of fresh dung and smoldering candle makes it so repulsive and acrid that it irritates Yasha's throat and chest as he falls asleep. He coughs and sneezes, while the old man, being accustomed to it, breathes with his whole chest as though nothing were amiss, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mid afternoon when the acrid, gray dust cloud kicked up by the listless plodding of eight thousand cloven hoofs formed the only blot on the hard blue above the Staked Plains, an ox stumbled and fell awkwardly under his yoke, and refused to scramble up when his negro driver shouted and prodded him with the end ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... not a poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... interesting duckweeds (Pistiaceae) should also be noted with the bullrushes (Typheae), and the arums (Aroideae). This last-mentioned order, familiar to us by the kind known as "Lords and Ladies," presents some climbing forms in tropical countries. Generally acrid, some species, when in flower, even produce headache and vomiting; at least an explorer was attacked with these symptoms after gathering forty specimens of Arum dracunculus. The order is also interesting from experiments as to vegetable heat, which have been made with the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... weeds pulled by the Major and Gertie during the last three days. He saw Gertie in the distance once or twice, in a clean sun-bonnet, going about her business, but she made no sign. The smell of the burning weeds gave a pleasant, wholesome and acrid taste to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... like a child with a sea-shell at his ear, he began to be aware of the great roar of the "underground," that, in his third-class carriage, the cruelty of the reservation penetrated, with the taste of acrid smoke, to his inner sense. It was really degrading to be eager in the face of having to "alter." Peter Baron tried to figure to himself at that moment that he was not flying to betray the extremity of his need, but hurrying to fight for some ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... uttered her name, his heart sank within him, for their talk the night he had sought her hospitality for the laird, came back to his memory, burning like an acrid poison. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... up, the more did I perceive that Lady Georgina threw out acrid hints with increasing spleen about the ways of adventuresses. They were hints of that acrimonious generalised kind, too, which one cannot answer back without seeming to admit that the cap has fitted. It was atrocious how middle-class young women nowadays ran after ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Jack-in-the-Pulpit. This is well known to all our children in the East. The root is the most burning, acrid, horrible thing in the woods when raw, but after cooking becomes quite pleasant ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... way down when a rank waft of acrid and mephitic air met him and half-choked him. He struggled on, and when he found his bearings by the dim and misty light he sat down on a locker and gasped. The atmosphere was heated to a cruel and almost dangerous pitch, and the odour!—oh, Zola! if I dared! A groan from a darkened corner sounded ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... talking after that. By five o'clock he was down in the cellar. She heard him making a great sound of rattling and bumping and shaking and pounding and shoveling. She smelled the acrid odour of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... themselves for this work. The acrid smell of potato-parings rose in the furnace-like heat of the kitchen, along with the singing voice, asking and answering itself. Mark listened with all his might, laughing and wriggling with appreciation. When his mother had finished and was putting the potatoes into the boiling water, he said exultantly, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... memories of the acrid smoke of hill camp-fires, of nights under a tarp with the rain beating down on him, and still others of a road herd bawling for water, of winter camps when the ropes were frozen stiff and the snow slid from trees in ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... not, Rabbi, teach the people to use their intelligence as a sieve, to divide the grain from the chaff, and the pearls from the sand? Rabbi! you have made us to eat the pomegranate with the bitter rind; we begin to feel the acrid taste of it and it ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... British campaign in general, paid heavily throughout the year 1781. The French fleet in undiminished vigor lay a dead weight upon all his subsequent action, which, like the dispositions prior to its arrival, underwent the continued censure of Hood; acrid, yet not undiscriminating nor misplaced. As already observed, the surrender of Cornwallis can with probability be ascribed to this loss of an opportunity afforded to strike a blow at the outset, when the enemy was as yet divided, embarrassed ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... a fit of coughing. Her bedroom was a blank. The open window overlooking the torrent had disappeared. She sat up choking—staring with wide open, stinging eyes, into an acrid haze. She felt for the matches beside her bed and struck one. Its flame burned saffron for an instant and went out as if it had been plunged into a bottle. At this instant she would have shrieked with fright had not the sound of a man leaping up ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... than by any other plant. Neuman obtained by distillation two ounces and two drachms from sixteen ounces of cloves. On an average cloves yield from 17 to 22 per cent. of oil, including the heavy and light oils. The oil is aromatic and acrid, and has been used as a condiment and a stimulant carminative. It is also extensively used by ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... left in silence and darkness till spring. No marmot, hibernating under ground in his nest of leaves and dry grass, more cozy and warm. No frost, no wet, but fragrant privacy and quiet. Then how the earth tempers and flavors the apples! It draws out all the acrid unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtle refreshing taste of the soil. Some varieties perish, but the ranker, hardier kinds, like the northern spy, the greening, or the black apple, or the russet, or the pinnock, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... time with this acrid contest of quicklime, which caused much effusion of tears from suffering eyes, a gentler warfare of flowers was carried on, principally between knights and ladies. Originally, no doubt, when this pretty custom was first instituted, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paused on the threshold, as was his wont, with closed eyes and dilated nostrils, enjoying the aroma of complex freshness which the dining-room had at this hour. Pathetically a creature of habit, he liked to savour the various scents, sweet or acrid, that went to symbolise for him the time and the place. Here were the immediate scents of dry toast, of China tea of napery fresh from the wash, together with that vague, super-subtle scent which boiled eggs give out through their unbroken shells. And as a permanent base to these there was the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... deck was so hot that it seemed an increase of a few degrees would cause it to burst into flames. In many places even the heavy-soled shoes of the men were no protection, and they were compelled to step lively to avoid scorching their feet. The smoke had increased and grown more acrid. Every man on board was suffering from inflamed eyes, and they coughed and strangled like a crew of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon the boats were swung out and equipped. The last several packages of dried bananas were stored in them, as well as the instruments of the officers. Captain ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... senseless long. When he recovered he became aware of a confused shouting, and an acrid smell ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... that, from some unusual condition of the atmosphere, the cold undercurrent of air which generally drew through these pillared aisles was withheld that afternoon; it was absolutely hotter than in the open, and the wood was charged throughout with the acrid spices of the pine. I turned back to the hotel, reascended to my bedroom, and threw myself in an armchair by the open window. My room was near the end of a wing; the corner room at the end was next to mine, on the same landing. Its closed door, at right angles to my open one, gave upon the staircase, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me, Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw. Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy, The sobs and slobber of a last years woe. And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I tell ye, To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... blue of morning-glory spires, Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows Of clematis, through which September goes, Song-hearted, rich in realized desires, Are flanked by hotter hues: by tawny fires Of acrid marigolds,—that light long rows Of lamps,—and salvias, red as day's red close,— That torches seem,—by which the Month attires Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen, Towering imperial in her two-fold crown Of harvest and of vintage; all her form Majestic gold and purple: ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... with General Eruptions over the Body.—In some cases the eye trouble is only a part of a general skin inflammation, accompanied with heat all over the body, and an acrid, irritating discharge from eruptions on the face and elsewhere, especially on the head. The cold cloths and poultice will not work in such a case. The chief agent in the cure is fine soap lather (see Head, Soaping). Let the head be shampooed with it for half-an-hour. The whole body should then ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... have been your ruin," said Phoebe laughing; "it is a very hard passage, let us turn back and begin again," and then the audience would laugh, not very sweetly, and (some of them) make acrid observations; but the pianist was good-nature itself, and went back and counted and kept time with her head, and with her hand when she could take it from the piano, until she had triumphantly tided him over the bad passage, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... agile youths, old men shaking the multitudinous wrinkles of their rosy, and white-haired skins, or dragging their legs thinner and drier than the juniper staff that served them as a third leg, hurried on, panting and emitting an acrid odour and hoarse gasps. Yet she went on peacefully and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the family of Asclepiadaceae, which have all something more or less 'fleshy' looking about some parts of them, which, like the Apocyneae, were in the old world credited with medicinal properties, and which are generally acrid, stimulating, and astringent. There are many poisonous members of the family, such as the dog's-bane and wolf's-bane of our own country, favourite plants with the enchanters, while the cowplant of Ceylon is ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... splinter in the body, vital energy is aroused to get rid of the offending substance, inflammation is set up, and sloughing goes on until the splinter is voided. If the splinter is covered with acrid material, the same process is intensified, and nature endeavors to eliminate the offending substance through the natural excretions. Upon the peculiarity of the material depends ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... with reminiscences of twenty thousand tradings and Chinese meals. The windows were but half a dozen bars, and the heavy vapors of a cruel past hung about the sombre walls. Though opium had long been contraband, its acrid odor permeated the worn furnishings. Here with some misgivings I prepared to spend my second night ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... falls as moves the waist of the 'Sui' man when brandishing the sword. The tender leaves of tea, so acrid to the taste, have just been newly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... little of the narrow and acrid temper of the special pleader. He is content to show humanity. It is quite conceivable that the future, forgetful of the special social problems and the humanitarian cult of to-day, may view these plays as simply bodying forth the passions ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... at last, and thrust the envelope into the flame. It burned slowly, at first a thin blue flame tipped with yellow, then, eating its way with a small fine crackling, a widening, destroying blaze that left behind it black ash and destruction. The acrid odor of burning filled the room. Not until it was consumed, and the black ash fell into the saucer of the candlestick, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... traffic. The announcement in the Clarion had done its work, and the baleful flower of panic, which is a juggler's rose for quick-growing possibilities, was filling the very air of the street with its acrid perfume—the scent of all others that soonest ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... stooping over the book close to his daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these triangles are equal; please note that the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... some physicians of the southern states. In this condition of the system, I have never resorted to it, and, I must confess, could not easily be persuaded to do so; suspecting that even in such cases, the digestive organs are already too far implicated, to justify the use of so powerful and acrid ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... of simples Cocted in Stygian shades— Acids of wrinkles and pimples From faces of ancient maids— Acrid precipitates sunken From tempers of scolding wives Whose husbands, uncommonly drunken, Are commonly found in dives,— With this I baptize and appoint thee (to St. John.) To marshal the vinophobe ranks. In the name of Dambosh I anoint thee (pours the liquid down St. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... The odour was certainly strong—acrid, but by no means disgusting. He broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that changed like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green colour. It was even an inviting-looking change. He broke ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... heavy-laden squaws, with their bowed heads, their papooses on their backs, their weary arms bearing home the spoils of a hard day's work, and the sore-eyed yellow dogs trudging, too, wearily and dejectedly at their heels, toward the rest of the wickiup and the acrid warmth ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... thunder, and thrown off her balance by the sudden lurch of the ship under her feet, Miss Bishop hurtled violently against Lord Julian, who kept his feet only by clutching the rail on which he had been leaning. Billowing clouds of smoke to starboard blotted out everything, and its acrid odour, taking them presently in the throat, set ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Adrian observed these further progressionary developments in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin's interdict not to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of his various changes. The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bought one for Robin. He carried it unwrapped in his hand as he walked on. One could do that here, in this intimate, cozy old town of dear England. He enjoyed the light mist, the moisture in the air. He had come to hate aridity and the acrid dryness of dust blown by hot winds across great spaces. The moisture caressed his skin, burnt almost to the color of copper ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... this cause, result in girls as well as boys. Temporary congestions become permanent, and develop into permanent irritations and disorders. Leucorrhea has already been mentioned. Contact with the acrid, irritating internal secretions also causes soreness of the fingers at the root of the nails, and warts. Congestion and other diseases are other ultimate results of the habit; and these congestions to which it gives rise unduly ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... sight, but to live eagerly and hopefully in them and through them; not to try to school oneself into hardness or indifference, but to love lovable things, and not to condemn or despise the unlovable. That was indeed a message out of the very heart of God. But of course all the acrid divisions and subdivisions of it come, not from itself, but from the material part of the world, that determines to traffic with the beautiful secret, and make it serve its turn. But there are plenty of true souls within it all, true teachers, faithful learners—and the ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hot for the flesh to bear, when they are swept out and laid on a table covered with matting, where they are again rolled. The firing and rolling are sometimes repeated three or four times, according to the state of the leaves. The rolling is attended with some pain, as an acrid juice exudes from the leaves, which acts upon the hands; and the whole operation of tea-curing and packing is somewhat unpleasant, from the fine dust arising, and entering the nose and mouth,—to prevent which, the workmen often cover the lower ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... balanced the dainty China cup it reminded me of the battered kettle from which we filled the blackened cans in a British Columbian camp. There, instead of embroidered curtains, were festoons of cedar sprays, biting cold and acrid wood-smoke in place of warmth and artistic luxury, and I knew that I had been favored greatly—for though many strive, the victory is to the few. Still, from out of the shadows of the somber firs, I seemed to hear our partner who ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... about the masts and made fast, and presently we drifted against the small forest of poles supporting the flakes and fishhouses. These were black and glistening with the rain and from them came an odor, acrid and penetrating, of decaying fish in ill-emptied gurry-butts and of putrefying livers oozing out a black oil in ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... urbanities and infamous for his uncompromising hostility to the leaders of liberal movements. On the other hand, those who have given the greatest boons to humanity have often been rough in manners, intolerant of infirmities, bitter in their social prejudices, hard in their dealings, and acrid in their tempers; and if they were occasionally jocular, their jokes were too practical to be in high favor with what is called ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... given for all people to gather on the vessel or the wharf. By ten o'clock the last of the gray ash-covered ghosts was mustered in, 185 people on the vessel, 149 in the warehouse on the wharf. Blinded by ash, with throats so burned by the acrid fumes that even a hoarse whisper was agony, with nostrils bleeding from constant effort to keep them from being clogged with the fine dust, and with a stabbing pain in the lungs with every breath one ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the Americans are reserving their fire as their ancestors did at Bunker Hill, conscious, maybe, that in the end they will be driven out of their slight literary entrenchments. Perhaps they were disarmed by the fact that the acrid criticism in the London Quarterly Review was accompanied by a cordial appreciation of the novels that seemed to the reviewer characteristically American. The interest in the tatter's review of our poor field must be languid, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... past timber value. Even those gleaners of dead wood and fallen branches seemed to have passed a different way, for the forest floor was littered with material that seldom goes to waste in Europe, and which broke under foot with a dull, thick sound, filling the nostrils with the acrid ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... efficient cause, as above explained, the final cause, or convenience, of these organic actions are worthy our attention. In this case of an acrid drug swallowed into the stomach the reverted actions of the muscular fibres of the stomach tend to eject its enemy; the reverted actions of its lymphatics pour a great quantity of fluids into the stomach for the purpose ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... was! And what an atmosphere inside the highest shelter, where sleepers had been packed like sardines and the newly kindled fire filled the fetid air with acrid smoke! What there was to be seen we saw—the crater, neither wide nor deep; the Shinto temple, where a priest was intoning prayers; and the Post Office, where an enterprising Government sells picture-postcards for ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... that the Cures that have been made, have mostly been performed either by a Change of Air, such as going from a cold to a hot Climate[100], by some remarkable Change of Life[101], or some accidental Disorder;[102] or by Issues or Drains[103]; or by the Removal of some acrid or irritating Substance, or such like[104]; or by preventing the Cause[105]; and that those Medicines called Specifics have in general had but little ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... later the second attempt began. This time there was no warning sound. A sudden, ear-splitting crash, a groan of tortured metal, and the barricaded hatchway glowed dull red. Another crash followed. The edge of the hatch split open, pouring acrid Murexide fumes into the cabin. A third explosion breached the door six inches; Greg could see headlamps ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... squadron came to the very verge of winning a triumphant success. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy... was honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing France to the great Revolution—corruption, self-seeking, acrid class insolence, and skinless, morbid vanity."—THE ROYAL NAVY, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... about a hundred and fifty people were sitting or standing. At the end, on a stage, were the musicians, each with a bottle of wine at his feet, from which they refreshed themselves during the intervals. An impalpable dust, raised by the feet of the dancers, filled the air charged with acrid odors. The women in light dresses and bareheaded, and the men arrayed in their Sunday clothes, gave themselves up with frantic ardor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... too much for them. They scrambled, they fought, they trampled upon each other. The yellow metal acted upon them like strong drink. In the midst of the pandemonium came a deafening explosion, a vivid flash of red, a volume of acrid suffocating vapour. Another explosion and men came rushing from Mountchance's laboratory—terror written in their faces. Helter-skelter the crowd darted from the house forcing Sally Salisbury with them whether she would or not. In the mad fight ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire that happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, pondering ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Englishman's right of grumbling to a large extent; with a sort of bitter and acrid humility, he would accuse himself of having missed his vocation and his rightful heritage, of being neither "fish, flesh, nor good red herring;" nevertheless his post for the last two years had pleased ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... silence of the avenue, the Russian evoked the ruddy figures of the implacable gods, that were going to awake that night upon hearing the hum of arms and smelling the acrid odor of blood. Thor, the brutal god with the little head, was stretching his biceps and clutching the hammer that crushed cities. Wotan was sharpening his lance which had the lightning for its handle, the thunder ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is lacking in your style; I find it acrid." I feel that this criticism is the most apt ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of Christmas trees, and lights, and toys; Santa Claus might have made his head-quarters in any one of them. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quite weighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burning their pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you met with a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families, and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling them into candy-stores or toy-shops; all of ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the next room. He came to the door. The acrid smell of their pipes was incense in her ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... merely a pleasant proof of Eve's amiability, of her freedom from that acrid monopolism which characterises the ignoble female in her love relations. Straightway he did as he was requested, and penned to Miss Ringrose a chatty epistle, with which she could not but be satisfied. A day or two brought him ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... carefully guarded. Like Merimee, M. Halevy is detached, but he is not disenchanted. His work is more joyous than Merimee's, if not so vigorous and compact, and his delight in it is less disguised. Even in the Cardinal sketches there is nothing that leaves an acrid after-taste, nothing corroding—as there is not seldom in the stronger and sterner ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... the ocean that when they knew themselves taken at the last, they turned their rugged faces down to their enemy with a stony and an ironic wonder. And here, too, among these cast-up bodies of the drowned, lay many women who had loved the prey of the sea, and kissed the cheeks turned acrid by its winds and waters. Some of them had died from heart-sickness, cursing the sea. Some had faded, withering like the pale sand roses beside the sea. Some had lived to old age by empty hearths, in the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... at the other end of the wire. The brain is the receiving operator for all the senses, which bring their messages in code, and which it interprets first as sound, vision, taste, touch, feel, smell, temperature; then more accurately as words, trees, sweet, soft, round, acrid, hot. ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... 'Cyril' has been saved by being a Christian name. We may yet hope to retain y short in 'cylinder', 'cynosure', 'lycanthropy', 'mythology', 'pyramid', 'pyrotechnic', 'sycamore', 'synonym', 'typical'. As for 'h[y]brid' it seems as much a caprice as '[a]crid', a pronunciation often heard. Though 'acrid' is a false formation it ought to follow 'vivid' and 'florid'. The 'alias' rule enforces a long ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... worldly success and extracts its acrid juices. This is not the romantic melancholy of youth, which dreams of infinite things, but the pain of manhood, which feels the limitations of life, which can laugh at the mockery of attainment, which is sensible ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... frightful to hear. Every inch of the floor was slippery with blood; a thin stream of blood from the attic was crawling lazily down the stairs. And the air was scarce respirable, an air thick and hot with sulphurous fumes, heavy with smoke, filled with an acrid, nauseating dust; a darkness dense as that of night, through which darted the red ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... phases of contemporary life, employing the machinery of a free burlesque. The achievement of Aristophanes, in fact, is more astonishing, in a sense, than that of Aeschylus. Starting with what is always, prima facie, the prose of everyday life, its acrid controversies, its vulgar and tedious types, and even its particular individuals—for Aristophanes does not hesitate to introduce his contemporaries in person on the stage—he fits to this gross and heavy ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... in the science. I had a bitter tongue. How deeply I regret it, God only knows. I have often made an awful fool of myself at conferences, at public meetings, etc.; I have often done silly and puerile things, what the French call betises; I think of them without shame. But the sharp, acrid things I have said, and the few harsh things I have done, fill me with confusion. There's the benefit of a diary. It is an examination of conscience. I remember once at a station, a rather mean fellow flung a florin on a heap ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Sydenham, who records it. For many years after the time of Dr. Cullen, who frequently promulgated opinions founded on those of some fancy author rather than on his own observation, it was very much the fashion to speak of redundancy of bile, or of acrid bile, as the cause of the whole train of symptoms in this disease; but, since the attention of medical men has been more particularly drawn to the subject, practitioners may be found in every town in England who can inform you that, in severe cases of ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... but temporary: the juice cooled our lips and tongues, but there is an acrid principle in some of these plants that soon acted, and our thirst ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the fat before adding the flour can be unwholesome, unless the cook is unskillful enough to heat the fat so high that it begins to scorch. Overheated fat, as has already been pointed out, contains an acrid, irritating substance called 'Acrolein,' which may readily be considered to be unwholesome. It is without doubt the production of this body by overheating which has given fried food its bad name. There are several ways ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... in this fashion for about 150 yards, when I heard a shell come shrieking in my direction. With a plunk it fell, and exploded about forty feet away, choking me with sand and half blinding me for about five minutes. The acrid fumes, too, which came from it, seemed to tighten my throat, making respiration very difficult for some ten minutes afterwards. Cautiously looking round, I tried to locate the other scouts, but nowhere could they be seen. I ...
— 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
... But while it lasted the boy knew of no excitement comparable with it. Little wonder that he remembered those fiery pits with the dark figures dancing around their brims! But yet more unforgettable was the smell of the burning kelp had been more than enough—that acrid, all-permeating, unforgettable odour. His mother had never been able to endure it. When the wind drove the smoke from the beach, she would shut every door and window, and build up every crevice with a barricade of sandbags; all in vain. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... unlike another woman's, for it coiled and bristled after her with a life and motion of its own, like a serpent. Her hair, of too dead a black for gloss or glister, was always adorned with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design, elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in costume, and had at last en regle acquired ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Douglas Jerrold, who reminded him somewhat of Ellery Channing, was the most notable writer he met there. There was, however, very little speech-making, and plenty of good conversation. Unfortunately, he offended Jerrold, by using the word "acrid" as applied to his writing, instead of some other word, which he could not think of at the moment. The difficulty, however, was made up over a fresh bottle of Burgundy, and with the help of Hawthorne's unlimited good-will, so that they parted excellent friends, and much the better for having ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... consistence, colourless, melting at -8 deg. and boiling at 184 deg. C. On exposure to air it absorbs oxygen and resinifies, becoming deep brown in colour; it ignites readily, burning with a large smoky flame. It possesses a somewhat pleasant vinous odour and a burning aromatic taste; it is a highly acrid poison. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... into the open. Then he felt a touch on his arm, and, turning, he saw Margaret. Dry-eyed, she watched with him, while the wounded dragged themselves painfully past the still smoking crater, and the acrid smell of ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... she told him; "only obedient." Her veil fluttered in the hot November breeze that bore with it the heavy fetid taint from the overcrowded trenches that ringed Gueldersdorp, and the acrid fumes of the cordite; though the air up here on the veld was sweet compared with the befouled atmosphere of the Women's Laager and the crowded wards at the Hospital, in spite of all that disinfectants ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the authority of the bishops, and to secure to all Trinitarian Protestants entire liberty of worship and all civil and political rights and privileges. Thus to the bitterness of heated political controversy there was added the still more acrid ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Moiseika; his neighbour on the right hand is a peasant so rolling in fat that he is almost spherical, with a blankly stupid face, utterly devoid of thought. This is a motionless, gluttonous, unclean animal who has long ago lost all powers of thought or feeling. An acrid, stifling stench always ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... by the extent of the relationship, was not immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard "dear papa" on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self- accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... unbridled tempest scours, Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers; Then fly the herds,—the swains to shelter scud. Freeing mine eyes, 'Thy sight,' he said, 'direct O'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood, Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.'" ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... one plant interested me more from this point of view, than the well-known Indian turnip (Arisoema triphyllum). As a boy I was well acquainted with the signally acrid quality of this plant; I was well aware of its effect when chewed, yet I was irresistibly drawn to taste it again and again. It was ever a painful experience, and I suffered the full penalty of my rashness. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... knocked her down, for she found herself rising to her knees, reaching for the table to aid her. But her hand was all red and slippery; she looked at it stupidly, fell forward, rose again, with the acrid smell of smoke choking her, and her pretty fur jacket all soaked with the warm wet stuff which ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... been caught with his iron hot. The acrid smell of burnt flesh was still in the air when an angry cattleman and two of his riders came on the man and the rustled calf. Fortunately for the thief the sheriff happened to be in the neighborhood. He had rescued ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... dead. The chamber was a small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... mahogany and leather, and when the sideboard was opened, the acrid odour of tea and the sickly smells of stale bread and rank butter were diffused through the room; but these were quickly dominated by the fumes of the malt. A bottle of port was decanted for the ladies. To the host nothing was too much trouble; his ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... chromos of Indians and buffaloes, and of factories and steamships spouting clouds of soft-coal smoke; and on the top of all was a pile of the First Mortgage Gold Six Per Cent obligations of the Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company—all of them fresh and crisp, with that faintly acrid smell which though not agreeable to the nostrils ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... last year in this prayerful and solemn mariner, but the business of the Lord Jesus soon degenerated into an acrid, harmful discussion, that lasted two weeks and ended in confusion. The debate evidently was now to be renewed with the additional bitterness and vehemence that had accumulated during the ensuing year. The ministers and elders having convened, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters |
