"Smothering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tale of Begbie the bank-porter, stricken to the heart at a blow and left in his blood within a step or two of the crowded High Street. There, people hush their voices over Burke and Hare; over drugs and violated graves, and the resurrection-men smothering their victims with their knees. Here, again, the fame of Deacon Brodie is kept piously fresh. A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society, crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to us all, were over, how delightful to sit down on our robes and spend some hours in pleasant chat ere my bed was made and I was cosily and thoroughly tucked in by my faithful comrades. It was hard at first to sleep with the head completely covered; there was such a sense of smothering, that I often ran the risk of the freezing rather than the smothering. One night, perhaps because of this suffocating sensation, I unconsciously uncovered my head. After a time I awoke suddenly to consciousness, to find ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the house, so tame, so trained its proceedings, so inexpectant its aspect—I scarce knew how to breathe in an atmosphere thus stagnant, thus smothering. Would no one lend me a voice? Had no one a wish, no one a word, no one a prayer to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it regretfully, as the poor little gills opened and shut in vain efforts to breathe the smothering air, and the pretty silver colouring deadened as its life went. 'I am very sorry,' she said, folding her hands together; 'I think I ought not to have killed it only to amuse myself.' And she walked away to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... very sorry for you!" replied the girl, in soft tones. Then she shed copious tears as she was always ready to do. The Bohemian was moved and began to kiss her hands, smothering his desire for more familiar kisses in the presence ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... contagious and, smothering their laughter, the girls waltzed after her, throwing sticks and stones and all sorts of improvised weapons into the midst of the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... it seemed, his sight passed through her into space as though she had no face. Her arms were round his neck. She drew him softly downwards to his knees. He sank; he yielded utterly; he obeyed. Her weight was upon him, smothering, delicious. The snow was to his waist.... She kissed him softly on the lips, the eyes, all over his face. And then she spoke his name in that voice of love and wonder, the voice that held the accent of two others—both taken over long ago by Death—the voice of ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... by the regular steps of a stair, and that she was now alone excepting his company. Arrived, as it appeared to the lady, on more level ground, they proceeded on their singular road by a course which appeared neither direct nor easy, and through an atmosphere which was close to a smothering degree, and felt at the same time damp and disagreeable, as if from the vapours of a new-made grave. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the widow and Oonah found their voices, they made good use of them. The noise awoke Andy, who had, be it remembered, a tolerably long sleep by this time: and he having quite forgotten where he had lain down, and finding himself confined by the bed above him, and smothering for want of air, with the fierce shouts of murder ringing in his ear, woke in as great a fright as the women in the bed, and became a party in the terror he himself had produced; every plunge he gave under the bed ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... and put the rubber blankets over them. Then, during the night, we can build a fire right in the middle of the hut. But we'll have to take turns at guarding, to prevent the place from catching fire and to prevent those sleeping from smothering, if the ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... not wait to ask for a quilt or rug, there was no time for that. She quickly slipped out of her dress, and catching the little fellow wrapped him tight in the gown, smothering out ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... fire they were left in smothering darkness. "Where do we go?" she worried. "I feel completely lost. I can't make out a thing. I feel so lost and so blind, after ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... on December 21 and 22, 1837. A "gag" or "speech-smothering" resolution being then again before the House, Mr. Adams, when his name was called in the taking of the vote, cried out "amidst a perfect war-whoop of 'order:' 'I hold the resolution to be a violation of the Constitution, of the right of petition of my ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires, Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires; Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay, From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... rectory gate, when an automobile whizzed past, half-smothering him in a cloud of dust. This was a common occurrence during the summer months, and he paid little attention to the annoyance. The car had gone but a short distance, however, when a horse, driven by Miss Arabella Simpkins, took fright, ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... the wagon tipped over on the side, tumbling its contents upon you two children. Father and uncle, in great alarm, rushed to your rescue. Georgia was soon hauled out safely through the opening in the back of the wagon sheets, but you were nowhere in sight, and father was sure you were smothering because you did not answer his call. They worked breathlessly getting things out, and finally uncle came to your limp form. You could not have lasted much longer, they said. How thankful we all were that our heaviest boxes had been cached at ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... was still game. He agreed to advance another day's stint, in order to see the caravan well started into safer regions. With the rise of the sun, a gale also arose. The wind blew hot and hotter, driving the sand in clouds and almost smothering the men and animals. Therefore little could be done. The mules and oxen had to be unyoked—they stood with tongues out and tails to the gale; the wagon covers lashed and bellied; the men sheltered themselves as best ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... into his living-room, plying him in the meantime with innumerable questions as to how he felt. Having been stunned by the fall, the Baron asked to lie down for a few minutes on the couch. Herr Carovius granted his wish, smothering him with sighs of affection ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... boat for a ship." The English mode "of preparing of fire-ships," he observes, "do not do the work, for the fire not being strong and quick enough to flame up, so as to take the rigging and sails, lies smothering a great while, half-an-hour before it flames, in which time they can get the fire-ships off safely. But what a shame it is to consider how two of our ship's companies did desert their ships. And one more company did set their ship on fire and leave her; which afterwards a Feversham fisherman ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... to you and Minna when you were with her before the doctor arrived?" questioned Miss Kiametia, smothering ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... talk some time they spent, Says she, 'now I'll go shopping;' He kissed her and as out she went, The Doctor's boy came hopping; He saw her and he quickly cried, 'O, please excuse me missus, But Doctor's got a girl inside, And he's smothering her with kisses. So ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... of Itoyasan, and the grand mass of Miyojintake in the south-west, with their vast snow-fields and snow-filled ravines, were all visible at once. These summits of naked rock or dazzling snow, rising above the smothering greenery of the lower ranges into a heaven of delicious blue, gave exactly that individuality and emphasis which, to my thinking, Japanese scenery usually lacks. Riding on first, I arrived alone at the little town of Nozawa, to encounter the curiosity of a crowd; and, after a rest, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... distant, the wind had increased to such an extent that sail had been reduced to close-reefed topsails and reefed courses, while the sea had risen in proportion and was now so heavy that the frigate was literally smothering herself forward at every plunge. The fact was that she was being terribly over-driven; yet the skipper had no alternative. He dared not relieve the ship of another inch of canvas, for we were on a lee-shore, and embayed, the land astern curving out to windward so far that its farthest ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... 'I've had enough of this; I'm smothering and can't hear a word of all they're saying of the deceased.' 'God bless you, and lie still and quiet a bit longer,' says I, 'for my sister's afraid of ghosts, and would die on the spot with fright if she was to see you come to life all on a sudden this way without the least preparation.' ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... stared at by eyes she could not see. She felt that she must scream, or die, unless she moved; and she was too afraid to move, and by far too proud to scream! At last she tore herself away from the window and ran to a low divan and lay on it, smothering her face among the cushions. It seemed an hour before the Risaldar came out again, and then he took ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... of dress might come in mighty handy on SOME occasions; so I guess you'd better hold on to it for future use, and go and select another for this Fairford dinner," he said; and before he could finish he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last word in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... signalized his advent by drowning Conchobhar, "heir apparent of Tara;" by slaying all the chieftains of the Deisi at Cluain-Daimh; by killing the son of Clennfaeladh, King of Muscraighe Breoghain; by smothering Machdaighren in a cave, and by the destruction of Caitill Find (Ketill the White) and his whole garrison. Oisill is the next chief of importance; and he "succeeded in plundering the greatest part of Ireland." ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... will, but at least take it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband's roof, I should be capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy—or of doing worse! Do no exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... John's, as she would see were not her eyes so intent upon her work. How the impulse came to him, where he—grave, sober, business-man John—learnt such story-book ways can never be known; but in one instant he is down on both knees, smothering the floury hand with kisses, and the next moment Anne's arms are round his neck and her lips against his, and the barrier between them is swept away, and the deep waters of their love ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... that's the grass shriveling. Think of it—grass with so much sap inside it hisses. It's drying right up in a one-two-three! Now the top part is falling down—toppling forward—coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay.... It put out one of the torches by smothering it. Drowned it in grass. Nothing serious—the boy's got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks—youve got to realize this stuff's about ten feet high. Further in it's anyway sixteen feet. Fighting it's like battling ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Presently, smothering his emotion, he walked the length of the dead giant, and where the top tapered off to a size that would permit of his stepping across it, he retraced his steps on the other side of the tree until he had reached a point some fifty feet from the butt— when the vandal's reason ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Cecilia, smothering her concern for this last piece of intelligence by pretending to feel it merely for the former, expostulated with Lady Honoria upon so mischievous a frolic, and earnestly entreated her to go back and contradict ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man." Democracy means "a victory of sentiment over reason"; it is the triumph of the unfit, the ascendancy of the second-rate, the conquest of quality by quantity, the smothering of the hard and true under the feather-bed of the soft and ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... wall of blackness looming up beyond the circle of light. He could not see the towering hills, but memory pictured them as they were revealed to him in the gathering darkness before the storm. She was somewhere outside that sinister black wall and in the smothering grasp of those invisible hills, but was she living or dead? Had she reached her journey's end safely? He tried to extract comfort from the confidence she had expressed in the ability and integrity of the old man who drove with far greater recklessness than one would have looked for ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Demetrius, grinding his teeth and thumping his fist down on the table. "The lies sown by one single man have produced a deadly weed that is smothering this miserable house! You—to be sure, what can you know of our father? I knew him; I have been present when he and his friends, the philosophers, have laughed to scorn things which not only you Christians but even pious heathen ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cleared away the empty dishes and then discreetly ignored them. Fred fell to studying his reflection in the polished mirror running the length of the room. He had to acknowledge that he looked savage, with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible on the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues were being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with caresses. He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the actors to ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... number of Royal Academicians pronounced John Kendal's work impertinent, if not insulting, meaningless, affected, or flippant. Collectively, with a corporate opinion that might be discussed but could not be identified, they received it and hung it, smothering a distressful doubt, where it would be least likely to excite either the censure of the right-minded or the admiration of the unorthodox. The Grosvenor gave him a discreet appreciation, and the New received him with joy and thanksgiving. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... Blakeney had stolen out of the alcove, and his two hands—so slender and elegant looking, and yet with a grip of steel—had fastened themselves upon Heriot's mouth, smothering within the space of a second the cry that had been half-uttered. Ffoulkes was ready to complete the work of rendering the man helpless: one handkerchief made an efficient gag, another tied the ankles securely. Heriot's own coat- sleeves supplied the handcuffs, and the blankets off the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... greatly advancing and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any known. In the midst of my studies Jerry rushed in, flushed with his long drive in the open air, and threw his great arms around my neck, almost smothering me. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... and then he stopped, to wipe his face and rest, seemingly—then on we trundled again Meanwhile I was getting exceedingly hot; all the blood in my body seemed mounting into my head: and unpleasant ideas of smothering obtruded themselves. The noises around me told me we were on the wharf; then the jolting and bumping became worse than before: I fancied I could tell we passed up a sloping plank and were on shipboard. Then, without the least warning, I was rolled over and over, and then set upon my head! but ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... study, this he unlocked, and half opening the door, he said, "It is only I," and then slipped into the room, and carefully closed and locked the door behind him. I immediately heard his voice in animated conversation; my curiosity upon the subject of the letter was naturally great, so smothering any little scruples which I might have felt, I resolved to look at the address of the letter which lay as my husband had left it, with its face upon the table. I accordingly drew it over to me, and turned up the direction. For ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... lot of human kindness under the smothering, stifling cloud of the "System" and behind the iron clank and swishing "cat" strokes of brutality—a lot of soul light in the darkness of our dark past—a page that has long since been closed down—when innocent men and women were ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... or twice before Joyce had been conscious of this. Something seemed to go out from her and follow Gaston. She, or that strange something, escaped the fear and smothering closeness of the little house. It was free and happy out there with Gaston in the night. He was strong—stronger than anybody in St. Ange. Nothing could really happen while he was near. She saw his smile; ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... old country home in Sweden, where, at all events, they kept good fires. And, suddenly, all his being revolted. Stay here and face that father—and that image of a servant! Stay here for a night of this! Gyp was not his Gyp, lying there with that baby beside her, in this hostile house. Smothering his footsteps, he made for the outer hall. There were his coat and hat. He put them on. His bag? He could not see it. No matter! They could send it after him. He would write to her—say that her fainting had upset him—that he could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had felt really unhappy at the idea of being left alone with Bernard, toward whom she stood in such a peculiar relation, she studiously concealed her feelings from Della, not wishing to mar the bright anticipations in which she was indulging; and, smothering her own forebodings, hoped ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... power, grandeur, eye, and to prate of thrones! Is a prison the fit place? You wish to make me believe in splendor, and we are lying lost in night; you boast of glory, and we are smothering our words in the curtains of this miserable bed; you give me glimpses of power absolute whilst I hear the footsteps of the every-watchful jailer in the corridor—that step which, after all, makes you tremble more than it does me. To render me somewhat less incredulous, free me from the Bastile; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... knew how the flames would roar as they leapt from tree to tree; each man knew how the fire would glare as it caught the sun-dried grass; how overhead, and a mile in front, the whirling columns of smoke would roll, choking, smothering, blinding, till the blood-red glare showed fierce behind, and everything with life had fled, or stayed and swelled the ashes, on ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... don't cry, Bob; I told you to get up, and I'll say so,' said Lance, smothering her in his arms after the wont ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his mind. In his hand he still held the revolver. He pressed it upwards against the thing that was smothering him, and pulled the trigger. Again he pulled it, and again, for it was a self-cocking weapon, and even there deep down in the water he heard the thud of the explosion of the damp-proof copper cartridges. His lungs were bursting, his senses reeled, only enough of them remained to tell ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... never becoming, sir," said Blakeney, politely smothering a slight yawn, "and it is vastly unbecoming ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that Second Lieutenant George Montrose Graham was quite a celebrity in the —th Cavalry before ever he reported for duty with his troop. Several weeks the Silver Shield Mining Company spent in a squabble among themselves that ended in the smothering of "the Breifogle interest," and came near to sending "the Boss of Argenta" to jail. Several days elapsed before Captain Lee and Lieutenants McCrea and Graham felt it entirely prudent to leave, but when they did it was with the assurance that stockholders who had ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... smothering her anger by a strong effort; "I don't believe that was what Ursula meant you to do with it, and I don't believe she will rest quietly in the grave while you squander the money ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... of their feet and the clang of their arms were heard in the streets of the town. Windows and doors flew open and with cries and tears of joy and thankfulness, wives, children, and aged parents gathered about them almost smothering them with caresses. ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... avail them now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted still, the ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do but give in? Swift and sure was the destruction that now overwhelmed them—everybody ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of the second day another wave of hell's atmosphere came across, more deadly than any of the others, followed by a smothering fire from the German batteries, and the Germans broke in upon us on our right and left. Yard by yard we retreated, fighting as we went, and they occupied some of ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... cozy one. Outside the wind shrieked angrily and swirled the snow in smothering clouds around the tilt, and rattled the stovepipe, threatening to shake it down. It was very pleasant to be out of it all in the snug, warm shack with the stove crackling contentedly and the place filled ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... he was smothering, and he felt along the side of his face as he had done in youth when they had put a cap on him that was too large. Twining green things, moist with earth-blood, crept over his fingers, the hot, impatient leaves pressed in, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Austin, smothering the yawn in his voice and casting his cigar into the ashes. "You're about ripe for the younger set—one of them, anyhow. If you can't stand the intellectual strain we'll side-step the show later and play a little—what do you call it ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I say! But stop"—and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it partly out of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... identified with his age than any other poet, and yet forming a link between the old and the new, was Campbell. Classical and correct in versification, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody, he still had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criticism. He was the son of a merchant, and was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777. He thus grew up with the French revolution, and with the great progress of the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... too ridiculous for anything?" whispered Nora, smothering a giggle and trying to look severe. Her attempt failed ignominiously when Hippy, with an exaggeratedly contrite expression on his fat face, sidled up to her, salaamed profoundly, lost his balance and sprawled on all fours at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... again, smothering his kitten in his pinafore, prattling of Red Riding Hood by his school-mistress's knee, and guddling in the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... sight, Charlie turned with solemn warning hand—at which I heard my young friend behind me smothering his profane laughter—and made various signs by which Tom (who was poling me) and I understood that our job, and also that of my companion, was to steal behind one mangrove copse after another till we had got on the other side of that unsuspecting squadron—which might then be ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... throwers. Their principal weapon is a bucket or bag of grenades or bombs. They operate not only from trenches but accompany the firing line in an attack and dispose of sheltered or isolated group of the enemy by smothering their position with a shower of hand ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... got into a trap o' some sort. The savages must have been here before us, doggie, and made more than one of 'em, for I've just comed out o' one myself. Hallo! there, I'm into another!" he exclaimed as the treacherous bank gave way, and he slipped in headlong, with a dire crash, almost smothering Cuffy in ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... twenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one of the very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they had first suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the big car without smothering the occupants of the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... with heavier gust! And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost! Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows! Not all your rage, as now united, shows More hard unkindness unrelenting, Vengeful malice unrepenting. Than heaven-illumin'd Man ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in ghosts, so you might as well let us out!" cried Dick. "That stuff you set on fire is smothering us!" ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... and princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner; and then they in their cooks' caps, and the Princess Alicia in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... uproar of the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, afraid ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... We were entranced with the forest. The trees were immense spreading giants with interlaced branches that formed a solid roof of green 150 feet above the soft moss carpet underneath. Every trunk was clothed in a smothering mass of vines and ferns and parasitic plants and, from the lower branches, thousands of ropelike creepers swayed back and forth with every breath of wind. Below, the forest was fairly open save for occasional patches of dwarf bamboo, but the upper canopy was so ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... she breathed deeply. At any rate, her brow cleared and her smile was positively enchanting. Never, in all his life, had he gazed upon a lovelier face. His heart began to beat with a rapidity that startled him, and a queer little sensation, as of smothering, made it difficult for him to speak naturally in his ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... comfort, avoiding equally too much heat or exposure to cold. To these points the parent's attention must be particularly directed. It is the practice with some nurses, in the belief that a breath of cool air is most pernicious, to keep the child constantly enveloped in a smothering heap of bed-clothes, with curtains closely drawn, and the room well heated by fire, by which means the fever and all its concomitant dangers are greatly augmented. It is equally a popular error (and yet by many it is still ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... spirits fail, And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I could not get the drift of it exactly—it seemed to be the continuation of some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries—all of which will be better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature, bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small, red-headed, meek, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... she had been working two or three hours. She had been actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them. ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... noiselessly, had darkened the bedroom, and eaten her own breakfast without the clatter of a dish, putting the coffee aside to be reheated for him when he awakened. Now she was sitting by the window, panting in the noon heat, and looking down upon a dazzle of dust and ugliness and smothering hotness. She was thinking, as it chanced, of the big forest at home, and of a certain day—just one of their happy days!—only a year ago, when she had lain for a dreamy hour on the soft forest floor, staring up idly through the laced fanlike branches, and she thought of her ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... seaward. The startled savages dropped flat with terror. A different fear seized La Salle, for he knew that the shot was a signal of disaster. Looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails, and his heart sank with the conviction that she had struck upon the reef. Smothering his distress,— she was laden with all the stores of the colony,—he pressed forward among the filthy wigwams, whose astonished inmates swarmed about the band of armed strangers, staring between curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with whom he was dealing, and, without ceremony, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... steaming, sometimes called smothering, is that of cooking meat in a tightly covered jar in a moderate oven for an hour (the moderate heat serves to draw out the juice of the meat), after which the heat is increased, and the meat cooked in its own juices one half hour ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... have it in for me," mused Tom. "Well, I can't help it. I owed him something on account, but I didn't figure on paying it in just this way," and he thought of the time the bully had locked him in the ballast tanks of the submarine, thereby nearly smothering him ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... was too loyal for that, and smothering a sigh she retreated into the house. As she did so the first flakes fell of the storm that was not to have come ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... though it were late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece's beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... be free, then? A flash of fire, which subsided quickly under the smothering truth. What if she were free? He could not ask her to be his wife. Not because of last night's madness. That no longer troubled him. She was the sort who would understand, if he told her. She had a soul big with ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... peer back into that crowded little schoolroom, smothering hot and reeking with lamp smoke, and recall the half-lit, familiar faces of the congregation, it all has the quality of a vision, something experienced in another world. The preacher, leaping, sweating, roaring till the windows rattle, the mothers with sleeping ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the years had humbled The Kings in the Realm of the Boy, Song-built bastions crumbled, Ash-heaps smothering Troy; ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the "Arabian Nights" was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a "family edition." Well, qui s'excuse. . . . Who, pray, has accused me as yet? Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... urgent and imperative in the voices of both men—something that breathed of danger—the three women hastened from the room. Jane's candle flared and went out in the draught from the suddenly opened door, and in the smothering darkness they stumbled pell-mell ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... beneath the edge of the slate shivered it into small bits. The flames cracked and leaped angrily under the gushing water; only when the jet was turned directly upon them, and then more by means of its smothering power than its inherent qualities, did ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... dwindled to a trail of ruts, which staggered hither and thither in an effort to escape the quagmires—which it did not escape. Twice, already, Stuart's horse had been mired and he had to get out of the saddle and half-crawl, half-wriggle on his belly, in the smothering and sucking mud. So far, Manuel had escaped, by the simple device of not passing over any spot which the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... father's method of instruction. I attended his classes as an elementary grant-earner from the age of ten until his death, and it is so I remember him, sitting on the edge of a table, smothering a yawn occasionally and giving out the infallible formulae to the industriously scribbling class sitting in rows of desks before him. Occasionally he would slide to his feet and go to a blackboard on an easel and draw on that very slowly ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Hilton Fenley berating a servant for having permitted Trenholme to make known his presence to Miss Manning. The man, however, protested that he had done nothing of the sort. Miss Sylvia had been called to the lodge telephone, and the footman's acquaintance with the facts went no farther. Smothering his annoyance as best he could, Fenley rang up Mrs. Bates and asked for particulars. When the woman explained what had happened, he rejoined Winter in the hall, paying no heed to Furneaux, who ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... many accidents, and understood the meaning of the noises he heard. There was death in them, death for the weak by squeezing, and smothering, and trampling underfoot. It was a grim moment, and no one who was there has forgotten it, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... but she tore her gaze from his, and with a rending sob, covered her face with her hands, and ran blindly. He remained petrified and staring. And then a bullet struck him full in the face, and he screamed like a shot rock-rabbit, and threw up his arms and fell back, smothering in his own blood, behind the breastwork. And she never knew the cruel trick that Fate had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... pa?" the elder woman asked, stopping suddenly as she crossed the room, her face drawn in a quick stroke of fear, her hands lifted to ease the smothering in her ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the box and opened it, but instead of the pretty sheaths that she expected to see, she found my poetry. After reading it aloud, she called me a thief, and smothering me with kisses she entreated me to give her back what I had stolen, but I pretended not to understand. She then read the lines again, considered for one moment, and under pretence of getting a better pen, she left the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... my dress," said she, shakily, wiping her eyes on the soft sleeve of Mrs. Costello's shirt-waist; when a great deal of patting, and much smothering from the arms of Teresa and Alanna had almost restored her equilibrium, "and Joe worried too! I couldn't write and bother my father. And only this morning I was thinking that I might have to write and tell ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... sharp pain. He looked down and found that the flames were rapidly creeping up—creeping up... There was a rug on the floor— with feverish haste he wrapped himself in it—smothering the flames. He must ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the fire was fairly burning, one of the Indians flung his blanket over it, his friend seizing the other part, while both held it thus until it was in danger of taking fire or smothering the flames. Had the coarse cloth been a little more cleanly it is likely that it would have been burned, but as it was it strangled the blaze until it may be said there were several bushels of smoke gathered beneath and the embers were at ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... already got assault and battery against us, and smothering-with-a-pillow, to say nothing of burglary, breaking and entering, and banjo-playing after 10 P. M. We won't any of us live long enough to serve out our sentences, not even if we get old enough to make Methuselah look like ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... idiot!" she said shakily. And on the words she tried to laugh, but only succeeded in partially smothering a sob. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Gunnar had flung him into space as though he had been a minnow at the end of a snapping line. But that experience had been momentary. This built itself up—until Odin felt himself expanding and contracting at each pulse beat. His heart seemed to beat slower and slower. Waves of smothering pain struck him when they passed the speed of light. Then the pain diminished. He gasped for air, and it seemed to take years to reach his chest. The pain and the feeling of speed went slowly away. They were merely drifting now, as ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,— The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... beauty floating in an eddy of the stream. Quick as thought one of them opened his mouth, which was well filled with teeth of different sizes, and put it around the angle-worm. Quicker still he felt a sharp pain in his gills, followed by a smothering sensation, and in an instant his comrades saw him rise straight into the air. This was nothing new to them; for they often leaped out of the water in their games of hide-and-seek, but only to come down again with a loud splash not far from where they went out. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... went out finally, and between gusts of wind regained his own house. He stopped on entering, and barred the door behind him; then he groped his way to the kitchen, and taking a lamp from its place, raked together the embers smothering in a brazier habitually kept for retention of fire, and lighted the lamp. He next broke up some stools and small tables, and with the pieces made a pile under the grand stairway to the second floor, muttering as he worked: ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... put us in peril of drowning, or smothering to death!" roared Stanley. "If you call that a joke I don't, and I want you to know it!" And in a sudden passion he doubled up his ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Then combining, and lying silently in wait until she came near, they threw themselves upon her, and swallowed her up. Down from the roof came spots of wet, faster and faster, and they wetted the cheeks of Nycteris; and what could they be but the tears of the moon, crying because her children were smothering her? Nycteris wept too, and not knowing what to think, stole back in ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the second-rate. In addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering it altogether. No one is taken for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... compass—were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the Sub-prefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance. "My men," said he, "are working down the bed-top ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... his way through the wilderness of his laurels, and realising his share of Emerson's 'banyan' similitude,—the roots that have passed under the sea and come up on this side of the Atlantic rather smothering him with their thriftiness in republican soil." I suppose ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... eliminative function of the skin. Primitive man, living in a state of Nature, was not burdened with clothing. There was nothing to interfere with the healthy activity of his epidermis. There can be no question that the smothering of the skin by our clothing has much to do with defective elimination of wastes, and the more nearly we can avoid clothing, or the less clothing we can wear, the better. When possible, therefore, and especially in ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... stone and rose-red brick perched on a ledge of rock midway between earth and heaven, the cliff falling almost sheer to the valley two hundred feet and more, the mountain rising behind straight towards the sky; all the rocks covered with cactus and dwarf fig-trees, the convent draped in smothering roses, and in front a terrace with a fountain in the midst; and then—nothing—between you and the sapphire sea, six miles away. Below stretches the Eden valley, the Concha d'Oro, gold-green fig orchards alternating with smoke-blue olives, the ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... her, his sobbing breath smothering itself in the soft masses of her hair, while her arms rose weakly and fell around his neck. He heard the quick, gasping struggle for breath within her bosom, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... mind the 'cousin;' you must drop it at once," said Mr Oliphant. "It's Jane, and you're Hubert. But I beg Jane's pardon for smothering her answer." ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... objects. After the seeds have been dibbled about an inch deep in either April or May, the only attention the plants require is to nip out a straggling shoot occasionally, or prevent a stray branch from reaching over and smothering some plant which will ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... to herself. "How do you know when you are cold, when you are hungry, when you're tired, when you're lonesome? How do you know that you want air when you are smothering? Everything about you tells you, your heart, your mind, your body, your ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice |
