"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it aloud, on purpose for Belle to hear. I felt like killing her. I might have done it, but one thought restrained me—I should be hung for murder, and I was too bashful to submit to so public an ordeal. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... bark of the gedu tree, which when ground and mixed with water, makes a poisonous draught, believed to be infallible in the detection of crime. It is, in fact, "a trial by ordeal;" if the drinker survives he is innocent, if he ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and arbitrary power, sanctions supernatural or 'extra-experimental' beliefs of all kinds. You reject in the case of miracles all the tests applicable to ordinary instruction, and appeal to trial by ordeal instead of listening to witnesses. Instead of taking the trouble to plough and sow, you expect to get a harvest by praying to an inscrutable Being. You marry without means, because you hold that God never sends a child without sending ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... hills with the purple of grape-bloom, and laying a pathway of molten gold across the waters when the Battle Squadrons returned to their bases. A few ships bore traces in blackened paintwork, shell-torn funnels and splintered upperworks, of the ordeal by battle through which they had passed; but their numbers, as they filed in past the shag-haunted cliffs and frowning headlands, were the same as when they swept out in an earlier gloaming to ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Clifton. The sight of a human face was more than I could bear unless it were the one face; and that I could not hope for. But the desire to see her, to hear from her—if only to learn how she had endured the bitter ordeal of the day before—soon became unbearable. I must know this much at any cost to her ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a little; but both our minds were preoccupied by the coming ordeal. The conversation soon flagged—then dropped altogether. Mr. Blake idly turned over the books on his bedroom table. I had taken the precaution of looking at them, when we first entered the room. THE GUARDIAN; THE TATLER; Richardson's PAMELA; Mackenzie's MAN OF FEELING; Roscoe's ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... began in earnest, and very good fun it was; for every girl had a considerable sense of humor, so much so that their games were carried on with great spirit. Their laughter was so merry as to be quite infectious; and no one was more amazed than Betty herself when the ordeal of this first visit to the Specialities was over and she was walking quickly downstairs, with Olive by her side, on ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... write, after an interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main current of ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... flurry of snow; but, in spite of that, an immense crowd had gathered. The church and churchyard were filled to overflowing. It was the largest collection of queer looking people, horses, and "fixes" I have ever seen. The services were brief, but most impressive, and it must have been a trying ordeal for the aged clergyman, an old friend of the deceased. Several times his voice faltered, and he seemed about to break down. The coffin was borne to the grave by six stalwart negroes, laborers on the estate. A lad followed, leading poor Thurlow's ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... requirements of masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could not disguise ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the utterly helpless passengers, the captain, the officers and the stewards. These hardy sons of the sea, who had often faced imminent danger, would visibly flinch, set their faces and cover their ears till the ordeal was over. But they were never safe, as he made two or three announcements daily, and they had to listen to his thunder in all parts of the ship till it returned to New York. His incessant shouting was a flock of dinosauria in the ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... the fierce flashing of artillery, the glare of bursting shells, and the radiance of star rockets. And we should be in the midst of it. It would be my first experience of actual warfare, and I wondered how I should pass through the ordeal. I had already learned that the Japanese soldier or sailor is absolutely the most fearless creature in existence. He fears death as little as he fears sleep, provided that it comes to him in the service of his Emperor and his country. To die for his Emperor, indeed, who is to him as a god, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... generous and large-minded, and thoroughly upright. [Footnote: The following passage occurs in a letter from Airy to his wife, dated 1845, Sept. 17th: "I am sorry that —— speaks in such terms of the 'Grand Master,' as she used to be so proud of him: it is only those who have well gone through the ordeal of quarrels with him and almost insults from him, like Sheepshanks and me, that thoroughly appreciate the good that is in him: I am sure he will never want a good word from me."] In power of mind, in pursuits, and interests, Airy had more in common with Whewell than ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... forsaken him, but his strength had. He was no longer the proudly aggressive wild beast he had been. He had reached his limit. The terrible ordeal he had been through; the struggle incident to his capture; the rough, hot ride to the corral, hog-tied, on the hard floor of the dead-ax wagon; the outbursts of passion in the corral; the fighting and second roping in connection with the sawing off of his horns; the battle with ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... are," Evadne cried, feeling fully for the first time how much she had in heart been dreading the ordeal of having perhaps to enter the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the popular fervour had ebbed, and that the repeal members would not generally be returned: the English press made confident predictions to that effect. John O'Connell and the clique at Conciliation Hall accepted the ordeal, and were backed by priests and people in their policy. An extraordinary meeting was convened, and an address to the electors of Ireland resolved upon. It was a document which ought to be retained upon the page of history, for it discloses the spirit and temper of the repeal party, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... survives the ordeal and lives it bears the same relation to the herd as the maverick and has no lawful owner until it is branded. If an unbranded calf has left or lost its mother it has lost its identity as well and finds it again only after being branded, although it may ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... people who talk so glibly of humanity and pity, of rectitude and amiability, to dissect the real bodies of egotism to which they give those names. I put Man in the pillory of self-judgment; it is for you to deal evangelically with what remains of his temperament when he comes down out of the ordeal." ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... ordeal, but I surely did see Bears that day. If I may reckon it a new Bear each time one came, I must have seen over forty. But of course it was not, for the Bears were coming and going. And yet I am certain of this: there were at least thirteen ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... I will not recall it. Your constant pleading worries me. It is enough to say that the people shall be examined—by the tangena ordeal if necessary—and they shall be punished according to their deserts. Is that all that you come here ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the gates of death with a wonderful smile of love; and, as she walks upon the heavenly Jordan's shining waters, hand in hand with Him, she will see her erst-wrinkled face reflected from them in angelic beauty. Ah, but to tackle a Johann Wolfgang Goethe or a Gotthold Ephraim Lessing—what an ordeal for the celestial Professor of Apologetics! Perhaps that's what the Gospel means—only by becoming little children can we enter the kingdom of heaven. I told my little god-daughter yesterday that heaven is so pure and magnificent that they eat cakes ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... I think she would better be excused," Hinman answered. "She is still very nervous. The ordeal might cause ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... natural that you should feel home-sick. It is a fierce ordeal for a child like you to be ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in Mrs. Gaunt after this fiery and chastening ordeal. In a short time she had been taught many lessons. She had learned that the law will not allow even a woman to say anything and everything with impunity. She had been in a court of justice, and seen how gravely, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... morning was a repetition of the dormitory ordeal. Kennedy walked to his place on Mr Kay's right, feeling that everyone was looking at him, as indeed they were. He understood for the first time the meaning of the expression, "the cynosure of all eyes". He was modest by nature, and felt ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... even have consigned the Southern States to a species of provisional and quasi nationality, with the claim and expectation of their ultimate return within the pale of the Union, when, through the severe ordeal of military despotism or anarchy at home, or from other causes, they should have purged themselves of that institution, adverse to all our policy, which has been the sole ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... something within hurt. His relation with Beth Truba had been long, and increasingly delightful, since the ordeal of becoming just a friend was safely past. He realized that only a beautiful woman could speak this way, even in fun to an old friend.... His work dealt with wars, diplomacy and politics; his fictions were twenty-year-old appeals, so that Beth felt her present depth of mood to be fathoms ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... conversation, as the mirrored, gilded, and highly varnished apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for our presumably not very terrible ordeal. Things were well under way. At the desk in the corner one officer was jotting down notes as to the clearance papers and the cargo; while at a table in the foreground sat his comrade, in a lieutenant's uniform, with the captain of the Re d'Italia at his right, swart-faced and silent, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a sudden, deep breath, as if she had passed through the ordeal of what she had most dreaded to say, and now, meeting the changeless expression of Alan's face with a fierce, little cry that leaped from her like a flash of gun-fire, she sprang to her feet and stood with her back crushed against the tundra flowers, her voice trembling as she ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... go to sleep smiling; listening to the "Ode for the Daughters of Dixie" had been an ordeal too truly painful, because it disclosed live feelings which I had thought were dead, or rather, it disclosed that those feelings smouldered in the young as well as in the old. Doctor Beaugarcon didn't have them—he had fought them out, just as Mr. Braintree had fought ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... with the law. We are not advised whether the pert characteristics of his nature were emblazoned,—if they were, the record would describe a singular specimen of a frightened French darkie, more amusing than judicial. But John Baptiste Pamerlie passed the ordeal, muttering some rotten Creole, which none of the officials could understand, and was marched off to the jail, where the jailer acted as his interpreter. Being so small, he was allowed more latitude to ware and haul than the others, while his peculiar bon point and pert chatter afforded a ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... was brought out after all. I had great trouble for some time to learn to write editorials. I used to go to the office of a Sunday morn, and sit sometimes from ten till two turning over the exchanges, and seeking for ideas. It was a dreadful ordeal. In fact, in after times it was several years before I could seize a pen, rattle up a subject and dash off a leader. Now I can write far more easily than I can talk. And it is a curious fact that soon after I became really skilled at such extempore ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... leave. He dreaded to go—dreaded to exchange that warm, pleasant room for the cold, cheerless chamber above, where he knew no fire would greet him, for he had told Claib not to make one, and that was why he lingered as long below. But the ordeal must be met, and just as the clock was striking eleven, he bade his mother and sister good-night, whistling as he bounded up the stairs, by way of keeping up his spirits. How dreary and dark it looked in his room, as with a feeling ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... what to say to them; and they, no doubt, were in precisely the same difficulty. To an English youth, unfamiliar with the language and shy as only English youths can be, a conversation with that redoubtable old lady must have been a grim ordeal indeed. One can almost hear the stumbling, pointless observations, almost see the imploring looks cast, from among the infinitely attentive company, towards the tutor, and the pink ears growing still more pink. But such awkward moments were rare. As a rule the days flowed on in ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... came up dismantled and helpless from her terrific ordeal, the throng on the Breakwater gave one great groan of agony. "They're lost! They're lost!" The cry was audible even ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... upon the steam pipes, glands, and feed connections remains a matter of speculation. So far as the consequences of the burst upon the structure of the hull itself is concerned, every care was taken to make the ordeal as complete and instructive as possible. The wing passage, which has a maximum diameter of 3 ft. diminishing to a point, was left empty, although at the former experiments the lower portions were filled with coal. But behind this, and at a distance of 8 ft. from the bulkhead, a longitudinal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... at Possum Gully father was much away on business, and so on my mother fell the ordeal of receiving ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... conceive precisely how great an ordeal it was for Finn and Kathleen to face, when they were led down the length of this great building to their own particular bench among the other Irish Wolfhounds, of whom there were some thirty or forty present. For fifty yards or more they walked ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the gods were once graciously good to me. One wondrous evening before hope died utterly I survived the ordeal of walking home with her ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... should call on him. His face was pale and his eyes were rather dull. He looked a little overwrought. He was feeling the tension; so much was obvious. I remember wondering if he had reached the limit of his strength, whether he was really big enough in spirit for the ordeal that lay before him. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Spirit. In summer he shivers with cold, in winter he suffers from heat; he cries when he laughs and he laughs when he cries, &c. He is the reverse of nature in all things. Heyka is universally feared and reverenced by the Dakotas, but so severe is the ordeal that the Heyka Wacpee (the dance to Heyka) is now rarely celebrated. It is said that the "Medicine-men" use a secret preparation which enables them to handle fire and dip their hands in boiling water without injury, and thereby gain great eclat ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... Hutchins did not make a very good impression at the time. He was surly and irritable under the ordeal. I want you to see the ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... only too ready to retire. The ordeal had strained his patience and had left his brain feeling the stress of unaccustomed exercise. Therefore, allowing Melvina to drive him before her much as she would have driven a docile Jersey from a cabbage patch, he made his way downstairs, followed ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Giles had however passed through this ordeal. The letter to John Birkenholt had been despatched by a trusty clerk riding with the Judges of Assize, whom Mistress Perronel knew might be safely trusted, and who actually brought back a letter which might have emanated from the most affectionate of brothers, giving ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... no subject in the whole range of human affairs so interesting to a working majority of the race as the theory and practice of proposals of marriage. Men perhaps cease to be very much concerned about the ordeal when they have been through it. But the topic never loses its charm for the fair, though they are presumed only to wait and to listen, and never to speak for themselves. That this theory has its exceptions appears to be the conviction ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... is unfortunate such pictures should be presented to the world. There were some painful scenes of meeting between relatives of those who were lost, but once again women showed their self-control and went through the ordeal in most cases with extraordinary calm. It is well to record that the same account added: "A few, strangely enough, are calm and lucid"; if for "few" we read "a large majority," it will be much nearer ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... gladly escaped the ordeal of dining in the great salle-a-manger that night, but she could muster no excuse for so doing. At any other time it would have been an immense treat, and she dared not let Jack think that it was otherwise with ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... made in the name of the owner, and not of the attorney. These grants were, therefore, utterly void. In New South Wales the defect was cured by special legislation; but in Van Diemen's Land every grant was subject to an ordeal. Those already issued by Arthur had been legally worded after the defect was discovered; but the government of New South Wales continued the invalid form, until the judgment of the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... bewildered. Nor even when she had come fully to appreciate all the beauty and the joy of it, did she give audible expression to her gratitude; she was too proud—or rather say, too religious—to subject the divine emotion to the vulgar ordeal of words; she only kissed Miss Wimple's hands, and mutely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... with a tray containing all things necessary for my morning meal, he looked so over-weighted; but he was quite equal to it as far as landing the tray safely on the sideboard. But, alas! then came the ordeal; not one thing did poor Joe know where to place, and stood with the coffeepot in his hand, undecided whether it went before me, or at the end of the table, or whether he was to pour out my ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... I hope the ordeal will be over soon, or I shall die with disgust, or, like some I have read of in fairy stories, be killed by a ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... basis for taxation. The Domesday Book is one of the most curious and valuable monuments of English history. Among the changes in law made by William was the introduction of the Norman wager of battle, or the duel, by the side of the Saxon methods of ordeal described above. In most of the changes, there was not so much an uprooting as a great transformation of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... shameful ordeal, which might have vexed me sorely if I had not had greater trials and expected worse. Now and again appeared a face I knew—some lady who turned her head away, or some gentleman who watched me curiously, but made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is seldom inflicted for a longer term than four months. It may therefore be safely computed that these gaol gangs are changed once in this period, or in other words, that three hundred persons annually pass through this ordeal. This further addition to the formidable catalogue of crimes already made out, increases the total to six hundred and eighteen persons, yet only leads us to the third mode of summary punishment, viz. labour at the factory at Paramatta. The number of women sentenced to this mode of punishment ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... was the best preparative for the ordeal of the ride to town, Laramie hesitated about waking Hawk—yet the hours were precious, for the trip would be long and slow. Fortunately he had not long ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... Burns Celebration probably caused many humble men to think of the number of great minds who have been compelled to undergo this ordeal of poverty. How perfectly, in some instances, does the man's soul and intellect seem to have been separated from the man himself. It does seem a marvel that seventy years ago this man should have been in want and harassed by fears for the family he was to leave behind him, when now ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... drachms of powder. It is easy to understand that in the hands of Allan Quatermain this weapon, obsolete as it is to-day, was capable of great things within the limits of its range, and that the faith he put in it at the trial of skill at the Groote Kloof, and afterwards in the fearful ordeal of the shooting of the vultures on the wing, upon the Mount of Slaughter, when the lives of many hung upon his marksmanship, was well justified. This, indeed, is shown by the results ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the stereotyped smile, in which I signally failed, as I was so agitated. The audience at first remained silent, then their faces gradually unwrinkled, and soon, one or two claps having been ventured, they were carried away and peace was made. I was well rewarded, however, for this terrible ordeal, as my "second-sight" never gained a more ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal presence and issues from it ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and even chimed in with the deacons in the responses, though only with the notes not with the words. When at last it came to taking leave of the dead, I bowed low, but did not give the last kiss. Mr. Ratsch, on the contrary, went through this terrible ordeal with the utmost composure, and with a deferential inclination of his person invited the officer of the Stanislas ribbon to the coffin, as though offering him entertainment, and picking his children up under the arms swung them up in turn ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... farcical; but we must admit that a show of fairness was had, and, considering the ferocity with which the old man was attacked when down in the Engine House, the only wonder is that he was granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal how like a hero did he deport himself! Grand in his assaults on the citadel of slavery, he became grander still as he calmly met his enemies, and told them of his purposes. Never boastful, he assumes ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... then been subjected, were amazed that she had not been shattered like an egg shell; but when, later on, we came to dismember her, we were still more amazed to find how little damage, comparatively speaking, she had sustained while passing through that fearful ordeal on the reef, and what extraordinary exertions were needed to wrench her several parts asunder. But a detailed description of the varied schemes to which we were obliged to resort in order to effect our purpose would be of no interest to the general ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Soon this became a matter of pleasure, for the satisfaction of successfully leading them through difficulties and dangers more than compensated for the effort. But while he had vindicated himself in their estimation, he yet lacked that which the ordeal of a battle would give him at home, and more than all, in Rachel's eyes. He heard nothing from or of her, but he consoled himself with the hope that the same means by which she had been so promptly informed of his misstep, would convey to her an intimation of how well he was ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... two in thickness. The seed pods, which contain two or three seeds or beans, are 6 or 7 in. in length; and the beans are about the size of an ordinary horse bean but much thicker, with a deep chocolate-brown colour. They constitute the E-ser-e or ordeal beans of the negroes of Old Calabar, being administered to persons accused of witchcraft or other crimes. In cases where the poisonous material did its deadly work, it was held at once to indicate and rightly to punish guilt; but when it was rejected by the stomach ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... not acting under a blind impulse. We have carefully counted the cost of this warfare, and are prepared to meet its consequences. It will subject us to reproach, persecution, infamy—it will prove a fiery ordeal to all who shall pass through it—it may cost us our lives. We shall be ridiculed as fools, scorned as visionaries, branded as disorganizers, reviled as madmen, threatened and perhaps punished as traitors. But we shall bide our time. Whether safety or peril, whether victory or defeat, whether ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... ordeal and passed the Gulab Begum to where the Bagrees stood in line, Nana Sahib said, "Do you know, General, what that baboon-faced ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... innocent munch away at their rice contentedly, but the guilty wretch feels as if he had ashes in his mouth. At a given signal all spit out their rice, and he whose rice comes out, chewed indeed, but dry as summer dust, is adjudged the thief. This ordeal is called chowl chipao, and is rarely unsuccessful. I have known several cases in my own experience in which a thief has ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... complex and more moral in their considerations. The "Philosophie des Krieges," by S. R. Steinmetz is a good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal instituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the essential form of the State, and the only function in which peoples can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat for ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... a declining state; at least, her behaviour was such, that a man, must have extraordinary faith, who can think her innocent. She has told us, in the second volume of her Memoirs, that she received from a noble person a present of fifty pounds. This, she says, was the ordeal, or fiery trial; youth, beauty, nobility of birth, attacking at once the most desolate person in the world. However, we find her soon after this thrown into great distress, and making various applications to persons of distinction for subscriptions ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... mercenaries. His ambition excited jealousy, and some acts of imprudence involved him in dangers from which he thrice escaped. One of those perils was the usual appeal which was made in the middle ages to the 'judgment of God' to vindicate injured innocence. To this ordeal Michael submitted, in presence of the emperor and the archbishop of Philadelphia. 'Three days before the trial, the patient's arm was enclosed in a bag, and secured by the royal signet; and it was incumbent on him to bear a redhot bolt of iron three times from the altar to the rails ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... an institution of grave importance to the community, as the practice of obligatory inoculation prevailed, and all the young people of the colony had to go up in classes to the hospital and pass the ordeal. Her mother's death left her the matron of the hospital and caretaker of her sister and brothers, and the stories of her life at that time, which she told me now and then, showed that, with the position, she assumed the effective authority, and ruled her brothers with a severity ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... ease. I shall walk with my kith and kin of the South in the shadow, for in the furnace of a common sorrow, my heart has been melted into one with theirs. We of the South (you see I call myself one of them), know not what the future has in store for our beloved section, but we face the ordeal with the grim determination of our race. If you believe in prayer, pray that I may be just and may even in darkness do ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... plaudits just as poor men would earn them—by service to their fellow-creatures. Man is not constituted so that he can "take his ease" and be happy. The prisoner in solitary confinement is forced to take his ease, and we are told that he suffers terribly under the ordeal. Of course you have ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... and the Bourbons again reigned over the ancient provinces of France. Popular liberty on the continent of Europe was entombed, and the dreams of revolutionists were unrealized; but suffering proved a beneficial ordeal, and prepared the nations of Europe to appreciate, more than ever, the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Orgreave to Hilda. "You aren't wet?" She drew Hilda towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her. The embrace was to convey the mother's sympathy with Hilda in the ordeal of the visit to Turnhill, and her satisfaction that the ordeal was now over. The ageing lady seemed to kiss her on behalf of the entire friendly family; all the others, appreciating the delicacy of the situation, refrained from the peril ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... soul desires it, forasmuch as the gods have indeed caused thee to come back to thy stablished home and thine own country. But now that thou hast noted it and the god has put it into thy heart, come, tell me of this ordeal, for methinks the day will come when I must learn it, and timely ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... to go through the ordeal of appearing in court. There are ways of fixing such things." He laughed softly. "Especially here in San Mateo County. It's too rotten a business for you to have to step into, this murder. Come along down to the drug store and have ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... it were to be presented, not at ten o'clock at night, but twelve hours earlier. Much would need to be changed in the dresses, scenery, and decorations, and in many other respects, in the pieces, the solid merits of which would be able to undergo the severe ordeal; and if we consider what changes would be required to adapt them to the altered hours, we shall find that they will be all in favour of good taste, and on the side of nature and simplicity. The day is ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... would enable him to get married. Somehow, when Alexander was talking, it had not occurred to me that young Holmes might be in the running for so important an office as the treasurership. I had ruined the boy's chances. Ordeal by golf was the one test which he could not possibly undergo with success. Only a miracle could keep him from losing his temper, and I had expressly warned Alexander ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been thrilled and delighted to know that Olga so much wanted to come in after dinner and see the tableaux, so he found it quite easy to induce Lucia to nerve herself up to an ordeal so passionately desired. Indeed he himself was hardly less excited at the thought ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... sat quite still, gathering all her forces for the ordeal. Then at length she compelled ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the acquaintance of the elect twenty who were to be her house companions, but that was a comparatively slight affair compared with the ordeal of her introduction to the school as a whole. In spite of her outward appearance of sangfroid, she felt her heart thumping a little as she marched into the large lecture hall for "call over". It needs a certain courage to face seventy-two ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the pleasure-and-beauty-loving, artistic temperament, which is the one most likely to be exposed to such an ordeal as that of my mother's childhood, is also the one liable to be most injured by it, and to communicate through its influence peculiar mischief to the moral nature. It is the price of peril, paid for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... much does George Meredith (1828-1909) belong to our own day that it is difficult to think of him as one of the Victorian novelists. His first notable work, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was published in 1859, the same year as George Eliot's Adam Bede; but it was not till the publication of Diana of the Crossways in 1885, that his power as a novelist was widely recognized. He resembles Browning not ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... very fair stock of that useful quality called assurance; but he had no more than he needed to enter that large room, where the assembled family sat in a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed by Miss O'Shea's eye-glass, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying as he overheard the old lady ask her neighbour, 'if he wasn't the image of the Knave ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... penniless and ready to be fitted out for another expedition. Young Kit, at this period of his life, imitated the example set by his elders, for he wished to be considered by them as an equal and a friend. He, however, passed through this terrible ordeal, which most frequently ruins its votary, and eventually came out brighter, clearer and more noble for the conscience-polish which he received. He contracted no bad habits, but learned the usefulness and happiness ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... has experienced the awful ordeal of listening to some female chatter about his chosen subject, or who has undergone the even worse ordeal of dropping great thoughts of his own into the deep, deep pools of her incomprehension, will fail of sympathy with ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... pleasant to read the short story written by Paul Laurence Dunbar some years ago, entitled "The Ordeal at Mt. Hope." This story possibly gives one of the most vivid pictures of real, genuine service rendered by a man of splendid parts in a needy section of the South, bearing out the practical demonstration of the power the ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... fall panting and exhausted in the hut of one of a chief's wives. The sticks, rolling to her very feet, denounced her as a thief. She denied it; but the medicine-man answered, "The spirit has declared her guilty; the spirit never lies."' The woman, however, was acquitted, after a proxy trial by ordeal: a cock, used as her proxy, threw up the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... passed out of its ordeal of fire, and an excellent spirit on the part of both parties to the great strife is still growing and strengthening, in spite of an occasional exhibition of folly on both sides on the part of those who have not outlived the bitterness of the past, and ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the presentation was then effected without a scene. This animal, which was a well-bred Australian, was a stranger to me, and had never carried a lady before that day. Nevertheless, she passed successfully through a terribly trying ordeal, and I am certain that she would not have made the great efforts she did in jumping, if I had not soothed and encouraged her with my voice. She was only 14-2 in height, and was competing against big horses, some of which were ridden by steeplechase jockeys. The competition took ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... on whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chamber-maid of hers in their reach, and with the rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal?" Walpole's testimony in such a matter is particularly valuable, because he had not only been intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the French capital for many years, but also because his principal friends in France did not belong to the party which might have been expected ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... witchcraft and similar acts which inflict death; that if one by them be made away, and the thing cannot be denied, such practicers shall be put to death; but if they endeavour to purge themselves, and be cast by the threefold ordeal, they shall be in prison 120 days; which ended, their kindred may redeem them by the payment [in the universal style of the English penalties] of 120 shillings to the king, and further pay to the kindred of the slain the full valuation of the party's head; and then the criminals ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... the automobile, with a dazed feeling, as if some one had sounded an alarm of fire and she was blindly fumbling her way through smoke. In a vague way she was conscious that she was facing one of the big moments of her life, and she wondered why, when she needed to centre all her thoughts on the ordeal that confronted her, they should slip backward to a trivial thing that had happened years ago at ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that free manner is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you over and over again about a proper reserve?" The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared that ordeal, for the young ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Peter now if he could help it, and even the masters, judging that where there was smoke there must be fire, passed him coldly. That Easter term, in the late winds and rains of March, closed hideously. The Easter holidays, although perhaps he did not realise it, were a deliberate backing for the ordeal that was, he ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... surrounded by boats as soon as she was at rest, but the boatmen kept their distance till the port physician and the custom-house officials came on board. Both ships passed the ordeal of the examination, and the boats closed up. They were manned by all sorts of people, and they were in all sorts of craft. The captain said that most of them were Chinese sampans, and the boatmen were of the ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... over between us. Your sense of justice will not have to undergo the ordeal of forcing your sense of honor to link itself with dishonor. To your credit, I believe you would have married me, John, and I am grateful. But there's an end of it. I have come to say good-by. I suppose it is absurd, but I wish we could ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... doubting that she loves him in return, he is determined to secure for her a triumphant acquittal. Just at the crucial moment, however, he learns that she loves another man; and, overwhelmed by this disillusion, he has still to face the ordeal and plead her cause. The conjuncture would be still more dramatic if the revelation of this love were to put a different complexion on the murder, and, by introducing a new motive, shake the advocate's faith in his client's innocence. But that is another matter; the question ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... to move with decent slowness. Had she obeyed her impulse, she should have run. She forced herself to turn at the door and smile back, forced herself to bridle her emotions and go quietly to breakfast and to her ordeal with the lightning ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... narrow channel, made but slow headway. The delay was a severe strain upon the nerves of the men, who stood silent and grim at their quarters on the American ship, waiting for the fight to begin. At such a moment, even the most courageous must lose heart, as he thinks upon the terrible ordeal through which he must pass. Visions of home and loved ones flit before his misty eyes; and Jack chokes down a sob as he hides his emotion in nervously fingering the lock of his gun, or taking a squint through the port-holes ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The ordeal that the debutante had now to undergo was, of course, made remarkably easy for her through the intervention of this good friend of hers. When they got down to the theatre they went at once on to the stage, where Nina found herself in ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... satisfactory in the reflection that, when the new faith, "That all men are created equal," and that "Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," was finally assailed by the slave-power of America, and had to pass the ordeal of four years of war, a man born and reared in poverty, deficient in education, unused to the etiquette even of ordinary society, and untutored in the art of diplomacy and deception, had been selected by the people of the United States to become the representative of the new faith, and the defender ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, if only for a time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not fitted for it. It would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today which would carry them through ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... writings and trying as hard as she could to assimilate every good and noble idea that she came across—I say that she's a saint and a heroine," said Maurice, with sudden passion and enthusiasm, "and we've forgotten that not a girl in a thousand could have come through a trying ordeal ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... She wished the ordeal could have been postponed: she had fully made up her mind to do the deed, but she had not made up her mind to do it this very day; and now she felt ill at ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... his slow, sardonic grin. "Don't apologize, gentlemen. Only make the ordeal as short ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... alive but yesterday, the novel frequently awarded first position among his works, "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," was published a good half century ago. Go back to it, get its meaning, then read the latest fiction he wrote—(he ceased to produce fiction more than a decade before his death) ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... bullet had crashed through his arm, and left a shattered limb behind it. His final journey had had to be delayed while Bill had exercised his skill in healing that the prisoner might face his ultimate ordeal whole. Now the healing was nearing completion, but the irony of it all lay in the fact that the prisoner's well-being was of necessity the first thought of those who controlled ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... as a soldier, a statesman, an organizer, a politician. In all he was undeniably great. But men will always like to know something about him as a man. Can he stand that ordeal? These volumes will answer that question. They are written by one who joined the First Consul at the Hospice on Mt. St. Bernard, on his way to Marengo, in June, 1800, and who was with him as his chief ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... probably a landmark in Balkan history in that it brings to a close the period of tutelage exercised by the great Powers over the Christian States of the Balkans. Neither Austria-Hungary nor Russia emerges from the ordeal with prestige. The pan-Slavic idea has received a distinct rebuff. To Roumania and Greece, another non-Slavic State, i.e., Albania, has been added; and in no part of the peninsula is Russia so detested as in Bulgaria which unreasonably protests that Russia betrayed her. "Call us Huns, Turks, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Annas visits Joseph, perceives the Virgin big with child, 4 informs the high priest that Joseph had privately married her. 8 Joseph and Mary brought to trial on the charge. 17 Joseph drinks the water of the Lord as an ordeal, and receiving ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... to go through such an ordeal, my dearest. I know that we could have all these grand things, and for that reason, if for no better one, I'm perfectly willing to go without them. No, Alice, we will be married here in this room. We will deck it with flowers," continued ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... be called by some other name. But, like all other battles, it, too, has gone into history. I leave it with you. I do not know who was to blame. It lives in the memory of the poor old Rebel soldier who went through that trying and terrible ordeal. We shed a tear for the dead. They are buried and forgotten. We meet no more on earth. But up yonder, beyond the sunset and the night, away beyond the clouds and tempest, away beyond the stars that ever twinkle and shine in the blue vault above us, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Germans kept a rain of lead between the Canadians and the British line of trenches with the result that it was almost suicide for a man to attempt to return for bombs. Nevertheless many braved the ordeal. Only one was successful. He, Private Smith of Southampton, Ontario, seemed to bear a charmed life, for he made the trip five times. The Third Canadian Battalion was sent forward to reenforce the Ontario Regiment ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... this ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to have nerves young enough to sustain such rough treatment, the Colonel abandoned his nieces to their self-inflicted ordeal, and mounted the stairs to his own familiar quarters. And there, as he closed the door behind him, he ceased to speculate upon ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... poignancy to his previous thoughts that he regarded her with a wholly new sympathy. There was nothing dull about this girl. On the contrary, she had intelligence and feeling. There had been a rich vibrance in her voice as she told of that frightful ordeal; a dimness had come into her eyes as she spoke of her mother gabbling feverishly of the green hills and babbling brooks; she had yearned maternally at mention of those wretched little children. No, there was a sincere ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... waited, not daring either to advance or to retreat. How could he know that his father was shrinking as a criminal from the branding iron, that every nerve in that huge, powerful, seemingly impassive body was in torture from this ordeal of accepting the hatred of his son in order that he might do what he considered to be his duty? At length the young man said: "I'm ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... to us. Of necessity, the dramatist was nerved to keenest endeavor by the knowledge that his play had to withstand a comparison with other plays presenting the same characters in the same situations, and by the certainty that his personal contribution would stand out sharply. A similar ordeal was undergone by the great painters of the Italian Renascence, who tried their hands, almost all of them, on the Madonna with the Holy Child, on the Descent from the Cross, and on every other of the score of stock subjects then in favor for the appropriate decoration of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... creature without artifice. And, as she looked up, she recognized the man in the box, the man who had once been a barbarian, too, and she turned her eyes to the iron gates of the cages whence came the roar of the beasts, and waited the ordeal. And the face was the face ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... herself wonderfully at her ease, began talking, and, without wishing to speak loud, discovered that she was shouting like a trumpeter. The somewhat unusual strain which she had put upon herself during the ordeal of being presented at the English court revenged itself by an outpouring of voice ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... she lay in that friendly trance, for such, in truth, it was to a delicate being, subjected to an ordeal so painful as that she was called upon to pass through. We have, indeed, remarked that there is in the young, especially in those of the softer sex, a feeling of terror, and shame, and confusion, when ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... affection, with what convincing artifice did the false one turn pale! With what overpowering dignity did she repulse my father's licentious scoffs! yet at that very moment the deceiver was conscious of her guilt! Nay, did she not even undergo the fiery ordeal of truth? Forsooth, the hypocrite fainted! What must now be thy language, sensibility, since coquettes faint? How wilt thou vindicate thyself, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "it was the old question of the survival of the fittest. Christianity fell upon the Jews, originally a race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many centuries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history of mankind bears any record of. Only the strong of body, the cunning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. Like breeds like; ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... true, one may conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; it is the gift of a physical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... very night it seemed that God had ordained an ordeal for Hosea to test him and inspire him in his ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... of his old friend for a conference over Bivens's offer of compromise and he dreaded the ordeal. If he should refuse this final chance of settlement he would make a mistake that could not be undone. The result was even worse than he could ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... prone to escape trouble by the easy help of some pain-lulling agent, she is soon on the evil path of the opium, chloral, or chloroform habit. Nor is prevention easy. With constant or inconstant suffering comes weakness of mind as well as body, and none but the strongest natures pass through this ordeal of character unhurt. If the woman be unenduring and unthoughtful, if the doctor fail to command her faith, and be too sympathetic, at last she gets possession herself of the drug, or the drug and the hypodermatic needle. Then there is before her one of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell |
