"Pestiferous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... malady was caused by the long confinement of the English in their fort. Indeed, a crowd of men, penned up through the heats of midsummer in a palisaded camp, ill-ordered and unclean as the camps of the raw provincials usually were, and infested with pestiferous swarms of flies and mosquitoes, could hardly have remained in health. Whatever its cause, the disease, which seems to have been a malignant dysentery, made more havoc than the musket and the sword. A party of French ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the long campaign against the weeds, which advance like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place—the worst of the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, and—direst foe of ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... are much talked about just now as breeding-grounds for the pestiferous Influenza microbe. The worst "low-lying" districts Punch knows are the editorial offices of certain scurrilous journals, and the social pestilences they engender and disseminate sorely need abatement. Perhaps when they have duly fumigated the House, they will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... Christina, than he proceeded without delay to entrench himself, and immediately on running his first parallel, dispatched Antony Van Corlear to summon the fortress to surrender. Van Corlear was received with all due formality, hoodwinked at the portal, and conducted through a pestiferous smell of salt fish and onions to the citadel, a substantial hut built of pine logs. His eyes were here uncovered, and he found himself in the august presence of Governor Risingh. This chieftain, as I have ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... fire-fly, so called from its emitting sparks of fire in the night, resembling flashes from the strokes of steel upon flint, is a curious creature. About the beginning of summer, when these insects are very numerous, they illuminate the woods, and strike a stranger with astonishment. Millions of pestiferous gnats, called Musketoes, are hatched during the summer, and swarm over the country in such numbers, that, during the day, it requires no small trouble for the inhabitants to defend themselves in every quarter against them; and, during the night, gause pavilions ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... mutilated, the other graceful and pleasing. The two prisoners offered him a share of their straw, and this, rotten and swarming with vermin as it was, was better than having to lie on the earth, which was befouled with excrement. Brotteaux sank down on a bench in the pestiferous darkness and sat there, his head against the wall, speechless and motionless. So intense was his agony of mind he would have dashed out his brains against the stones if he had had the strength. He could not breathe. His eyes ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... to find out whether Nana were in her dressing room or not. He went up the three steps, crossed the little yellow-painted lobby and slipped into the court by a door which simply shut with a latch. At that hour of the night the narrow, damp well of a court, with its pestiferous water closets, its fountain, its back view of the kitchen stove and the collection of plants with which the portress used to litter the place, was drenched in dark mist; but the two walls, rising pierced with windows ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... think,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'that I have ever encountered quite so pestiferous a stupidity. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... air of the little valley, which four days ago was smiling with all the health of nature and the contentment of industrious man, is waxing pestiferous with the awful odor of decaying human bodies. Buzzards, invited by their disgusting instinct, gather for a promised feast, and sit and glower on neighboring perches or else circle round and round in the blue empyrean over the location ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... should be diffused over the soil in proportion to its extent. We have accumulated in huge cities and smothering manufactories the numbers which should be spread over the face of a country; and what wonder that they should be corrupted? We have turned healthful and pleasant brooks into morasses and pestiferous lakes,—what wonder the soil should be unhealthy? A great deal, I think, might be done by executing the punishment of death, without a chance of escape, in all cases to which it should be found properly applicable; of course these occasions ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... centre of industry lurked beyond the horizon. Dunfield offered no prominent features save the chimneys of its factories and its fine church, the spire of which rose high above surrounding buildings; over all hung a canopy of foul vapour, heavy, pestiferous. Take in your fingers a spray from one of the trees even here on the Heath, and its touch left ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... then, interspersed with these earnest entreaties, others louder still would be raised for bread. In every hovel we entered, we found the dying or the dead. In one of these straw-roofed burrows, eight persons had died in the last fortnight, and five more were lying upon the fetid, pestiferous straw, upon which their predecessors to the grave had been consumed by the wasting fever of famine. In scarcely a single one of these most inhuman habitations was there the slightest indication of food of any kind to be found, nor fuel to cook ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt
... But if, when the offer that had this aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... must clearly acknowledge that he is a very undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the foregoing account, ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps; and the highest ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... safety researches into ancient sepulchres or temples. His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in his neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetrated so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria. He wore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him. I came to the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were missing), ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drugged or doctored for unwary sailors in the pestiferous dens of filthy Calcutta and other ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... moment had passed by, and even then the battalions of the rebels were gathering in readiness to be hurled upon our devoted army. While the regiment, whose fortunes have been more intimately connected with our story, was retiring from the pestiferous swamp, the commanding general received information of the approach of Stonewall Jackson. These proved to be sad tidings; for the anticipated triumphal march into the rebel capital was changed into a bloody but glorious retreat. The battles which were to be fought ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... men falling sick here, and our Ransom being now fully disbursed by the authorities of Guayaquil, we made haste to get away from the place, which was fast becoming pestiferous. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... reminded me of the mosquito netting as a safe-guard against flies and other insects in our world. But the mosquito baffles our genius, for he seems to be able to get through as small an opening as air can. Likewise, the pestiferous water animals seem to invade the homes of Stazza, notwithstanding all ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before. Nothing essential had been taken away. There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed. The face underneath ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... regions there are fissures in the rocks exhaling pestiferous emanations; these are the spiracula, the breathing-holes, of the dragon within. The dragon legends of Naples and Mondragone are probably of this origin, and so is that of the Roman Campagna (1660) where the dragon-killer died from the effects of this poisonous breath: Sometimes the confined ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... but the living. Some whistle to keep their courage up while going along by graveyards; I whistle while moving among the wide awake. Before attempting this barbaric disposal of the human form as a sanitary improvement, it would be better to clear the streets and "commons" of our cities of their pestiferous surroundings. Try your cremation on the dogs and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... open mouths, and deposited their maggots in the gangrenous wounds of the living, and in the mouths of the dead. Musketos in great numbers also infested the tents, and many of the patients were so stung by these pestiferous insects, that they resembled those suffering from a slight ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... manifests life. Among animals, those calculated to inspire terror by their mysterious movements were chosen, as serpents appearing and disappearing with startling suddenness, or ugly scorpions, against whom it was difficult to protect oneself, or the fabulous monsters with which graves and pestiferous spots were peopled. Regions difficult of access—the desert, the deep waters, the high mountains—were the favorite haunts of the demons. Some of these demons were frequently pictured in the boundary stones between fields, in order to emphasize the curses hurled ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... (also called Adab and Usab) and the neighbouring F[a]ra, the site of the ancient Kisurra. The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world. The science of irrigation and engineering seems to have been first created in Babylonia, which was covered by a network of canals, all skilfully planned and regulated. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... tranquilly in the shade of the wagon, his saddle blanket beneath him and his folded arms for a pillow as he slept on his face. The herd chewed its cud drowsily under the quaking asp nearby, out of the mid-day heat and away from pestiferous flies, while under a bush not far from the wagon a lamb lay with eyes half closed, waggling its narrow jaw, and grinding ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... song always seemed to please everybody except the gnat. The fairies appeared to regard the gnat as a pestiferous insect, but a contemptuous pity led them to call upon him for a recitation, which invariably ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... published in many different languages and sold at such low prices that the poor could have access to it, and within a short time millions of Bibles were in the hands of the people. The Papal system denounced these Bible societies as "pestiferous Bible societies". The time had come, however, for an increase of knowledge and the Lord was fulfilling his promise by putting it within the reach of those who were hungry for truth. The people began to learn that God is no respecter of persons; ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... after noon, and though to the Fair Strangers it seemed they had travelled more than forty or a hundred miles, they were apparently no nearer than ever to the heart of the labyrinth: and this from the first had been the pestiferous peculiarity of that malignantly meandering maze. So they dismounted, and tied Enbarr to the branch of a tree, while they refreshed themselves with a mouthful of Toma's loaf; and Finola now put her thumb under her 'tooth of knowledge,' for she wished new guidance and inspiration, and, being ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its dependant duties out of the decalogue, while Davies, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... indisposition, then an hour of fever, then the hideous delirium, then—the Yellow Death! On the street corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtaken by the disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous air, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which the inhabitants of the village were suffering. This swamp was situated at the distance of about a mile south-east from the village, and was of such an extent that whenever the wind blew from either the east or the south—these being the prevailing winds there—the pestiferous odours arising from it were wafted directly toward the village; and Earle's idea was to investigate, with the view of ascertaining whether anything could be done to reclaim the swamp, failing which he proposed to recommend the Catus to abandon ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... wounded rose shrill above the thunder of the cannon. Her flag was struck, but to this the American gunners paid no heed. The repeated treachery of the corsairs had left in the minds of the Yankee sailors but one thought,—to send the ship to the bottom, and rid the ocean of so pestiferous a craft. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... which are left unmolested to torment them, because the parents are unfamiliar with the meaning of the symptoms manifested, and therefore pay no heed to them. We have been thus particular in describing the symptoms indicating the presence of these pestiferous parasites, in order that they ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... tarnal, pisoned, alligator of a ring-tailed, roaring, pestiferous, rattlesnake, that critter 'the Old Country,' would jist about give up one half its skin, and wriggle itself slick out of the other, rayther than go for to put our dander up at this present identical out-and-out important critical crisis! I conceit their min'stry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... the largest quantity, is to be had at the high hill of Passaman, where likewise is the best, cheapest, and most abundant produce of pepper. But the air is there so pestiferous, that there is no going thither for our nation without great mortality among the men. Fortunately this is not necessary in procuring pepper, as the Surat commodities at Tecoo are sufficiently attractive. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... yet another sort of preachers whom you condemn, and so do I as well as you, though not in your spirit, nor to advance your pestiferous principles: and they are 'such as make it their great business, to advance the petty interest of any party whatsoever, and concern themselves more about doing this, than about promoting, and carrying on that, wherein consists the chief good of all mankind, and are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... me; I had to make almost wild efforts to procure a horse, and at last had to force one from the governor by my importunities. I collected wine and cordials, and whatever could be of service, and after his first outburst my young brother-in-law helped me in a way I can never forget. No doubt the pestiferous air caused by the horrible carnage of Freiburg had poisoned the wound. As soon as possible my husband was removed; but the mischief had been already done; the wound was in a bad state, fever had set in, and though he struggled on stage after ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is plain, according to my poor judgment," replied the Palmer. "No one is bound to faith with those who mean to observe none with him. Anticipate this treachery of your uncle, and let his now short and infirm existence moulder out in the pestiferous cell to which he would condemn your youthful strength. The royal grant has assigned you lands enough for your honourable support; and wherefore not unite with them those of the Garde Doloureuse?— Eveline Berenger, if I do not ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of baneful literature. Almost every one starting off for the summer takes some reading matter. It is a book out of the library or off the bookstand, or bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. I really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year. Men and women who at home would not be satisfied with a book that was not really sensible, I found sitting on hotel-piazzas or under the trees reading books the index of which would make ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... approbation, and permission for this third sally, I found her altogether a different being from the one I sought; I found her enchanted and changed from a princess into a peasant, from fair to foul, from an angel into a devil, from fragrant to pestiferous, from refined to clownish, from a dignified lady into a jumping tomboy, and, in a word, from Dulcinea del Toboso into a ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... valued above all else was salt. Their country contained no saltpans, and they were cut off from the sea by a strip of pestiferous jungle, which, moreover, belonged to the Portuguese or was supposed so to belong. Fortunately I had brought with me a small bag of salt; it contained about a pound in weight. Men used to come from long distances to beg for a pinch. As I did not want the bag to be seen, it was my practice, when salt ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Antkowa began to sob hysterically with rage and exhaustion, tore her own hair and wailed: 'Oh Jesus! Oh little child Jesus! Oh Mary! Look at this pestiferous woman...curse those heathen...oh! oh!...' she was only able to ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... with the Italian Government. According to their leader, who was the very eminent personage Donna Rosetta now proposed calling upon, other measures should be adopted to liberate the Holy Father from the pestiferous influence of a rationalist varnished over with mysticism. These things Donna Rosetta had learned from the Abbe Marinier, who smiled knowingly about them in her salon. It was inconceivable how many poisonous accusations were being sown broadcast with ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... disease! I know not, new or old, But it may well be call'd poor mortals' Plague; For like a pestilence it doth infect The houses of the brain: first it begins Solely to work upon the phantasy, Filling her seat with such pestiferous air, As soon corrupts the judgment, and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memory, Still each of other catching the infection, Which as a searching vapour spreads itself Confusedly through every sensive part, Till not a thought or motion in the mind Be free ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... state you are in she would not so much as read your letter. I have read it, and by way of reward I give you two alternatives which you must decide on immediately. I am in a hurry. You will either go to the hospital—for we can't have pestiferous fellows like you here—or start for Lyons in an hour. You must not stop on the way, for I have only given you sixty hours, which is ample to do forty posts in. As soon as you get to Lyons present this to M. Bono, and he will ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lion, my friend, I pray thee do not put in all thy moss there; keep somewhat, for there is yet here another little hole, that stinks like five hundred devils; I am almost choked with the smell thereof, it is so pestiferous and empoisoning. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... had a small flotilla on the Nile, which served to guard his right flank: the infantry marched over burning sand at some distance from the river. The miseries of this progress were extreme. The air is crowded with pestiferous insects, the glare of the sand weakens most men's eyes, and blinds many; water is scarce and bad: and the country had been swept clear of man, beast, and vegetable. Under this torture even the gallant spirits of such men as Murat and Lannes ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the dismissed favourite Du Barry were still working underground. Their pestiferous vapours issued from the recesses of the earth, to obscure the brightness of the rising sun, which was now rapidly towering to its climax, to obliterate the little planets which had once endeavoured ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not for the intervention of one hundred miles of low, swampy, pestiferous country, I would insist on your coming to see me, all, all! Little gamp, and Mademoiselle Sumtare, and their appendages; for they ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... population of Europe stationary. The surface of the Continent was for the most part covered with pathless forests; here and there it was dotted with monasteries and towns. In the lowlands and along the river-courses were fens, sometimes hundreds of miles in extent, exhaling their pestiferous miasms, and spreading agues far and wide. In Paris and London, the houses were of wood daubed with clay, and thatched with straw or reeds. They had no windows, and, until the invention of the saw-mill, very few had wooden floors. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... kindliness, as the natural and necessary result of the overthrow of all civil government and religious belief. It appears, still more wonderfully, that he contemplates this state of things as the ideal SUMMUM BONUM. In short, it is quite impossible that there should exist a more pestiferous mixture of blasphemy, sedition, and sensuality, than is visible in the whole structure and strain of this poem—which, nevertheless, and notwithstanding all the detestation its principles excite, must and will be considered ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... contrary," I answered dryly. "And I wish I had been. I haven't had five hours' sleep all told since I came on board. These pestiferous ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... strictly limited houses swarming with multiplying broods. On the Saturday the gates of the Ghetto were officially closed. The plague was shut in. For three months the outcasts of humanity were pent in their pestiferous prison day and night to live or die as they chose. When at length the Ghetto was opened and disinfected, it was the dead, not the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... it, and fleas transmit it from them to human beings. It was probably brought in by pestiferous rodents hidden inside packages of vegetables, as it appeared in a district where crates of vegetables are opened in large numbers, and did not appear in the vicinity of the piers, although shore rats are abundant there, and if diseased rodents ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... murthered her! Perfumes some creature kill: she has so long In that darke Dungeon suck't pestiferous breath, The sweete has stifled her. Take hence the body, Since me it hated it shall feele my hate: Cast her into the fire; I have lost her, And for her sake all Christians shall be lost That subjects are to me: massacre all, But thou, Eugenius, art the ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... eighth heaven of bliss and then some, as the result of my diplomatic mission. Of course the task of preparing pupils out of the pestiferous Polydores devolved upon her, but she was actively aided by the eager and willing Huldah and between them they pushed the project that promised such an elysium with all speed. The prospective pupils themselves were not wildly enthusiastic ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... reason for action or forbearance, for compliance or refusal, than that they hope to gain more by one than by the other. These are indeed the meanest and cruellest of human beings, a race with whom, as with some pestiferous animals, the whole creation seems to be at war; but who, however detested or scorned, long continue to add heap to heap, and when they have reduced one to beggary, are still permitted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... magistrates and legislators in every part of the United States, to rouse themselves from apathy on this momentous subject. It is due to their country and to posterity, to strive to remove an evil, which, like the Upas, extends its pestiferous influence in every direction. Let them reflect that the object of punishing criminals is to protect society. This object may be promoted by the reformation of the transgressor; but if he is placed in a situation where contagion ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... having been resorted to by a few conscienceless publishers, and by a certain class of unscrupulous agents, that buyers have become wary, not to say weary, of being made the victims of their deceptive inventions. It is indeed lamentable that a few such pestiferous schemers should thus bring a certain degree of reproach upon the entire publishing business. It is a common practice among these soi-disant publishers—many of whom possess neither capital, credit, nor sense of honor—to buy some lot of etchings or old prints from ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... the rocks and ledges between which dashed sparkling waterfalls in haste to join the Skagway below. It mattered not if the hot noonday sun at times entered these fastnesses; it served only to cheer the hearts of little birds and animals, and bring to pestiferous life millions of mosquitoes and flies to torment both day and night the unfortunate toilers ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... coming. There was no anxiety as to the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished, pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more districts outside Rome—veritable ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... meet with no other subject, but what a company [1740]of harebrains have done in their rage. We may do well therefore to put this in our procession amongst the rest; "From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, anger, and all such pestiferous perturbations, good ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... called Susan or Hepzibah instead of Peter or Lazarus? So long as my convictions of truth (which custom brands as vagaries) are innocuous, I have a perfect and inalienable right to indulge them; but the instant I become pestiferous to society, let me be consigned to the tender mercies of strait-jacket and insane-asylum regimen. If I creep quietly along my own intellectual and ethical trail, taking heed not to touch the sensitive toes of custom, why should it ungenerously insist upon bruising mine? My seer was ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... life, for our homes and our inheritance, and for the oppressed, is elevating, purifying. War is terrible in itself, and in some of its consequences, but there is a bow on the cloud. When the bolt has spent itself in the pestiferous air, all nature is bright and glorious. With true discipline, soldiers are made vigorous in body; they are also quickened in mind by the tactics and incitements of warfare, they are ennobled by high motives, and may leave ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... him a single question relative to that glorious victory which had so astonished the world. On the contrary, all the scandalous insinuations, and licentious remarks, with which the Jacobinical foreign journalists had filled their pestiferous pages, relative to our hero and his friends in Italy, and which had found their way into the most thoughtless and depraved of our own newspapers, were preserved for his lordship's immediate amusement. Without introducing the reader ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... doubt, the most pestiferous for whites in the whole world. The coast of Africa, which enjoys a dreadful reputation in this way, is not so deadly in its climate as is Chagres. The thermometer ranges from 78 deg. to 85 deg. all the year, and it rains every day. Many a traveler who has incautiously remained ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... and pocket, the enraged clergy lodged complaints against Hus as a pestiferous heretic, who had to be suppressed; he lost his position as the Synodal preacher ...
— John Hus - A brief story of the life of a martyr • William Dallmann
... Laws esteems nothing of more pestiferous consequence to his city than to give young men the liberty of introducing any change in their habits, gestures, dances, songs, and exercises, from one form to another; shifting from this to that, hunting after novelties, and applauding the inventors; by which means manners are corrupted and the old ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... able to determine any thing on this question, I shall content myself with collecting, into one view, the several properties of this pestiferous brood, with which we are threatened, as hints to more sagacious and fortunate readers, who, when they shall find any red animal, that ranges uncontrouled over the country, and devours the labours of the trader and the husbandman; that carries with it corruption, rapine, pollution, and devastation; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... suffused the heavens. An appalling stillness pervaded nature; even the insects were silent. For the first time in his pilgrimage, a feeling of deep despondency fell over the soul of Alroy. His energy appeared suddenly to have deserted him. A low hot wind began to rise, and fan his cheek with pestiferous kisses, and enervate his frame with its poisonous embrace. His head and limbs ached with a dull sensation, more terrible than pain; his sight was dizzy, his tongue swollen. Vainly he looked around for aid; vainly he extended his forlorn arms, and wrung ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Species" had been published the year before, and tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good man to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... association is really environmental, he may think, and the same poverty or squalor which causes the child to die early may cause the parent to die early. They may both be of healthy, long-lived stock, but forced to live in a pestiferous slum which cuts both of them off prematurely and thereby creates a spurious correlation in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... of the boat, setting the pole well forward in the soft bank, or out into the stream itself, and then, with its end against his shoulder, urging and teasing the craft a few feet at a time against the strong current. Jose imagined, as he dully watched him, that he could see death in the pestiferous effluvia which emanated from the black, slimy mud which every plunge of the long pole brought to the surface ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed, while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official back-stairs—would to heaven they HAD departed!—are very complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and suspicions continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... while a pestiferous and annoying creature of the insect kind appeared in the guise of the Ro-tay-yo (a huge mosquito). It first appeared among the Tuscaroras along the Neuse river. It flew about with vast wings, making a loud noise, with a long stinger; and on whomsoever it lighted it sucked out all the blood and ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... diplomat, pallid and bewildered, yet had the wit to believe that this quiet voiced young man meant every word he said. He reasoned quickly that the freeing of a pestiferous Englishman at Semlin could have no possible effect on Austria's subsequent action. She might please herself whether or not the threatened invasion of her territory should be deemed a cause of war, while to yield for the hour robbed this extraordinary adventurer of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... had to embrace her faith, or be handed over to the secular power for punishment. They produced death by compelling men to apostatize, by withholding from them the word of life, by infusing into their minds pestiferous doctrines, and by the fear of the civil power,—symbolized by the sword, famine, pestilence, and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... a dog's tongue good for medicine, and a horse's tongue pestiferous? A. By reason of some secret property, or that the tongue of a dog is full of pores, and so doth draw and take away the viscosity of the wound. It is observed that a dog hath some humour in his tongue, with which, by licking he doth heal; but the contrary ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... broken, the channel, which is in parts little more than a shallow bed of mud, befouled by garbage and carrion, or choked by a matted growth of weeds, should be superceded by a flow of water, pure and emitting no pestiferous exhalations. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... you pestiferous woman," old Hector cried sharply. "Had it not been for the girl he would not be living this minute, so the least he can do is to express his compliments to her. Also, since this disagreeable topic has again ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... She has been constantly in that pestiferous place. All Worth would say was that she must be kept quiet and cool, but he has sent the same draughts for all three. I saw, for Terry's came here. I fancy Worth spoke out plainly to that maid of Cecil's, Grindstone; but she only looks bitter at me, says she can attend to her mistress, and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy, and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing out poisonous waters, and rendering the moral influence more pestiferous than that fabled fountain of old, over which no creature of heaven ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... so—I expostulated with her on her rashness, but all in vain. I told her to send them as much wine and jellies as she pleased, but to keep out of these pestiferous cottages. She only looked at me with those big solemn ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... which all industrial managers agree he does not possess—his initiative. Now a man who has the desire to exercise initiative and does not know how to put anything through is not only a useless person in society but the most pestiferous fellow in existence. Allowing that he is does not mean that he has not the power of initiative or that he could not have learned to put this initiative to good use, if at any time in his manhood or youth he ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... intended to make Alfred's new kingdom their permanent abode. The forces of the Saxons, on the other hand, were scattered and discouraged. There seemed no hope left to them of making head against their pestiferous invaders. If they were defeated, their cruel conquerors showed no moderation and no mercy in their victory; and if they conquered, it was only to suppress for a moment one horde, with a certainty ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... officers to sleep on shore. They expect to be taken sick, but hope that the first attack of fever will season them. Possibly, this is as wise a course as the British officers could adopt; for, unlike ourselves, they are compelled by duty to trust themselves in pestiferous situations, particularly in the ascent of rivers, where there is scarcely a chance of escaping the deadly influence of the atmosphere. They therefore confront the danger at once, and either fall beneath it, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... by his epigrams and his fallacious half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through France he launched among the French one of his pestiferous phrases, 'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute' and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... towered indignantly at her side, joining in wrathful denunciations of the tyrant man; and fair, persecuted Dr. Simcoe's assenting voice was faintly heard amid the fiendish shrieks of those pestiferous younglings, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... always mixed with water. (4) Slaves. Slaves were regarded as chattels. No one objected to slavery as wrong. Slaves were better treated at Athens than elsewhere, but even at Athens they were tortured when their testimony was required. They were let out, sometimes by thousands, to work in pestiferous mines. (5) Women and Children. In Athens, the wife had seldom learned any thing but to spin and to cook. She lived in seclusion in her dwelling, and was not present with her husband at social entertainments, either at home or elsewhere. She had few if any legal rights, although at Athens she might ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... off me, I reckon," said Leary a little pathetically, the reference being presumably to the pestiferous police. "That was a good idea of yours for me to go up into Canada and work at a real job for a while. Must a worked hard enough to change my finger prints. Some bloke died in Kansas awhile back and got all the credit for being the old ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... actual town owes its existence to an order issued by Sir Charles Macarthy. That ill-starred Governor of Sierra Leone (1814-24) is still remembered in Ashanti and on the Gold Coast: he is immortalised by a pestiferous island in the Upper Gambia well described by Winwood Reade. The settlement, designed for the use of liberated Africans, was built in 1816 by Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton and by Captain Alexander Grant. In 1821 it was made, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... you, most beloved, by the living God, leave not this my city of Rome to be any longer torn by the Lombards, lest your bodies and souls be torn and tormented for ever, in inextinguishable and Tartarian fire with the devil and his pestiferous angels; and let not the sheep of the Lord's flock, which are the Roman people, be dispersed any more, lest the Lord disperse you, and cast you forth as the people of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... says I. "You didn't think I expected this great, big, low-roofed market to have paws and growl, did you," says I. "I would growl if the city were to set me down in the mud of this pestiferous place. So you thought I really meant it. Well, the easy way in which some men are taken in is astonishing. They never can understand metaphor," says I. "But the bivalves and Rockaways. What ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... proceed. "What an ugly brute! what a hideous dog!" but as he engages the attention of our party, these expressions become modified, and before reaching the bottom of the hill, nobody cares about the remains of Otricoli, nor looks any longer at the yellow reaches of the pestiferous Tiber, that was winding far along the plain; the dog alone occupies every thought. "Such a discerning creature! What clever eyes he has! See how well he understands what we are saying about him; suppose we take him on to Rome? We might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... animal life Porto Rico has little. No poisonous serpents are found, but pestiferous insects, such as tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, ticks, fleas, and mosquitos, supply this deficiency in a measure. All sorts of domestic animals are raised, and the excellent pasture-lands support large herds of cattle for export and home consumption, and ponies, whose superiority ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... you to dispose of every hen on the place within the next twenty days, and to burn everything that has been used in connection with them. We've cleared this land of disease germs, if there were germs in it, by turning it bottom-side up; now let's start free from the pestiferous vermin that make a hen's life unhappy. No stock, either old or young, shall be brought here. When we want to change our breeding, we'll buy eggs from the best fanciers and hatch them in our own incubators. It will then be ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... who had but little faith in physicians, laughed, and exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, when you see so many men alive in England at this instant, why should you believe in the impossibility of your living even in this pestiferous country?" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... successively on opposing lines. He conceives that civilised Europe owes its preservation to the radiant centre of religious power at Rome, and is grateful to Innocent III. for the vigour with which he recognised that force was the only cure for the pestiferous opinions of misguided zealots. One of his authorities is the inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis, and there is no writer whom, in various shapes, he quotes so often. But when Guidonis says that Dolcino and Margarita suffered per juditium ecclesie, Mr. Lea is careful ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... announced Jed Wallop. "But you might strike something jest as bad, especially if the snow keeps on gittin' deeper. The wolves in this neighborhood git mighty pestiferous when they can't git ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though, of course, it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... berries good, though up to that time the members of the household had supposed they were poisonous. After a few more bites of the morning meal the birds went all around the house, inspecting every nook and crevice. But they found every place fully occupied by the pestiferous English sparrows, who darted at them maliciously. For two whole days the blue birds stayed around the lawn and garden, but the sparrows made their lives miserable and finally they went to the timber an eighth of a mile away and selected an abiding place in the cavity ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... discharging convulsive yelps at the retreating vehicle, "I'd give a five-dollar note to git one good lick at him. I'd make him holler 'pen-an'-ink' once! Why anybody's willin' to have such a dum'd, wuthless, pestiferous varmint as that 'round 's more 'n I c'n understand. I'll bet that the days they churn, that critter, unless they ketch him an' tie him up the night before, 'll be under the barn all day, an' he's jest blowed off steam enough to run a dog churn a ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... nothing will remain to remind us of her noble disregard of self, save the memory of her heroism and magnanimity. For, indeed, your majesty, it is easier to confront death on the battle-field than to face it in the pestiferous ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a state that in them the praise of God and the welfare of man are next to nothing regarded; the regulars and nuns dwelling there being so addicted, partly to their own superstitious ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Romish Pontiff, that, unless an effective remedy be promptly provided, not only the weak lower order, but the whole Irish people, may be speedily infected, to their total destruction by such persons." To prevent such a calamity the king resolved to take into his ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... separately, for analogy cuts two ways. I have dwelt upon the analogy of pathological modification, which is in favour of the xenogenetic origin of microzymes; but I must now speak of the equally strong analogies in favour of the origin of such pestiferous particles by the ordinary process of the generation ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.(181) If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... gallant soldiers, so soldiers often prove brave robbers, so near an alliance there is between those two sorts of life. But this bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many servants, is not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of a nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers about noblemen: this being a maxim of ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... improvement in health and saving of life in the district by the letting in of light and air, has been of the most satisfactory character, but though the scheme was originated under the Artisans' Dwelling Act, intended to provide good and healthy residences in lieu of the pestiferous slums and back courts, it cannot in one sense be considered much of a success. The number of artisans' dwellings required was 1,335, about 550 of which were removed altogether, the rest being improved and relet, or converted into shops, warehouses, &c. A piece of land between Newtown Row and ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... in quest of employment on canals at 62-1/2 cents to 87-1/2 cents per day, paying $1.50 to $2.00 a week for board, leaving families behind depending upon them for support. They labor frequently in marshy grounds, where they inhale pestiferous miasmata, which destroy their health, often irrevocably. They return to their poor families broken hearted, and with ruined constitutions, with a sorry pittance, most laboriously earned, and take to their beds, sick and unable ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... entirely non-productive and live upon the common people. A few of them, doubtless, are sincere and are seeking after communion with God. But the vast majority are lazy and rotten to the core. Their life is known to be utterly worthless, and they are morally pestiferous in their influence upon the whole community. And yet the people accept them as the highest types of piety in the land. Even the poorest among them would give his last morsel to these worthless men. There are, indeed, very few in the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... to Pompeii, stopping long enough at Naples, however, to learn that the impudence of the pestiferous porters is quite unendurable. Italy throughout is much infested with porters, but in the southern section of the peninsula they are a regular pest, which at times becomes epidemic. During the traveling season it seems as if everybody was a porter. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... do this, I had a long and agreeable conversation with the General, who spoke of the Puritans with intense disgust, and of the first importation of them as "that pestiferous crew of the Mayflower;" but he is by no means rancorous against individual Yankees. He spoke very favourably of M'Clellan, whom he knew to be a gentleman, clever, and personally brave, though he might lack moral courage to face responsibility. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... rugged defiles, yet they have the advantage of a healthy field of operations, and can bivouac on the mountain ridge, or amongst the green valleys, whilst our troops had to seek their damp beds amidst the miasmatic everglades, or more pestiferous marsh. Again, the Kaffirs do occasionally make a stand, and some very severe actions have taken place between them and ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... no milk for the baby; it had to be fed with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in. Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached. Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... finished the goat. Ruskin's description of the picture helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "The salt sand of the wilderness of Ziph, where the weary goat is dying. The neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying vegetables brought down by the Jordan in its floods, and the bones of the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... so easy and lazy and uppish that it is very common, but its cry is drowned by a louder and more sincere one. We who do not want to know, also do not want to go blind, to go mad, to be disfigured, to be barren, to become pestiferous, or to see such things happening to our children. We learn, at last, that the majority of the victims are not the people of whom we so glibly say, 'Serve them right,' but quite innocent children and innocent parents, smitten by ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... hairs. In the place of the traditional helmet, the Don's head was encased in a garden watering-pot, on the spout of which, and dominating the entire canvas, as artists say, poised on one foot and evidently enjoying the sorrowful knight's discomfiture, was the pestiferous ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... butchers' shops. But, whose fault was this? Was it Mr. Hunt's, who seems to have spent a quarter of an hour in endeavouring to convince his hearers, that to commit such acts was to prove themselves unworthy of relief; or, was it the fault of those pestiferous vehicles of falsehood, the Courier and the Times, who are incessantly inveighing against the avarice of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... these fellowes pretend to be witty; for understandinge, so manye have lost there witts as ... they have fisht for it and in som drawenett or other have caught it. But where might these lost shrewes bee? I suspect this pestiferous Je vous prie hathe putt some slovenly tricke or other to cheate my mayster boathe ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... frying pan was not safe. The same precaution of covering was taken with the meat on the platform of the pole cache, for while its height from the ground protected it from the prowlers, the frozen hides also protected it from the inroads of the "whiskey jacks," as the voracious and pestiferous Canada jays are called in the Northland. For they are the boldest robbers of all, not even hesitating to fly into a tent and grab some morsel from the plate of the camper while he is eating his meal. These birds scorn the cold, remaining in the far North all ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... impression of calling the landlady and of seeing the body carried from the pestiferous room. But whether he helped to carry it himself or ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Uscoques, par le Sieur Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV." A whole complete scholarly history of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the most pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth century Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured their acrid musty smell. How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart's-blood, how many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... sprang to his feet, and crumpling the note in his hand, threw it into the fire; and then, turning around, he exclaimed: "Did the world ever hear anything like that! Triple wedding, indeed! Does the pestiferous old shrew imagine that anything in this world would induce me to ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... called the Miramichi or the Irrawaddy, it would have been despoiled of half its charms, and have sunk down into a vulgar stream, the atmosphere of which might have suited well enough Russian boors, but which would have been pestiferous to ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a planet. And on the luster of the great calm waters the Judea glided imperceptibly, enveloped in languid and unclean vapours, in a lazy cloud that drifted to leeward, light and slow: a pestiferous cloud defiling the splendour of sea ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... defence which the nations of the world eventually adopted. The Hanseatic League of the cities of Northern Germany and neighboring states, no doubt, had its origin in the necessitous combination of merchants to resist the attacks of the Norsemen. England sent out many expeditions to destroy the pestiferous freebooters who swarmed from the African coast, and finally, in 1815, the United States sent Decatur to Algiers to annihilate the nefarious corsairs, who had thrived and become brazen in their recklessness during the three centuries of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... pleasure in hearing us sing the praises of our God." Among all his trials, none afflicted him so much as the flies and mosquitoes. "If I had not kept my face wrapped in a cloth, I am almost sure they would have blinded me, so pestiferous and poisonous are the bites of these little demons. They make one look like a leper, hideous to the sight. I confess that this is the worst martyrdom I suffered in this country; hunger, thirst, weariness, and fever are nothing to it. These little beasts not only persecute you all day, but at night ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... or Soveraigne Remedie against the pestiferous Writings of all English Sectaries, and in {360} particular against Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Fulke, Dr. Bilson, Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Sparkes, and Dr. Field, the chiefe upholders, some of Protestancy, some of Puritanisme; divided into three ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... add our commendation of the design of the Botanic Garden at Manchester, and similar establishments in other large towns of Britain. What can be a more delightful relaxation to a Lancashire Mechanic than an hour or two in a Garden: what an escape from the pestiferous politics of the times. At Birmingham too, there is a Public Garden, similar to that at Manchester, where we hope the Artisan may enjoy a sight at least of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head—and even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the sanction of her name to an undertaking ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hath been sick. Derby gaol is a pestiferous place. They are waiting, I suppose, till he is well enough to go publicly, that all the world ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... thou hast dis-honor'd me. Thinke not, although in Writing I preferr'd The manner of thy vile outragious Crymes, That therefore I haue forg'd, or am not able Verbatim to rehearse the Methode of my Penne. No Prelate, such is thy audacious wickednesse, Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious prancks, As very Infants prattle of thy pride. Thou art a most pernitious Vsurer, Froward by nature, Enemie to Peace, Lasciuious, wanton, more then well beseemes A man of thy Profession, and Degree. And for thy Trecherie, what's more manifest? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Quebec the gulf which separates the two worlds is greater even than that which lies between Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharfs, and in the lumber trade. But my readers will, not thank me for detaining them in a pestiferous atmosphere, among such unpleasing scenes; we will therefore ascend into the High-street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercers' stores, and articles of luxury of every description. This street and several others were at this period impassable for carriages, the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... which they were intended had lost her master and both mates by sickness, and the merchant therefore sold them to me. We had not altogether escaped, and several of our men who were perfectly healthy when we entered the harbour fell victims to the fever engendered by the pestiferous climate. We were compelled to fill up their places with others, who afterwards ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... we should feel the want of one or two large quadrupeds much less than of one or two species of these despicable-looking insects. Mankind in general are sensible that nothing is more disagreeable or more pestiferous than putrid substances; and it is apparent to all who have made observation, that those little insects contribute more to the quick dissolution and dispersion of putrescent matter than any other. They are so necessary ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... tells me that he is a French music-master whom she hired to marry her in order that she might escape from a pestiferous person named Count Ladislas Vassilan," replied Curtis with cool directness. "She brought the obliging individual with her from Paris for the purpose, and paid him a thousand dollars as a sort of retaining fee. From what little I have seen of her, she impresses me as a charming girl wholly without ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... but little confidence in being able to reinstate bee-keeping in our country, into a certain and profitable pursuit, if I could not show the Apiarian in what way he can safely bid defiance to the pestiferous assaults of this, his most implacable enemy. I have patiently studied its habits for years, and I am at length able to announce a system of management founded upon the peculiar construction of my hives, which will enable the careful bee-keeper ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... nonnaturals[obs3]; plague spot; malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "These yere pestiferous chilluns!" exclaimed the colored man, trying to mop up the flood. "And dem cups was near 'nough to las' ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... early at this pestiferous old slaughter-house,' said that gentleman, poising himself on one leg, and shaking the other in an ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... long breath before proceeding. "A short time after this, the regiment of her lover was ordered out to India, in which pestiferous country he took a malicious fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of the pianoforte entering by ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... from which it is only separated by a low strip of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... turn toward the bottom of the wide depression as though it wearied of dodging rocks and preferred the loose sand below. Of his own accord Rabbit broke into a steady lope, flinging his head sidewise now and then to discourage the pestiferous gnats that swarmed about his ears. Starr, also driven to action of some kind, began to fling his hands in long sweeping gestures past his face. He hoped that the cabin, being on a higher bit of ground, would ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... is a strike in the West Virginia mines, and it has sent a mass of ruffians out looking for work. We need all the people we can get, but they are a pestiferous outfit. I am opening up a camp in Bear Run, and our orders are enormous already, but I hate littering the valley with these swine. They are as insolent and dirty as Turks. Pete says the village smells, and has taken to the woods. Onnie says the new Irish are black scum of Limerick, and Jim Varian's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... kind that constantly live in your own house and eat your own food. I thought this seemed reasonable, on the same principle that parents can get used to their own children easier than they can to other people's pestiferous brats. I don't know that there is science about any of this—no means of escape is all ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... dreadful shade contiguous," and fills the land with tears of blood—you look over this frightful aceldama and mourn at the soul-chilling spectacle. When infidelity and licentiousness exhale their pestiferous breath, to poison the moral atmosphere and destroy the rising hope of our country, by undermining the virtue of our youth; the Christian's heart is pained, and every effort is put forth to stay the march of ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... talked and procrastinated. But it is not easy to restrain the hound when within sight of the game which it has long pursued. Before the eyes of Sir Edmund lay that pestiferous paper which had given him such annoyance. His impatience was no longer to be restrained. In the midst of the long-drawn-out oratory of the members he rose and stepped towards the table to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Lord! grant me patience. O my brother! O Eugene! O beloved child of our hearts! what has become of you? Did you die on your bed, or meet with an accident? or how did these beads you loved so well come into this horrid, pestiferous well? O, woe is me! Why did I ever let you out of my sight? Why did I not remain in servitude and slavery, rather than let you into the care of the cruel, false-hearted stranger? O villanous deceiver! O infamous prevaricator! Parson Dilman, why did I listen ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... of the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold prosperity compared with the new slave States. Give a free laborer a barren ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... and won for him new friends and admirers. His opponent had intimated both by word and act, that he was not to be trusted; he did not seem to feel it necessary to go into a defence of his motives in reply, but appeared to say, "Here I am,—I come to denounce a habit of pestiferous corrupting influence, of which I have practical knowledge; I will stand or fall by the position which I have taken,—leaving the future to show the world whether or not I am honest." Freeman spoke again after Green concluded, and very ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... ugly in the very memory of it. But it was not that which grieved him. Some other affair of his was yet unsettled—an affair which tortured him and required his attention. In his imagination rose the gloomy scenes of the hundreds and thousands of human beings pent up in the pestiferous air. The laughter of the prisoners resounded in his ears. He saw again among the dead bodies the beautiful, angry, waxen face of the dead Kryltzoff; and the question whether he was mad, or all those who commit those evils and think themselves ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... box of long-stemmed roses. She went down a trifle apprehensively, for by this time the current tales of Bob's drunken freaks had given her cause to think somewhat seriously, and she feared an unpleasant encounter. More than once she had witnessed quarrels in the alleyway behind the Circuit, where pestiferous youths of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... open, as though in fulfilment of his threat, Quentin sprang in, and looking hastily round, cried, as if in towering wrath, "Whaur are they? Whaur are thae pestiferous rebels?" ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... almost unknown seas by explicit instructions from those who remained on shore, and who had never navigated the ocean at all. The consequence on this occasion was that the voyagers towards the Straits of Magellan spent a whole summer on the coast of Africa, amid pestiferous heats and distracting calms, and reached the straits only in April of the following year. Admiral Mahu and a large proportion of the crew had meantime perished of fevers contracted by following the course marked out for them by their employers, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one exceedingly large, in which was a great and rich city; which on due consideration must be the Island of Meroe. They told me also that on this great island, and all through the river, there were great numbers of fierce and pestiferous animals, which doubtless must be crocodiles. Enquiring if the river in a certain place fell from such a height, that with the noise of the fall those who inhabited the neighbouring towns were born deaf; they said that certainly in one place the river did fall over a great rock with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of many privy heresies, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude |
