"Acrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no means new to the four walls of the Jailbird nor to the men concerned. It was a two-man fight, with as yet no call for the four friends of Quinnion to interfere. It would take the spit and snarl of a revolver, the flash of flame, the acrid smell of burning-powder to switch their sympathetic watching into actual participation. No new situation certainly for Chris Quinnion who took quick stock of the table with its heavy top and screened his body with ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... is the most acrid and stimulating spice with which we are acquainted. It is a powder prepared from several varieties of the capsicum annual East-India plants, of which there are three so far naturalized in this country as to be able to grow in the open air: these are the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of a few degrees would cause it to burst into flames. In many places even the heavy-soled shoes of the men were no protection, and they were compelled to step lively to avoid scorching their feet. The smoke had increased and grown more acrid. Every man on board was suffering from inflamed eyes, and they coughed and strangled like a crew of tuberculosis patients. In the afternoon the boats were swung out and equipped. The last several packages of dried bananas were stored ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... is as clear in my memory as though it were yesterday—the dim light of our one candle, with the acrid smell of the wick that we had forgotten to snuff, the shadows in the corners of the 'lang, laigh, mirk chamber, perishing cauld,' the driving rain on the roof close above our heads, and the gusts of wind that shook our windows. The very ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... upon the head waters of Red River during the summer of 1852, we suffered most severely from thirst, having nothing but the acrid and bitter waters from the river, which, issuing from a gypsum formation, was highly charged with salts, and, when taken into the stomach, did not quench thirst in the slightest degree, but, on the contrary, produced a most painful and burning ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... some physicians of the southern states. In this condition of the system, I have never resorted to it, and, I must confess, could not easily be persuaded to do so; suspecting that even in such cases, the digestive organs are already too far implicated, to justify the use of so powerful and acrid a remedy. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, yellow teeth of glass, whitened soot—all the decay and rubbish of a generation of neglect littered the place and filled it with an acrid odour. From one of the rooms we looked forth through a little discoloured window upon a patch of forlorn weedy garden, where the very cats glowered in a depression that no surfeit ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... warmth, again showing those rows of teeth like picket fences. "I suppose we're all here on the same mission: to find a solution for the mystery of the world's paralysis." The apparition lit a long and bloated cigarette and through the acrid smoke surveyed them quizzically. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... other side, a broken incline, and to the beach. Land-crabs scrambled for their holes, the sole inhabitants of the spot once given to chants and prayers, burials, and the sacrifice of humans to the never-satisfied gods. There was an acrid humor in the name of the bay on which we looked, Popoti meaning cockroach. That malodorous insect would be on this shore when the last Tahitian was dead. It existed hundreds of millions of years before man, and had not ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... bending down, are easily secured from the frost by spreading them upon the ground, and covering them with straw or fern. This particularly suits fig-trees, as they easily bear bending to the ground, and are furnished with an acrid juice, which secures them from the depredations of insects; but are nevertheless liable to be eaten by mice. See ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... set your guests eating and drinking betimes on these occasions. The fasting man takes an acrid view of your arrangements compared with that taken by the man who has well fed; and the deferred opening of the supper-room has sealed the fate of many a dance which but for that had been voted pleasant enough. Lionel Beauchamp ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... off. It came from a lost battle, from a silent and great defeat. She was afraid of it, for it was black and profound beyond all plumbing. Often in her ten years of retirement she had felt melancholy. But this was a new sort of sadness. There was an acrid edge to it. It had the peculiar and subtle terror of a grief that was not caused only by events, but also, and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... house rocked under the stunning crash of a huge gun. Celia sprang to her feet, caught at the curtain as another terrific blast shivered the window-panes and filled the room with acrid dust. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.[177-9] Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south, The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; Light men and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service own'd; The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skullcaps; and those wilder hordes Who roam o'er Kipchak ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... food was sometimes eaten by itself, but more often was used to flavor soups and to mix with pemmican. Bull berries (Shepherdia argentea) were a favorite fruit, and were gathered in large quantities, as was also the white berry of the red willow. This last is an exceedingly bitter, acrid fruit, and to the taste of most white men wholly unpleasant and repugnant. The Blackfeet, however, are very fond of it; perhaps because it contains some property necessary to the nourishment of the body, which is lacking in ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... throughout the world; then Reinecke came and they became the most slovenly in the world—in this fine quality of slovenliness not even our London Philharmonic Society could hope to rival them; also, as Reinecke was an acrid reactionary, no modern music could get a hearing there. However, that did not greatly matter; and the world owes the Gewandhaus concerts an ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... that it sold better than any other book that the author had ever written—and the reviews unanimously described it, either with praise or with blame, as an extraordinary collection of heresies, most of them almost too acrid to be bruited about. In other words, this mass of platitudes took Americans by surprise, and somehow shocked them. What was commonplace to even the peasants of the European Continent was so unfamiliar to ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... meantime the potent mixture[35] is boiling and heaving in the brazen cauldron, placed {on the flames}, and whitens with swelling froth. There she boils roots cut up in the Haemonian valleys, and seeds and flowers and acrid juices. She adds stones fetched from the most distant East, and sand, which the ebbing tide of the ocean has washed. She adds, too, hoar-frost gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and east that was the reflection of snowy mountain crests standing stark against the sky line—this smoky wraith crept along the valley floor. No red glow greeted Hollister's sight. There was nothing but the smell of burning wood, that acrid, warm, heavy odor of smoke, the invisible herald of fire. It might be over the next ridge. It might be in the mouth of the valley. It might be thirty miles distant. He went back to bed, to lie with that taint of smoke in his nostrils, thinking of Doris and the boy, of himself, of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... libido into a general principle of attraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets Hesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have escaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... of respect. Here, as in his later books, right is right, and wrong wrong, and he is never tempted to jingle his jester's bell out of season, and make right look ridiculous. And if the humour of "Pickwick" be wholesome, it is also most genial and kindly. We have here no acrid cynic sneeringly pointing out the plague spots of humanity, and showing pleasantly how even the good are tainted with evil. Rather does Dickens delight in finding some touch of goodness, some lingering memory of better things, some hopeful aspiration, some trace of unselfish devotion in characters ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... regret it, God only knows. I have often made an awful fool of myself at conferences, at public meetings, etc.; I have often done silly and puerile things, what the French call betises; I think of them without shame. But the sharp, acrid things I have said, and the few harsh things I have done, fill me with confusion. There's the benefit of a diary. It is an examination of conscience. I remember once at a station, a rather mean fellow flung a florin on a heap of silver before me. He should have paid a half-crown. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... it coiled and bristled after her with a life and motion of its own, like a serpent. Her hair, of too dead a black for gloss or glister, was always adorned with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design, elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in costume, and had at last en regle acquired a manner. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... afternoon; but when we attempted to land upon the islet we found that although the ashes were black on the surface they were still a dull glowing red in the heart of them, and so hot that they were not yet to be stood upon, leaving out of the question the veil of acrid, suffocating, blue smoke that still wreathed and curled ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the legend of yore told in the state of Kentucky When in the springtime the birds call from the beeches and maples, Call from the petulant thorn, call from the acrid persimmon; When from the woods by the creek and from the pastures and meadows, When from the spring-house and lane and from the mint-bed and orchard, When from the redbud and gum and from redolent lilac, When from the dirt roads and pikes comes that calling for Peter; Cometh the dolorous ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... have been your ruin," said Phoebe laughing; "it is a very hard passage, let us turn back and begin again," and then the audience would laugh, not very sweetly, and (some of them) make acrid observations; but the pianist was good-nature itself, and went back and counted and kept time with her head, and with her hand when she could take it from the piano, until she had triumphantly tided him over the bad ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... head uplifted, peering on every side to catch sight of the mate whose voice had so resistlessly summoned him. Only his wide ears moved, waving inquisitively. His nostrils, ordinarily his chief source of information, were dulled almost to obtuseness by that subtly acrid perfume of the smoke. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... disliked the bitterness of beer and the acrid specks of cigarette tobacco that stuck to his lips, but the "bunch at Eddie's" were among the few people in Joralemon who were conscious of life. Eddie's establishment was a long, white-plastered room with a pressed-steel ceiling and an unswept floor. On the walls were billiard-table-makers' ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the meantime, and an hour afterwards she herself served a dinner which would have made the most greedy of curates envious, and washed down with that light wine, acrid but heady, which the slopes ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... most acrid of all. But you shall not get out. Where is the chimney cover?[32] Come down again. Now, up with another cross-bar. Now look out some fresh dodge. But am I not the most unfortunate of men? Henceforward, I shall only be ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... therewith." Then he reproached the duke with his inertness against the English, with the capture of Pontoise, and with his alliances amongst the promoters of civil war. The conversation was becoming more and more acrid and biting. "In so doing," added the dauphin, "you were wanting to your duty." "My lord," replied the duke, "I did only what it was my duty to do." "Yes, you were wanting," repeated Charles. "No," replied the duke. It was probably ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his face in his hands. For in his mind he was seeing a rigid, searing body, and in his nostrils, acrid, distinct, was the smell ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... had made no mistake; his keen insight was well nigh infallible; but his triumph was costly. The luscious fruit of professional success left an acrid flavor; the pungent dead sea ashes sifted freely. He set his heel on the embroidered butterfly, and in his heart cursed the hour he had first seen it. His coveted bread was ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Ramsey chew his sour grapes if he wants to. I sha'n't say anything about it. Anybody with any sense can't help knowing a man of sense would have rather had you than Lily Merrill. I ain't afraid of anybody thinking you're slighted." There was indignant and acrid loyalty in Aunt Maria's tone. She closed the door, as was her wont, with a little slam and went down-stairs. Aunt Maria walked very heavily. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in the preparations for the defense of the station. Especially active and efficient was the only artilleryman among them, and the paradisaic peace amidst all the preparations for war was so complete that his acrid scorn of that pride of the settlement, the little swivel gun, and of the stationers' methods of handling it, occasioned not even a ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in it, perhaps is not even allowed to approach it. It is the beena garden—the charms for good luck in hunting. The similarity of the leaves to the head or other parts of deer or peccary or red-gilled fish, decides the most favorable choice, and the acrid, smarting juice of the tuber rubbed into the skin, or the hooks and arrows anointed, is considered sufficient to produce the desired result. Long ago I discovered that this demand for immediate physical sensation was a necessary corollary of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... minor Scherzo but not in the A flat Ballade. The F minor Ballade overflows with it, and so does the F sharp minor Polonaise, but not the first Impromptu. Its dark introspection colors many of the preludes and mazurkas, and in the C sharp minor Scherzo it is in acrid flowering—truly fleurs du mal. Heine and Baudelaire, two poets far removed from the Slavic, show traces of the terrible drowsy Zal in their poetry. It is the collective sorrow and tribal wrath of a down-trodden nation, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Emmett Corbin listened to the screech of tormented metal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried out ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... deep shudder went through the Blackfoot's body. The foot twitched. An acrid odor of burning flesh filled the room. No sound came from the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... deduce the frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the Pervigilium Veneris. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies, it would have afforded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... tabayba (Euphorbia canariensis), locally called 'cardon,' is compared by some with the 'chandelier' of the Cape, bristling with wax tapers: the Guanches used it extensively for narcotising fish. This 'milk plant,' with its acrid, viscid, and virulent juice, and a small remedial shrub growing by its side, probably gave rise to the island fable of the twin fountains; one killed the traveller by a kind of risus Sardonicus, unless he used the other by way of cure. A scatter of crosses, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... guarded. Like Merimee, M. Halevy is detached, but he is not disenchanted. His work is more joyous than Merimee's, if not so vigorous and compact, and his delight in it is less disguised. Even in the Cardinal sketches there is nothing that leaves an acrid after-taste, nothing corroding—as there is not seldom in the stronger and sterner ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they, doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which," added he, "battles are not to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... that of an oven. The water—what there was of it in the holes and swampy places—stank, and tasted acrid. The flies seemed to greet us as their only prospect of food that year. The monotony of hurrying through grass-stems that cut off all view and only showed the sky through a waving curtain overhead was more nerve-trying than the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... leaves are forming upon the brown and drooping heads of the spurge, which, sheltered by the bushes, has endured the winter's frosts. The lads pull them off, and break the stems, to watch the white "milk" well up, the whole plant being full of acrid juice. Whorls of woodruff and grass-like leaves of stitchwort are rising; the latter holds but feebly to the earth, and even in snatching the flower the roots sometimes give way and the plant ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... This latter I have tasted, as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch Whiskey, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,—indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... at the table, during supper, was icy, even though it was the middle of June. Thorpe noticed it and endeavoured to talk, but was not successful. Miss Mehitable's few words, which were invariably addressed to him, were so acrid in quality that they made him nervous. The Reverend Austin Thorpe, innocent as he was of all intentional wrong, was made to feel like a criminal haled to the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... constant attention. From a highly inflamed state, it often passes into a foul and sloughy condition; the breath of the patient becomes extremely fetid; the nostrils, the parotid and submaxillary glands swell enormously, so that swallowing and breathing become very difficult. There is an acrid discharge from the nose; the gangrenous matter affects the alimentary canal, causing pain in the stomach, the bowels, the kidneys and the bladder; a smarting diarrhoea with excoriation of the anus, and inflammatory symptoms of the vulva. Also the bronchia, lungs, pleura and pericardium ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... downward; man and dog rolled together on the stone-paved floor of the gallery. Something passed with the swift rustle of wind-distended garments, but Constans could see nothing, his eyes being blinded by the acrid foam from the animal's jaws. Fortunately, the high collar of leather that he wore prevented the dog's teeth from fastening on his actual throat, but that advantage could not endure, and already he could feel that the animal was shifting ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... mats of the tea-house of the Hundred and One Steps. On their sun-tanned faces was the glare of Yokohama Bay, in their eyes the light of youth, of intelligent interest, of adventure. In the hand of each was a tiny cup of acrid tea. Three of them were under thirty, and each wore the suit of silk pongee that in eighteen hours C. Tom, or Little Ah Sing, the Chinese King, fits to any figure, and which in the Far East is the badge of the tourist tribe. Of the three, one was Rodman Forrester. ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... his church relationship. And while George Reece was serving his term I chased the will-o-the-wisp of women And the mockery of wine in New York. It's deathly to sicken of wine and women When nothing else is left in life. But suppose your head is gray, and bowed On a table covered with acrid stubs Of cigarettes and empty glasses, And a knock is heard, and you know it's the knock So long drowned out by popping corks And the pea-cock screams of demireps— And you look up, and there's your ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... might be, Julian felt somewhat like a naughty boy in the angry presence of Cuckoo. As he looked at her the greenish twilight painted a chill and menacing gleam in her eyes, and made her twisting lips venomous and acrid to his glance. Her rouge vanished in the twilight, or seemed only as a dull, darkish cloud upon her thin and worn cheeks. She sat at the table almost like a scarecrow, giving the tables of some strange law to a trembling and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... muggy days until its sides are nearly red-hot and the heat of the wardroom is well-nigh intolerable. But on chilly mornings it occasionally rings a change by refusing to burn at all, and merely vomits forth clouds of acrid, grey smoke. This generally occurs during breakfast, when folk are sometimes apt to be snappish and irritable. We have never really quite fathomed the idiosyncrasies of the stove. Maybe it is sadly misunderstood, but at any rate we can always empty the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... Mr. Thorndike stepped into the gloom of an echoing rotunda, shut in on every side, hung by balconies, lit, many stories overhead, by a dirty skylight. The place was damp, the air acrid with the smell of stale tobacco juice, and foul with the presence of many unwashed humans. A policeman, chewing stolidly, nodded toward an elevator shaft, and other policemen nodded him further on to the office of the district attorney. There Arnold Thorndike ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... classes, that his election was anticipated as a certainty. In the Senate the consulship of Catiline was regarded as no less than an impending national calamity. Marcus Cato, great-grandson of the censor, then growing into fame by his acrid tongue and narrow republican fanaticism, who had sneered at Pompey's victories as triumphs over women, and had not spared even Cicero himself, threatened Catiline in the Curia. Catiline answered, in a fully attended house, that if any agitation was kindled against him he would ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... fire is no less certain: the fire evaporates and disperses all that is innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour matter which resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... see,' she said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to rise. Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her like jewels; and she ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-book out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden door. She met me eagerly. "I am not quite easy about something," she said. "Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... politician, or had merely been moulded in the fire of circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man whom he had made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a long time been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay without infusing into his admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in Paris, one superior man excuses himself ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... a child with a sea-shell at his ear, he began to be aware of the great roar of the "underground," that, in his third-class carriage, the cruelty of the reservation penetrated, with the taste of acrid smoke, to his inner sense. It was really degrading to be eager in the face of having to "alter." Peter Baron tried to figure to himself at that moment that he was not flying to betray the extremity of his need, but hurrying to fight for some of those passages ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... duckweeds (Pistiaceae) should also be noted with the bullrushes (Typheae), and the arums (Aroideae). This last-mentioned order, familiar to us by the kind known as "Lords and Ladies," presents some climbing forms in tropical countries. Generally acrid, some species, when in flower, even produce headache and vomiting; at least an explorer was attacked with these symptoms after gathering forty specimens of Arum dracunculus. The order is also interesting from experiments as to vegetable ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... mingled sociably before a non-partisan bulletin board in the courthouse, much as hostile camps fraternize in the truce forerunning peace. But the old, simpler order of things had suffered more wrenches than one in this acrid congressional campaign, and the warring factions could unite only on the hibernian proposition that union was impossible. One party, therefore, made ready to gather in the accustomed place, the other in the Grand Opera ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the threshold, as was his wont, with closed eyes and dilated nostrils, enjoying the aroma of complex freshness which the dining-room had at this hour. Pathetically a creature of habit, he liked to savour the various scents, sweet or acrid, that went to symbolise for him the time and the place. Here were the immediate scents of dry toast, of China tea of napery fresh from the wash, together with that vague, super-subtle scent which boiled eggs give out through their unbroken shells. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. Acrid rather, not unlike the odor of a lion, he thinks, yet softer and not wholly unpleasing, with something almost sweet in it that reminded him of the scent of decaying garden leaves, earth, and the myriad, nameless ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... derisive howl followed the line as it passed through the masses of the army, and remarks of an acrid nature were made that were not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... silly little world—all this quintessence of fashion and elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and essence of mignonette turned ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Loach was a bitter, acrid old woman when the fit took her. However, Basil insulted her so grossly that she made a new will and left all the money to Miss Saxon. Now it happens that Basil, to supply himself with funds, when his aunt refused to aid his extravagance further, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Second by second that huge mountain of muscle slipped and jellied and actually melted before the eyes of the humans. At the same time a curious acrid odor arose; Smith fell to coughing. The doctor ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... moved into another world, so different was everything,—as different, say, as was the acrid countenance of Mrs. MacGregor from the fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, clever, handsome face of Marcia Vandervelde. Everything interested Nancy. Her senses were acutely alert. Just to watch Mrs. Vandervelde, so calm, so ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... disturb, unsettle. Wishes that are turned into prayers are calmed and made blessed. Stanley and his men lived for weeks upon a poisonous root, which, if eaten crude, brought all manner of diseases, but, steeped in running water, had all the acrid juices washed out of it, and became wholesome food. If you steep your wishes in the stream of prayer the poison will pass out of them. Some of them will be suppressed, all of them will be hallowed, and all of them will be calmed. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... spoken of was composed chiefly of daphne shrubs—judging by the appearance of the fallen leaves, and some berries that still remained on the branches, Karl believed them to be of this species. But the bark was also a characteristic: being exceedingly tenacious, and moreover of a strongly acrid taste—so much so as to cauterise he skin of Ossaroo's mouth, who had been foolish enough ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... so many artists in their dealings with foreign princes, but he was irritable, turbulent, restless, intractable. He was a chivalrous defender of poorer brethren in art, and he was never a respecter of persons. His feuds with Betzki, the Empress's faithful factotum, were as acrid as the feuds between Voltaire and Maupertuis. Betzki had his own ideas about the statue that was to do honour to the founder of the Empire, and he insisted that the famous equestrian figure of Marcus ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... waved towards the sword, and then fell rigid with a thud. In Kidd rose from its depth all that acrid humour that is the strange salt of the seriousness of ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... scours, Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers; Then fly the herds,—the swains to shelter scud. Freeing mine eyes, 'Thy sight,' he said, 'direct O'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood, Where, most condense, its acrid streams ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... leather, and when the sideboard was opened, the acrid odour of tea and the sickly smells of stale bread and rank butter were diffused through the room; but these were quickly dominated by the fumes of the malt. A bottle of port was decanted for the ladies. To the host nothing was too much trouble; his guests must ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... cowboy, the trapper's cabin, the great log-built lumber-jack communities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. And when you talk of making camp you must know whether that process is to mean only a search for rattlesnakes and enough acrid-smoked fuel to boil tea, or a winter's consultation with an expert architect; whether your camp is to be made on the principle of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is intended to accommodate the full ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... remain senseless long. When he recovered he became aware of a confused shouting, and an acrid smell of ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... independent leaders. Divided authority here, as it nearly always does, caused petty and undignified squabbles, which were in later days elaborated into unseemly paper conflict. It is painful if somewhat amusing to read of the acrid disputes as to the course, under the very shadow of the majestic Australian Alps whose solitude had only then been first disturbed by white men; and how, on agreeing to separate and divide the outfit, it was proposed ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard "dear papa" on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self- accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, have jerked out ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... went wide of the window. It was followed by a rain of small beams, but I was warned and I dropped my head beneath the high sill. The rays flashed diagonally upward through the oval opening, hissed against our vaulted roof. The air snapped and tingled with a shower of blue-red sparks, and the acrid odor of the released ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... after dusk the temperature falls so decidedly that even in that heated fortnight in July a blanket or two were never too much. In the spring a day often began mellowly enough, but by the end of the afternoon it had grown pinched and acrid. ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... lay open to the kindly, abundant reservoirs, that so invitingly offered their waxen and sugary mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere of the city is changed; in lieu of the friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour of poison prevails; thousands of tiny drops glisten at the end of the stings, and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... sure of a welcome. Muckluck, cogitated the Boy, will believe more firmly than ever that, if a man doesn't beat a girl, he doesn't mean business. What was it he had wound round one hand? What was it dangling in the acrid smoke? That, then—her trinket, the crowning ornament of her Holy Cross holiday attire, that was what she was offering the old ogre of the Yukon—for his unworthy sake. He stirred up the dying fire to see it better. A woman's face—some Catholic saint? He held the medal lower ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... appeared a peculiar kind of Irishman. He is so unlike the English image of Ireland that the English have actually fallen back on the pretence that he was not Irish at all. The type is commonly Protestant; and sometimes seems to be almost anti-national in its acrid instinct for judging itself. Its nationalism only appears when it flings itself with even bitterer pleasure into judging the foreigner or the invader. The first and greatest of such figures was Swift. Thackeray simply denied that Swift was an Irishman, because he was not a stage Irishman. He was ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... grief, trouble, repentance, &c.]. Indeed, he uttered the word repeatedly, as if his ear had been eager for this sound, which for him comprised the whole scale of the feelings which is produced by an intense plaint, from repentance to hatred, blessed or poisoned fruits of this acrid root. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... was full of an acrid debate which turned entirely upon his interview with Ashe of the day before. No doubt, as an old friend, aware of Lady Kitty's excitable character, he might have felt it his duty to go straight to Ashe, coute que coute, and warn him of what was going on. But what encouragement ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you brace of cursed crones, Or I will have you duck'd! (Women hurry out.) Said I not right? For how should reverend prelate or throned prince Brook for an hour such brute malignity? Ah, what an acrid wine has Luther brew'd! ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... pointed. The stalks, which are often three or four, all rise separately from the root, and run into long cylindrical heads, composed of small flowers. It has not only the appearance, but the watery acrid taste of the antiscorbutic plants, and yet differs materially from the whole tribe; so that we looked upon it as a production entirely peculiar to the place. We ate it frequently raw, and found it almost like the New Zealand scurvy grass. But it seemed to acquire a rank flavour by being boiled; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... with physical blows; it tore at the bridge of his nose, jarred his teeth, sent shooting pains through his head, for he was not wise enough to stuff his ears with cotton and hold his mouth open. It shook the pit of his stomach and nauseated him. It was a sound cyclone. Added to this the sickening acrid smell of niter ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... or shrubs with acrid, often poisonous, usually milky juice, and dotless, alternate, usually pinnately compound leaves. Flowers greenish-white or yellowish, in large terminal panicles. Fruit small (1/8 in.), indehiscent, dry drupes in large clusters, generally ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... through the voice-tube which led to the gunboat's little turret. Immediately there came a deafening roar and a tremendous concussion, as the two 70-pounders hurled forth their shells at the Huascar, and a dense cloud of white smoke drifted down upon the conning-tower, filling it with acrid fumes and momentarily ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... in the early morning was pleasant and we made good time down the winding canyon, arriving at Furnace Creek about noon, where we halted to rest. This stream of warm water flowed down from a gully that headed up in the Funeral Mountains. It had a disagreeable taste, somewhat acrid and soapy. A green thicket of brush was indeed welcome to the eye. It consisted of a rank coarse kind of grass, and arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named bore a pink fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite fragrant. Here the deadness of the region seemed further ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... The acrid odour of picadura seemed to knit the events of three years into one uninterrupted adventure. I remembered the shingle beach; the deck of the old Thames. It brought to my mind my first vision of Seraphina, and the emblazoned magnificence of Carlos' sick bed. It all came and went ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a diet too exclusively maniocan produces dimness of vision, ending in blindness if the food is not varied; the poisonous principle cannot be anything like soaked out in the surcharged water, and the meal when it is made up and cooked has just the same sour, acrid taste you would expect it to have from ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... breasts, agile youths, old men shaking the multitudinous wrinkles of their rosy, and white-haired skins, or dragging their legs thinner and drier than the juniper staff that served them as a third leg, hurried on, panting and emitting an acrid odour and hoarse gasps. Yet she went on peacefully and seemed to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Paralysis is then obtained with but a single prick, made at the point which the Cerceris has revealed to us, the point at which the corselet joins the rest of the thorax. In that case, the least possible quantity of the acrid liquid is instilled, a quantity too small to endanger the patient's life. With scattered nervous centres, each requiring a separate operation, this method is impracticable: the victim would die of the excess of corrosive fluid. I am quite ashamed to have to recall these old ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... acrid with the sting of the wood smoke, but there was no avoiding another cupful, and Deringham drank determinedly, while his daughter felt that she had made full atonement when she set her cup down half empty. Then Alton, who explained that he had something to ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... explode with mirth the next moment, for the young West Indian, though he came from where his father's plantations produced acres of the pungent weed, was not to the manner born, and at the third draw inhaled so much acrid smoke that he choked, and stood coughing violently till Vane gave him a ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... a "gas warning." Some gusts of wind arrived, bearing along an acrid odour. All the wounded were given masks and spectacles as a precaution. We hung them even on the heads of the beds where dying men lay... and then we waited. Happily, the wave spent ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... infection. For the floor is covered with a layer of wood ashes that is usually deadly to bugs and fleas and ticks and other crawling beasts; and the atmosphere is so full of wood smoke that the most enterprising mosquito or tsetse-fly would flee, as we do, choking from the acrid smoke. So the native fire that burns within his hut day and night not only serves to cook his food and to keep wild beasts away, but also supplies him with an excellent form of Keating's Powder for the floor and smoke ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... of rest, insisted that the convention ought to keep busy six days in the week and finish the revision for which it assembled. When his power to influence colleagues had entirely disappeared, he began using the Tribune, whose acrid arguments, accepted by the lesser newspapers, completely undermined all achievement. Finally, on September 24, the convention recessed until ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... The air was acrid with the smell of burning. Blouses, pink and green, and cream, and blue, were stirred into a seething mass in the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... another coating of earth was put upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of coarse, dry stable manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and darkness till spring. How the earth tempers and flavors the apples! It draws out all the acrid, unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtile, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... of intellect, of sovereign mind and splendid wit as were their prototypes when she whose name they debase held her rule in the City of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the divine, haughty and eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the subtle Protagorus, Cratinus so acrid and yet so jovial, Damon of the silver lyre, and the great poets who are poets for all time. Author and artist, noble and soldier, court the Zu-Zu order now; but it must be confessed that the Hellenic idols were of a more exalted type than are ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... safety but emollient clysters and fomentations, and to drink copiously of camomile tea, or any other diluting liquor, till the spasms be relieved, and the nature of the disease more clearly understood. Persons who are subject to the bilious cholic in particular, should abstain from acrid, watery and oily food, especially butter, fat meat, and hot liquors: and pursue a calm and temperate course ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... light orange yellow to greenish yellow, in number, two to four times daily. Smell should never be offensive. Slimy mucous-like jelly passages indicate worms. Pale green, offensive, acrid motions indicate disordered stomach. Dark green indicate acid secretions and a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... shrill-accented, The acrid Asiatic mirth That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead, The scandal of ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... too. I hesitated a little, but as he pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau's books; and it so chanced that I used the word "acrid" for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my idea of Jerrold's way of looking at men and books. It was not quite what I meant; but, in fact, he often is acrid, and has written pages and volumes of acridity, though, no doubt, with an honest purpose, and from a manly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... entirely vanishes. See Sect. XL. No. 5. Thus the action of vomiting ceases and is renewed by intervals, although the emetic drug is thrown up with the first effort. A tenesmus continues by intervals some time after the exclusion of acrid excrement; and the pulsations of the heart of a viper are said to continue some time after it is cleared ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... silenced by it as he had been on the night of his birthday; he too, as he sat there with his "girl" and his wider experiences, felt that the ground over which Archelaus roamed was not altogether untrodden by himself. Annie, by the incursion of her eldest born, was changed, as always, from an acrid acquiescence to definite enmity towards Ishmael and his concerns. She became so rude to Blanche that it seemed the temper of a veritable angel still to be able to smile and answer with politeness. For her sake Ishmael also kept his temper, though inwardly he ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Dutch subsidy for October would be withheld. Much as we may sympathize with this indignant outburst, we must pronounce it unwise. For firstly, Pitt was intruding upon the sphere of Grenville in making this declaration, which was far more acrid than the despatches of the Foreign Secretary. Secondly, it was made in the presence of Dundas, with whom Grenville was already on bad terms. Is it surprising that the Foreign Secretary wrote sharply to Pitt protesting against his acting on a line different from that previously taken ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Ministers of the State and the leading nobles of Lalpuri. After the first volley, which scattered the horses of the cavalry, the artillery and infantry loaded and fired independently as fast as their antiquated weapons permitted, until the air was filled with smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Much patience, time, and skill, To prove tobacco cloyed With acrid alkaloid, With power the ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... examination of teachers that will give timely warning of attention needed. Until there is some system for giving this right to all teachers in private, parochial, charitable, and public schools, we shall produce many nervous, acrid, and physically threadbare teachers, where we should have only teachers who inspire their pupils with a passion for health by the example of a good complexion, sprightly step, bounding vitality, and forceful personality born of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... is a substance which is composed of a metal, or positive radical, and OH. It generally turns red litmus blue, and often has an acrid taste. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... on the sidewalk, a family dragging furniture through a blocked doorway, pillars, window ledges, cornices scattered along the road. Over all, delicately pervasive, adding a last ominous suggestion, was a faint, acrid odor of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... into the hard soil of the mesa. The argument was growing rather acrid; and Penfield and the two drivers were interested listeners. It was high time for a diversion to be made, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... spinning among the tables. Shouting, swinging noises and a bray of music spurted unintelligibly against the ears of the newcomers. A chlorinated mist, acrid to the eye, and burning to the nose, crawled about the room. Dorn, followed by Lockwood, groped his way through the confusion toward a small vacant table against a wall. From ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... hesitation on the threshold, the wind gusted sheets of snow into the Skinner shanty. Quieting the dog by a low-spoken word, Deforrest stepped in and closed the door against the storm. The acrid smoke drawn from the stove by the back-draft, filled the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... a distinct smell of dead horses at the obelisk in the forest. At least he rather thought they were dead donkeys. The smell was a little different—more acrid and unpleasant. We told him that there were eight dead Germans piled at the side of the road, and we reminded him that it had been a ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... have done credit to a mind-reader, Brock knew that attack was imminent. To him the wind that blew across the river October 12th was laden with omens of war. The air seemed charged with the acrid smell of burnt powder. The muffled beat of drums, the smothered boom of artillery, the subdued clash of steel meeting steel, the stealthy tramp of armed men, seemed to ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... olives as they reach us is as follows: They have been gathered when green, and soaked first of all in strong lye—that is, water saturated with alkaline salt, obtained by steeping wood ashes in the former. They are next soaked in fresh water to remove the somewhat acrid and bitter taste, and are then bottled in a solution of salt and water. Ordinarily they are presented at table in a dish or other suitable vessel, with a little of the liquid in which they have been preserved. In conclusion it may be added that olives form ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... he well knows, involves a long and humiliating discipline. The case now is not at all a surgical but a medical one, and the knife is here of no more use than in a fever. A specific irritant has poisoned his veins. And the acrid humors that are breaking out all over the surface of his life are only to be subdued by a gradual sweetening of the inward spirit. It is now known that the human body acts toward certain fever-germs as a sort of soil. The man whose blood is pure has nothing to fear. So he whose spirit is purified ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the product of a plant said to be Ferula tingitana, which grows in North Africa; it is a dark coloured gum-resin, possessed of a very weak odour and a persistent acrid taste. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... crop of moonshiners in politics," was the Senator's acrid response. "And the stuff they're putting out is as raw and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Sibylla's mind. It lay and smouldered there. Had Lionel been attached to Lucy?—had there been love-scenes, love-making between them? Sibylla asked herself the questions ten times in a day. Now and then she let drop a sharp, acrid bit of venom to him—his "old love, Lucy." Lionel would receive it with impassibility, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Jasper Everard. Jasper Everard! my name; and yet it was sent by my son, who was christened, if I remember rightly, Leonard!' Then he went on, only in a cold acrid manner which made his son feel as though a February wind was blowing ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the end of December appeared the first number of The Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming magazine with acrid contempt, and of course he did ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... said Mrs. Mills, coming back after repairing one of these outrages. The shop had a soft, pleasing scent of tobacco from the brown jars, marked in gilded letters "Bird's Eye" and "Shag" and "Cavendish," together with the acrid perfume of printer's ink. "Still, I suppose we were all young once. Gertie," raising her voice, "isn't it about time you popped upstairs to make yourself good-looking? There's no cake in the house, and that always ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... the campaign was hard cider. Every log cabin must have its barrel of this acrid fluid, as the antithesis of the alleged beverage of President Van Buren at the White House. He, it was asserted, drank champagne, and on this point I remember that a verse was sung at log-cabin meetings which, after describing, in a prophetic way the arrival of the "Farmer of North Bend'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White |
