"Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remember now what public man it was who had died of a breakdown from overwork, but I heard Father Payne say, after dinner, referring to the event, "I wish it to be clearly understood that I think a man who dies of deliberate or reckless overwork is a victim of self-indulgence. It is nothing more or less than giving way to a passion. I am as sure ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... system: iron and steel for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw materials. These materials are capable of indefinite expansion: cotton may yet challenge the southern ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... very tired when I first arrived, but fatigue came out on me like a rash afterwards. I got more tired every day, and ended by having a sort of breakdown. This rather spoilt my holiday, but it was very nice seeing people again. It was difficult, I found, to accommodate myself to small things, and one was amazed to find people still driving serenely in closed broughams. It was like ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... sound, it is the eagerness of young India to respond to our educational call that has led to the breakdown of the system in some of the most important functions of education. In its earlier stages those who claimed the benefit of the new system were chiefly drawn from the intellectual elite—i.e., from the classes which had had the monopoly ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... selling argument for the Ford. The price and the quality of the car would undoubtedly have made a market, and a large market. We went beyond that. A man who bought one of our cars was in my opinion entitled to continuous use of that car, and therefore if he had a breakdown of any kind it was our duty to see that his machine was put into shape again at the earliest possible moment. In the success of the Ford car the early provision of service was an outstanding element. Most of the expensive cars of that period were ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon chapel was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed him what had happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help watching him during chapel; and afterwards, on that evening, acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of Blake, there was ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "They're lucky. This beastly breakdown of mine has spoiled all my chances. My, I'd like to be ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the wheel chair appealingly, as she hesitated again with the manner of one who feels compelled to speak, yet fears to betray a secret. "You feel sure, don't you, that father's condition is nothing more than the natural result of his nervous breakdown and his ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... has never suspected the nephew. Only two people suspect him: the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his father. This gentleman puts a detective on the trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the second case of the thing I have argued as being generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of a private person, and which the considerations of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... a breakdown. (Pause.) Well, well, perhaps the suggestion's a little inopportune. What is your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... of Lord John Russell, the whig section of the cabinet, and the general voice of the country, that Lord Palmerston should, at such a juncture, assume that most important official position. The result was a terrible breakdown in the administration of the war department, disastrous to the ministry, the army, and the country. The vacant secretaryship of the colonies was given to Sir George Grey, who was certainly unequal to its requirements. On the whole, the changes gave dissatisfaction to the country, and prepared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a breakdown," thought Tom. "Serves 'em right! Now wait till I tackle 'em and find out where my boat is. I've a good notion ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... could be more significant than the breakdown of the ironclad, first grade traditions—is the grip which the kindergartens of Cincinnati have secured on the people. The Cincinnati kindergartener is more than a teacher—she serves many masters. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... further into his pillow. 'Do as you think best, Sheila,' he said. 'For my own part, I believe it may be as he suggests—partly an illusion, a touch of nervous breakdown. It simply can't be as bad as I think it is. If it were, you would not be here talking like this; and Bethany wouldn't have believed a word I said. Whatever it is, it's no good crying it on the housetops. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... bad effects; he immediately regained his appetite and usual health; but his Aunt Susan was sorely disappointed. He tried to soothe her by explaining what he believed to be the combined causes of his breakdown: first the intense heat, which had made his stay in Paris very trying; the fatigue he had undergone there; and lastly the weakness supervening after the loss of appetite, also due to the abnormal heat, which was causing several sunstrokes every day, even ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and hurling them into place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he danced a final breakdown to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... range of an airship a thoroughly reliable engine is a paramount necessity. The main requirements are—firstly, that it must be capable of running for long periods without a breakdown; secondly, that it must be so arranged that minor repairs can be effected in the air; and thirdly, that economy of oil and fuel is of far greater importance to an airship than the initial weight of the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... around the bed talking, Elizabeth telling briefly of her own experiences and her wedding trip which they were taking back over the old trail, and the old man and woman speaking of their trouble, the woman's breakdown and how the doctor at Malta said there was a chance she could get well if she went to a great doctor in Chicago, but how they had no money unless they sold the ranch and that nobody wanted ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... kill the measure. The House thereupon capitulated and accepted what became known as the Wilson-Gorman act—a law which was only less protectionist than the McKinley act. The President, chagrined at the breakdown of the party program, allowed the act to pass without his signature, but expressed his mingled disappointment and disgust in a letter to Representative ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... they shouted again, but though several times they did hear a distant yodel, the hope that it was in answer to themselves soon faded, as the sound became more distant, and their own exertions ended soon in an utter breakdown-into a hoarse squeak on Jock's part and a weak, hungry cry on Armine's. Jock's face was covered with tears, as much from ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course, only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should they now help others: ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... small beasts on the common pasture-land, and stipulated for the employment of a certain proportion of free labour. The free labourers were to give information of the crops produced, so that the fifths and tenths might be duly paid; and it may have been the breakdown of such an impossible institution which led to the establishment of the 'publicani.' [Sidenote: Composite nature of the Licinian law.] Nothing, indeed, is more likely than that Licinius and Sextius should have attempted to remedy by one measure the specific grievance of the poor plebeians, the political ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... entirely pleased at this easy dismissal of sentiment, when he knew what he himself would have done if she had flown the least signal of distress. He turned to Leila. "I am very much relieved, my dear, to see that your aunt is taking my departure quietly. I was afraid of another breakdown, and I could not have ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... that these might be carried out efficiently, the whole apparatus had to be carried down to the Hut. Here, Bickerton and Correll were continually in consultation with the meteorologist on the latest breakdown. Cups were blown off several times, and one was lost and replaced with difficulty. Most aggravating of all was a habit the clocks developed of stopping during the colder spells. The old-fashioned method of boiling them was found of assistance, but it was discovered that the best treatment ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... more to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Parsifal of eight-and-twenty turn into an incomparable Amfortas at fifty. For the actor, it often happens that the first sign of age is fatigue; in the singer's day, the first shadow is an eclipse, the first false note is disaster, the first breakdown is often a heart-rending failure that brings real tears to the eyes of younger comrades. The exquisite voice does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we still love to hear it, even to the end; far more ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... muttered in Marvel's ears. Peering ahead, he descried a small light. He was passing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... rolling from their black visages. A crowd of darkies stood at a respectful distance an appreciative and encouraging audience. And seated on the broad rail of the veranda were Melicent and Gregoire, patting Juba and singing a loud accompaniment to the breakdown. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... it appeared, suffered a severe nervous breakdown. The physicians had ordered immediate dropping of business ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... any sign of overhearing his weakness, and exulted mightily in my youth, despising the enchantments of a woman. Madame de Ferrier watched the departure from another side of the gallery, and did not witness my poor master's breakdown. She came and talked to him, and took more notice of him than I had ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... impetuosity caused all the scaling ladders to be broken by the crowds of soldiers who tried to mount them at once. Only a small party managed to enter the town, and since they could not be supported owing to the breakdown of the ladders, they were almost entirely cut to pieces. Several officers were killed in this affair, amongst whom were Jorge da Silveira and Garcia de Sousa, who both distinguished themselves by their daring valour. Finding it impossible to breach the ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... long while, or to perform such rapid movements, or to retain the numbers correctly, does not lead to fatal accidents like those in the case of the unfit motormen, but it does lead to fatigue and finally to a nervous breakdown of the employees and to confusion in the service. The result is that the company is continually obliged to dismiss a considerable proportion of those who have entered the service and who have spent some months in going ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... kerchiefs, and Persian slippers. In another, the chorus is composed of men representing wasps, with waists pinched in, bodies striped with black and yellow, and long stings behind. The piece ends with three boys disguised as crabs, dancing a furious breakdown, while the chorus encourages them with, "Come now, let us all make room for them, that they may twirl themselves about. Come, oh famous offsprings of your briny father!—skip along the sandy shore of the barren sea, ye brothers of shrimps. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... as the most creditable and promising periodical west of the Atlantic seaboard. But along with this increasing prestige came a series of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete physical breakdown of its editor and owner, which ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... remarked Tom again, when, after two hours, the Wonder was still close behind them. "Our only chance is that they may have a breakdown." ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... that monotony and discomfort are the cause of nervous and mental breakdown, witness the often-mentioned insanity among farmers' wives and the nervous breakdowns attributable to pain and strain, even though it be, as in many cases of eyestrain, so slight as not to be recognized ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the question squarely, I'm going to be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it 'brotherhood,' the 'solidarity of the race.' Sentimental mush. It's a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This idea is destroying ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... recognized the characteristic utterance of her old friend Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her pleasure in the renowned pedal ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... authority at a salary of L80 per annum, usually rising by annual increments to L120. The maximum is not so high as that for teachers of ordinary subjects, and pensions are not universal, though most councils make fairly adequate provision for retirement, breakdown, and ill-health. ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... think about it. But there is a sort of reflex fright. He becomes either cautious and liable to sudden panics, or very rash indeed, or absolutely mechanical in his actions. The first state means the approach of a nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed, who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh frightened voice. If you came suddenly out here, you would think they were all mortally ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... long tumbler of whisky and soda, and a box of cigars lay on the table. All seemed nervous and excited, indeed as if under an intolerable strain, and kept fidgeting and looking at their watches. Conversation was evidently maintained with an effort, as a thing necessary to keep them from a complete breakdown. Raymond was speaking: ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... to her face, burying her head deeply into the cushions of the divan, shutting out from her sight the barbaric luxury of her surroundings, shuddering convulsively. She did not cry. The complete breakdown of the first night had never been repeated. Tears of shame and anger had risen in her eyes often, but she would not let them fall. She would not give her captor the satisfaction of knowing that he could make her weep. Her pride was dying hard. Her mind travelled ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... physical evils that are produced by cramming and injudiciously-applied instruction, it must be acknowledged that the evidence as to their existence rests upon a much more solid foundation. Clever brain specialists, who have made a lifelong study of mental diseases and the causes of mental breakdown, are in a position to state very definitely, from actual experience, whether or not the cramming system of modern education is productive of physical ill ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of Exclusionism appears the means of finding out—whether there are vast aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not—where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of vegetable ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... known to all as "Sister Pat," was compelled to retire from her position on account of a breakdown in health. When she was leaving, the boys presented her with a trifling gift as a mark of their esteem, and to keep them green in her memory. But no gift was needed for that. As she accepted the present, she said: "Boys, Sister Pat ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... we arrived at this little French seaport, and then it took us two hours to cross the straits, although we happened to be on one of the fast-sailing steamers. We had now five hours to get to Kensington. I was getting terribly anxious now. If there should be a breakdown, or if anything should happen to hinder us! We were so near, and yet so far. Once I thought of telegraphing and telling of my success, but I refrained from that. I wanted to tell of my victory in person, and thus, if needs be, destroy ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... poor sea-cunies do? What could old Johannes Maartens do, with a bevy of laughing girls about him, tweaking his nose, pinching his arms, tickling his ribs till he pranced? To escape such torment Hans Amden cleared a space and gave a clumsy-footed Hollandish breakdown till all the Court ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... replying to him, "is stupid enough, today, to want to be a dictator. That ended by the middle of the Twenty-first Century. Everybody knows what happened to Mussolini, and Hitler, and Stalin, and all their imitators. Why, it is as much the public fear of Big Government as the breakdown of civil power because of the administrative handicap of a shortage of Literate administrators that is responsible for the disgraceful lawlessness of the past hundred years. Thus, it speaks well for the public trust in Chester Pelton's known integrity and sincerity that so many of ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Russians had the whole Van region and part of the Sanjak of Mush in their hands. They had practically annihilated Halil Bey's original corps and cleared the Turkish troops out for many miles around. A Turkish offensive in the Province of Azerbaijan ended in a complete breakdown. On their right wing the Russians occupied Turkish territory between the old frontier and the line of the rivers Chorokh and Tortun and the mountain range of Tchakhir Baba. A violent counterattack made by the Turks at Zinatcher was repulsed. In the course of an engagement in the valley of Oltichai ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the words so much, but the tone of his voice that maddened Paul. Throughout the day he had been in a state of intense excitement. It seemed to him as though his nerves were raw, and he knew that he was on the point of a breakdown. Bolitho's tones, therefore, maddened him, and he was almost beside himself. "Yes, you have won," ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... yellow eyes which shone crimson-red in certain lights. Of human adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just before and during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their lives in ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... may ask the reader to note the breakdown of that school of philosophy which divided the ego from the non ego. The protoplasmists, on the one hand, are whittling away at the ego, till they have reduced it to a little jelly in certain parts of the body, and they will whittle away this ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... be getting through to the operating departments regarding the necessity for cost reduction. I have here last month's breakdown on the Bunker Hill substation 115 KV installation. Most of you have seen it already, I think. I ...
— New Apples in the Garden • Kris Ottman Neville
... the limits of this country in the initial stages of a campaign. For the much larger force which we have actually found it necessary to employ our resources were absolutely and miserably inadequate. The result has been that the department, even by working under conditions which have nearly led to a breakdown, has been barely able to keep pace with the requirements of ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... on that first question in these very informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... informed. The more you do for these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you get your vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where you machine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'll have moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels' taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'd heard from the ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... you how he broke down before; but on Sunday morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide. You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were lit up like the red lamps on ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... room, and find rest and work at her sewing machine. The women of the street showed more refinement of feeling and sincere sympathy than the priests of the Church. But human endurance had been exhausted by overmuch suffering and privation. There was a complete physical breakdown, and the renowned agitator was removed to the "Bohemian Republic"—a large tenement house which derived its euphonious appellation from the fact that its occupants were mostly Bohemian Anarchists. Here Emma ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... her threat to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagdad and tap the riches of the East, led the British to form alliances with their traditional enemies—the French and the Russians. Russia, after the breakdown of Czarism in 1917, dropped out of the Entente, and the United States took her place among the Allies of the British Empire. During the struggle France was reduced to a mere shell of her former power. The War of 1914 bled her white, loaded ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... few minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... following the breakdown of national government, most regions have reverted to either Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision for appeal of all sentences, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal Herald—a thin weekly, with a patent inside—connects the red nose and the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the neglected state of the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... a C/N below 12:1 is mixed into soil its breakdown is very rapid. Because it contains more nitrogen than stable humus does, nitrogen is rapidly released to feed the plants and soil life. Along with nitrogen comes other plant nutrients. This accelerated ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, he had much of his own, though he never got it thoroughly or sustainedly organised and expressed. His mingled passion and humour (especially the latter) "escape"—make fitful spurts and explosions—in his correspondence. Latterly this reflects his mental breakdown, increasingly in the prose; though only a few years before the end it contains wonderful verse such as the song, "The swallow leaves her nest," which is a link between Blake and Canon Dixon. But earlier, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... the proximity of the Great Swamp, and lay and cursed his folly in having chosen just this neighbourhood to build in. Again, there was the case of typhoid he had been anxious about, prior to his own breakdown: under his LOCUM, peritonitis had set in and carried off the patient. At the time he had accepted the news from Polly's lips with indifference—too ill to care. But a little later the knowledge of what it meant broke ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... has snapped"—these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that "correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which throws it out of correspondence with some necessary part of the environment. Death is the result produced, the want of correspondence. We do not say that this is all that is involved. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the basic problem? Why do security measures strangle research? Isn't it a matter basically of a breakdown in the interchange of ideas? Sure, and it has come about because there has been no method of communication which would not get to and be used by our enemies. So, like yourself, I'm forbidden to publish the results of my work here in the journals. Why? Because those results ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... away to her own room, and brought back the smelling-salts and was most eagerly solicitous that Nina should conquer this passing attack of hysteria, as she deemed it. And, indeed, Nina managed to get through the rest of her part without any serious breakdown, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... controls of the 'copter. Easing the ship into the sky toward Washington, he searched out a news report on the radio, listened with a dull feeling in the pit of his stomach as the story came through about the breakdown of the Berlin Conference, the declaration of war, the President's meeting with Congress that morning, his formal request for full wartime power, the granting of permission by a wide-eyed, frightened legislature. Shandor settled back, staring dully at the ground moving below ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... migrated from Monte Carlo, and took a villa between us for a couple of months at Beaulieu. As for the system, Beckett, who was by no means disheartened, played it himself for many nights in succession, and ultimately admitted that there were defects in it which its late breakdown had revealed rather than caused. Not long afterward he was persuaded into adopting another, commended to him by Butler Johnson, once a prominent Member of Parliament. This system, mechanical rather than mathematical, was based on the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... nearly a week at Balmoral by the breakdown of the coach on these dreadful roads, I telegraphed to Hamilton for a conveyance; and the Superintendent of the Sunday School, dear Mr. Laidlaw, volunteered, in order to reduce expenses, to spend one day of his precious time coming for me, and another ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... danger, as a Quakeress would meet with respectful treatment anywhere. He gave me a pass which would further insure my well being, and so, when a boat load of stores was shipped to Head of Elk the first of this week, I came with it. Everything hath gone off well until this breakdown, and I do not regret that, since it hath brought us together. So you see, Peggy, the matter is very simple ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... persecution, but she was becoming aware that, strive as she might, her endurance had its limits. She was but human, and she was intensely sensitive to unkindness. Her nerves were beginning to give way under the strain. There were even times when she felt a breakdown to be inevitable, and only the thought of her step-mother's triumph warded it off. Once down, and she knew she would be a slave, broken beyond redemption to the most pitiless tyranny. And so, though her strength was worn threadbare through perpetual strain, she clung to it still. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... fear, or secret, deep down, painfully acquired knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway station and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... get itself deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found in records of "chronic ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... The chief breakdown is in dealing with the new relations that arise from the mutualism, the interdependence of our time. Every new social relation begets a new type of wrongdoing—of sin, to use an old-fashioned word—and many years always elapse before society is able to turn this sin into crime which can be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the breakdown of this communistic experiment was accompanied by other difficulties in the Church. It appears that by this time Christianity had attracted the favourable attention of a number of Jews who belonged at least by origin to the Diaspora, and this introduced a new element, destined in ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... from this second raid, the machines again took off and raided the Huns for the third time that night. All that were left of this weary group of aviators returned from this third raid in broad daylight, with nerves strained to the verge of a breakdown; some were in tears, some striving to be gay, and some were very quiet, but all were happy in knowing that they had ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... is required merely to keep it in existence, this does not vitiate the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; but as if they represented a degradation of the very conditions ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... piano, and the rest of the audience sitting on their desks. Ingred wisely did not venture on anything too classical, but tried a bright "Spanish Ballade," and managed to get successfully to the end of it without any breakdown. In the midst of the clapping that followed came a loud rap-tap-tap at the door, which immediately opened to admit—much to the astonishment of the Fifth—two of the prefects, and a consignment ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... a lodging for him at the house of a landed resident, three or four miles from the infected city. He was, in a sense, thankful for the illness, because it spared him the sight of the last agony of the broken remains of Napoleon's army. Quiet and rest soon did their work. The breakdown was the result more of over-fatigue, and of the horrors of which he was so continually a witness, than of actual fever. Frank, therefore, rapidly recovered, and declared after a fortnight that he could again ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. "The second maxim is: NEVER SUFFER AN EXCEPTION TO OCCUR TILL THE NEW HABIT IS SECURELY ROOTED IN YOUR LIFE. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... illusion that you should pass under an assumed name, unless you happen to be a very eminent actor, or cricketer, or other idol of the nation, whose presence would flutter the young persons at the bureau. If your nervous breakdown be (as it more likely is) due to merely intellectual distinction, these young persons will mete out to you no more than the bright callous civility which they mete out impartially to all (but those few) who come before them. To them you will be a number, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... tell. As evening came I heard your voice singing, and, screaming for help, I slipped from my saddle, with the intention of running towards you. Olivet made a brave effort to help me—but——" And it was only with an effort that she prevented another breakdown. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... good news awaited them. The crisis was past. Bailey was definitely out of danger. He was still asleep, and sleeping easily. It had just been an ordinary breakdown, due to worrying and overwork, said the doctor, the bigger of the doctors, the one who had been summoned from ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... information which they hold, but it is evident that at last they are confident of establishing a case. Mr. Henry Leroux, the famous novelist, in whose flat the mysterious outrage took place, is suffering from a nervous breakdown, but is reported to be progressing favorably by Dr. Cumberly, who is attending him. Dr. Cumberly, it will be remembered, was with Mr. Leroux, and Mr. John Exel, M. P., at the time that the murder was discovered. The executors of the late Mr. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... that, owing to bad management, lack of foresight, and the almost complete breakdown of the commissary and medical departments of the army, our soldiers in Cuba suffered greater hardships and privations, in certain ways, than were ever before endured by an American army in the field. They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half cared for when they were wounded or sick; ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... back Moll executed a sort of breakdown dance, so great was her satisfaction at the unexpected way in which her wishes had been carried out. But the disappointment and wrath of Joe over this sudden overthrow of his schemes were ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... my mind as one of the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do nothing mentally ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... in a breakdown of hysterics, between sobs of which were frequent admonitions to the child not to say that bad word; for Myra had caught sight of Rowland and was ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a precis) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the absurd idea that this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... now,' he said, 'we will go to the gospodarstwo and you shall give me some nails in case of another breakdown, and I will leave you some of this cordial in return. Mind, if your head or your stomach aches or you are worried and can't sleep, take a glassful of this: all your worries will at once disappear. Take good care of it and don't ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... words we perceive that "nerves" are uppermost, that the song and drink of the opening moment were bravado—that Sebald, in short, is close on a breakdown. He turns upon her with a gibe against her ever-shuttered windows. Though it is she who now has ordered the unwelcome light to be admitted, he overlooks this in his enervation, and says how, before ever they met, he had observed that her windows were always blind till noon. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... had enjoyed perfect health all his life could be stricken with epilepsy, what was to prevent my being similarly afflicted? This was the thought that soon got possession of my mind. The more I considered it and him, the more nervous I became; and the more nervous, the more convinced that my own breakdown was only a matter of time. Doomed to what I then considered a living death, I thought of epilepsy, I dreamed epilepsy, until thousands of times during the six years that this disquieting idea persisted, my over-wrought imagination seemed to drag me to the very verge of an attack. Yet at ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Manderson, I believe,' said Trent. He was much inclined to like young Mr. Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a physical breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living and inward health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his years. But there was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge to Trent's penetration; an habitual expression, as he took ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Aylmer and Edith had kept it to themselves. Mrs Ottley listened imperturbably to Edith's story, a somewhat incoherent concoction, but told with dash and decision, that Bruce had been ordered away for a sea-voyage for fear of a nervous breakdown. She cried a little, said nothing, kissed Edith more than usual, and took the children away for longer walks and drives. With a mother's flashlight of intuition she felt at once certain there was something wrong, but she didn't wish to probe the subject. Her confidence ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... freedom of trade, cannot always be dissected into their component units as readily as railroad companies or similar organizations can be. Their dissolution by ordinary legal process may oftentimes involve financial consequences likely to overwhelm the security market and bring upon it breakdown and confusion. There ought to be an administrative commission capable of directing and shaping such corrective processes, not only in aid of the courts but also by ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... work at the loading, and in the end six wagons were carrying capacity. The seventh lead wagon was an extra, which Jo had decided to use only in case of a breakdown. With thirty tons of hay, grain, case goods, and barreled provisions they started back early the following morning. Jo's heart was light, for this was exceedingly good business, and it was coming faster than she had dared to hope, with so few camps established. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... could I hold back? I was certainly growing stronger every hour, and in spite of my breakdown on the previous night, I felt that it would be absurd to pretend that I was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... American, 33 percent German, 19 percent Irish, 10 percent British other than Irish, 12 percent Scandinavian, and the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 percent. The strong predominance of the foreign element in American trade unions should not appear unusual, since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship system, the United States had been drawing its supply of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... turn of the three guardian angels of the fast men being come again they get up and dance each one a breakdown which seems to establish their lovers (now at last in the secret of the generous ruse played upon them) firmly in their resolution to lead a better life. They are in nowise shaken from it by the displeasure which soon shows itself in the manner of the first and second ladies. The ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... people say they used to have breakdowns in slave time—breakdown dances with fiddle and banjo music. Far after slavery, they had them. The only other amusement worth speaking about was the churches. Far as the churches was concerned, they had to steal out and go to them. Old man Balm Whitlow can ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... upright, had become more muscular. From a merely handsome man he had developed into a striking personality, released from the bonds of an enforced inactivity and an objectless destiny. By just so much Stafford had altered for the worse. His character was too strong and rigid to allow an absolute breakdown. He still carried himself well; to all intents and purposes, as far as his duty was concerned, he was as hard-working and conscientious as he had ever been, but no strength of will had been able to hinder the change ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... always clear, complete, concise. He used to work long into the night, and then, when in the early morning the post to Berlin had gone, he would mount his horse and ride out into the country. It was in these years that he formed those habits to which the breakdown of his health in later years was due; but now his physical ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... sudden influx of Negroes was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had (p. 104) only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some 15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J day and included many of those drafted ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... are now pursuing a policy of desperation are unconsciously building their hopes on the breakdown which brought them to the top: they are avowedly making the hoped-for revolution in the West the central point of their system. If the West holds out, they will be false prophets; but it will not only hold out, it will in the ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... in the country aid in making the republic what it ought to be? Partly they become a public care, expense, or nuisance, and largely they constitute the material for bossism and dynamite for the demagogue if he shall come. The economic breakdown, because of vocational misfit and the exploitation of childhood, usually results in a corresponding moral breakdown. To be doomed to inadequacy is almost to be ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Laura. In it she recounted what Pryor had told her of Corliss; begged Laura and her parents not to think her heartless in not preparing them for this abrupt marriage. She was in such a state of nervousness, she wrote, that explanations would have caused a breakdown. The marriage was a sensible one; she had long contemplated it as a possibility; and, after thinking it over thoroughly, she had decided it was the only thing to do. She sent ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... affects Capital.—Now the force which brings about all these movements is the force of competition. Every increase of knowledge, every improvement of communication, every breakdown of international or local barriers, increases the advantage of the big business, and makes the struggle for existence among small businesses more keen and more hopeless. It is the desire to escape from the heavy and harassing strain of trade ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... after the Reformation, when it ought to have prevailed, nor after the Revolution, when it ought not. The failure to establish the Protestant Church on the ruins of the old regime, to which Quinet attributes the breakdown of the Revolution, and which Napoleon regretted almost in the era of his concordat, is explained by Mr. Flint on the ground that Protestants were in a minority. But so they were in and after the wars of religion; and it is not apparent why a philosopher who does not ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... condition of the undergraduates became as poison in his daily cup. That may all be true enough. Still, whatever elements of a generous public spirit sharply baffled may have entered into this extraordinary moral breakdown, it must be pronounced a painfully unmanly and unedifying exhibition. It says a great deal for the Rector's honesty and sincerity in these pages, that he should not have shrunk from giving so faithful and prominent ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... there must always be a lot of wreckage, of waste, and refuse humanity. The inauguration of each new system, each new reform—religious, political, educational, economic—practically they're all in the same boat—let alone the inevitable breakdown or petering out of each, necessarily produces a fresh crop of such waste and refuse material. And in that a man like myself, who does not aspire to cure or to construct, but merely to alleviate and to pick up the pieces, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... not everybody can be hypnotized to the same degree. Just as the normal suggestibility showed itself very different with different persons, the degree of artificial reenforcement varies still more. Practically everybody can be brought to that breakdown of the resistance in which he can no longer open the eyes against the order of the hypnotist, but rather few can be brought to the point of seeing extended hallucinations, or accepting the disappearance of persons who are speaking, or ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... shouted friendly words to him. You could feel throughout the room an intense desire that he should succeed. He responded a little to the encouragement, but could not remember his verses. He struggled, struggled, did a hurried little breakdown dance, bowed and vanished into the wings, to be beaten, I have no doubt, by the Jewish gentleman. We watched a little of the "Drama of the Woman without a Soul," but the sense of being in a large vat filled with boiling human flesh into whose depths we were pressed ever more and more deeply ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... political machinery by means of which they have to be carried into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth, one reason why the engine of government ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... of the night Prescott awoke, stiff, nauseated, hungry and parched with tormenting thirst. Though he did not know it at that moment, the train had halted because of a breakdown in ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... the Food Controller has got into his stride, the nation has begun to realise the huge debt it owes to his firmness and organising ability, and is proportionately concerned to hear of his breakdown from overwork. The queues have disappeared, supplies are adequate, and there are no complaints ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... have shown her a queerer face than ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her eyes on my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even—as a woman reads another—she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and for the fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted charms. She didn't know—no one knew—how proud I had been to serve him and to stick to our terms; ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... we had got to the other side of the plain and had reached the Athi River, which could not be accomplished under a couple of months. As we progressed onwards into the waterless belt, this became a very serious matter indeed, as any breakdown in the supply would have had the most disastrous consequences among so large a body of men working all day under the blazing sun of a tropical climate. Every day two trainloads of water in great tanks were brought up from the last ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... amuse yourself somehow. Ask yourself a riddle. Tell yourself a few anecdotes. I'll be with you in a moment. I say, I wonder what the cove is doing at Belpher? Deuced civil cove," said Reggie approvingly. "I liked him. And now, business of repairing breakdown." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... quarter to five the telephone bell rang and Jack languidly went to answer it. Then he came back into the drawing-room. "Radmore's had a breakdown," he said briefly, "he's afraid he can't get here ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... more to Congress for authority to issue bonds at a lower rate of interest. Carlisle, the Secretary of the Treasury, addressed a letter to the Senate committee of finance, setting forth the great saving that would be thus effected. Then ensued what must be acknowledged to be a breakdown in constitutional government. Immediately after a committee meeting on January 16, 1894, the Chairman, Senator Voorhees, issued a public statement in which he said that "it would be trifling with a very grave ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... when among the men, had a sympathetic influence upon all about him. His voice had the same sort of influence upon them as the drum and fife on a soldier's march: it quickened their movements. We were often called in by our neighbour manufacturers to repair a breakdown of their engines. That was always a sad disaster, as all hands were idle until the repair was effected. Archy was in his glory on such occasions. By his ready zeal and energy he soon got over the difficulty, repaired the engines, and set the people ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... effects of fasting, but from the disease for which the fast was begun), perhaps one hundred thousand starve because they have too much to eat. Silly as this may sound, it is the truth, and this is s the explanation: Overfeeding causes digestive troubles and a breakdown of the assimilative and excretory processes. The more food that is taken while this condition exists the less nourishment is extracted from it. The food ferments pathologically, instead of physiologically, and poisons the body. The more that is eaten under ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... the summit of the Rocky Mountains at midnight on the 17th. The climate changes suddenly, and the cold is intense. We resume runners, have a breakdown, and are forced to walk ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... are absorbed, and the seed diverted through sexual excesses in the marriage relationship, by fornication, or by any other form of immorality, the man's power must decline: that to this very cause may be attributed the failure and breakdown of so ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... end. So much for human foreknowledge. By the autumn of 1854, the horrors of the Crimean war had reached their climax. The Times was full, day by day, of the most thrilling and appalling descriptions of the hideous sufferings of our brave men—sufferings caused quite as much by the utter breakdown of the sanitary administration as by even the deadly battles and trenchwork; while every post was bringing agonizing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... walk—Martha was terribly tired, and Scylla, even if she could stand up, was not equal to the long tramp back to the ranch, of course. They were dripping wet. The elation that followed their escape, and the discovery of Scylla's great good fortune, was followed by a nervous breakdown on the part of both girls, and they cuddled in each other's arms on the wet grass, sobbing and frightened, to ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... delirium tremens. Even Jack, though he itched to see me thus labelled, agreed with me that a less definite form of drunkenness would be safer, and finally Sir Francis decided to substitute "an alcoholic breakdown." ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... due to the employment of a single very large vessel which could only coal one man-of-war at a time. Several vessels, each carrying a moderate amount of cargo, would permit much more rapid replenishment of the ships of a squadron. The inconvenience that would be caused by the loss or breakdown of a supply-carrier would be reduced by employing several vessels of moderate cargo-capacity instead of only one or two of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... us that, owing to the new names which the various belligerents are giving to towns which they have conquered (like Lemberg) or temporarily occupied (like Ostend), several map-makers are reported to be suffering from nervous breakdown. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... France had sufficiently recovered from its apparently complete breakdown of a few years ago to be able to dispose of the largest revenue that had ever been at the disposal of any French Government, and this fact is of interest to us chiefly because it is one of the most definite and most significant proofs of the remarkable inherent strength ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... would be the one chance to rally all that is left of the national and the patriotic in Gloria! Hip, hip, hurrah!—one cheer more—hurrah!' And the usually demure Hamilton actually danced then and there, in his exultation, some steps of a music-hall breakdown. His face was aflame with delight. The Dictator and Sarrasin both looked at him with an expression of sympathy and admiration. But there were different feelings in the breasts of the two sympathising men. Sarrasin was admiring the manly courage and spirit of the young man, and in his ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... committee, Parliament, plucked up courage to begin the civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were bound to yield to the demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and higher wages for shorter and shorter day's work. Yet one ally they had, and that was the rapidly approaching breakdown of the whole system founded on the World-Market and its supply; which now became so clear to all people, that the middle classes, shocked for the moment into condemnation of the Government for the great massacre, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... weapon'd do you any good here in a timeless continuum. Take an m.g. gun. It induces an artificial breakdown of radioactive fuel in its chamber, firing an instantly lethal dose of radiation. But in order for radioactive breakdown to occur, time must pass. Even if it's only milliseconds, as in the case of an m.g. gun. There aren't any milliseconds on this ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... "Miss Trevor is still in her cabin, I take it, as I do not see her on deck. She has had a most trying and exhausting experience, and I hope, sir, you will afford her all the comfort at your command; otherwise she may suffer a serious breakdown. Fortunately, I am not without funds; and I can make it quite worth your while to treat us both well during the short time that I hope will only elapse ere you have an ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... told me of who had a bad nervous breakdown a few years ago? The one Red had stay with you here until ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... An extempore breakdown gang cleared the track, and the great trains thundered away to Atlantic and Pacific—saved ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... himself from the hand that pressed like a weight upon him. Even before this time he had observed a little discrepancy between his father's words and deeds, between his wide liberal theories and his harsh petty despotism; but he had not expected such a complete breakdown. His confirmed egoism was patent now in everything. Young Lavretsky was getting ready! to go to Moscow, to prepare for the university, when a new unexpected calamity overtook Ivan Petrovitch; he became blind, and hopelessly ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Compton listened with intense excitement; but the hunter treated the whole thing calmly, with set purpose. He had in his experience seen the effect of a terrible shock, in the complete breakdown of the victim, and, personally, he had known one man die from the shock to his system caused exactly by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a lion at night. He kept Venning's thoughts off the mental picture of the charging lion until dawn, when ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... none of these mournful memories. He had solved the mystery of the ship's breakdown, and an expert mechanical engineer had just pledged his reputation to restore wings to the Kansas—somewhat clipped wings, it is true, but sufficient, given fair weather and reasonable good fortune, to bring her to a civilized settlement in the Straits. Why, then, should they ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned a ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... life may have zest, that excitement may be easily and pleasurably evoked and by normal means, we need relaxation, periods free from excitement, or we must pass on to a costly chase for excitement that brings breakdown ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... at this time was in a mighty hurry about his literary supplies, I had to undertake again pretty much such a spell of work as I had undertaken with Val Strange, and with an almost equally unfortunate result. My methods of work have often brought me near a nervous breakdown, and by the time at which Rainbow Gold was finished, I was all but a wreck. It had been arranged between the editor of the Cornhill and myself that the completed copy of my book should be in his hands on a given date, and for some reason I was afraid to trust it to ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... such overwhelming sympathy as the distress of beauty and genius is sure to excite. For more than a week, now, the prevailing topic had been this young girl; first the promise of a brilliant debut, then the momentary triumph and sudden breakdown; now came the news of her illness, true, in so much that she was seriously ill, but exaggerated into a romance which gave her out as dying with a shock of a too ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... advancement of the Irish movement along constitutional lines, were brutally directed to the political execution of Mr O'Brien's friends, who, now that he had gone for good, and was reported to be in that state of physical breakdown which would prevent him from ever again taking an active part in Irish affairs, were supposed to be at the mercy of the big "pots" ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... After the breakdown of my prancing steed—rickshawed from the barber's to the Marina. The Marina is only an empty sweep of sand, and beyond that a strip of blue sea and a pale blue sky and a few fleecy clouds, simple enough material for a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the depths of the forest, many miles from any house. Occasionally we passed a deserted lumberman's hut by the wayside, and discussed the liability of a breakdown or an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have been simply scientific facts. In this village I found a fact—a fever. I could not classify it; it seemed peculiar to this corner of the coast; it had singular reactions of delirium and mental breakdown. I studied it exactly as I should a queer case in the hospital, and corresponded and compared notes with other men of science. But nobody had even a working hypothesis about it, except of course the ignorant ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... a livid and terrified face, he remained master of himself, nevertheless, and his brain remained clear amid the breakdown of his nerves. The little black hole of the revolver was pointing at six inches from his eyes. The finger was bent and obviously pressing on the trigger. It only wanted ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc |
