"Sweltering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much as I did. In the harvest dog-days and dog-nights and dog-mornings, when we arose from our clammy beds, our cotton shirts clung to our backs as wet with sweat as the bathing-suits of swimmers, and remained so all the long, sweltering days. In mowing and cradling, the most exhausting of all the farm work, I made matters worse by foolish ambition in keeping ahead of the hired men. Never a warning word was spoken of the dangers of over-work. On the contrary, even ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... was sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showers succeeded bursts of sweltering sunshine. The green pathway of the road wound steeply upward. As we went, our little schoolboy guide a little ahead of us, Father Simeon had his portfolio in his hand, and named the trees for me, and read aloud from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a water tank on the railroad, a siding where trains can pass each other, a ten-by-ten depot, telegraph office and express and freight office, six sweltering families, one sunbaked lodging place with tent bedrooms so hot that even the soap melts, and the Casey Ryan garage. I forgot to mention three trees which stand beside the water tank and try to grow enough at night to make up for the blistering they get during the day. The highway (Coast ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... folks!), and has one ancedote, upon which and about forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops, and once (not to balk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable [1] upon a mad horse, to the dismay and expostulatory wonderment of inn-keepers, ostlers, etc., who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... exposed himself on the field at all. But, for the second time, he sent word that the trenches must be taken with the bayonet. The response was another attack. But the men were tired out by the sweltering heat and a whole afternoon of desperate fighting. They advanced, fired, had their front ranks shot down again; and once more retired in sullen silence. The last British attack had failed. Their sharp-shooters and the American ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... finality of the smooth steel against his skin froze Johnny into a semblance of calm. He stood white and very still until the deputy took him away down a corridor into another building and up a steep flight of dirty stairs to a barren, sweltering little ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... a license-hunt was largely farcical. Mr. Commissioner McPhee had chosen a sweltering hot day for his hunt. Most of the diggers on Diamond Gully were below, sheltered from the mordant rays of a sun that blazed in the cloudless sky, so close to earth that its heat struck the face like a licking flame. Jim had just brought some picks ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Shineth over the shade and shapeth its destiny, Gazeth over the world. Then it groweth warm, His house becomes heated by the heavenly gleam; The herbs wax hot; the house steameth With the sweetest of savors; in the sweltering heat, 215 In the furious flame, the fowl with his nest Is embraced by the bale-fire; then burning seizeth The disheartened one's house; in hot haste riseth The fallow flame, and the Phoenix it reacheth, In fullness of age. Then the fire eateth, 220 Burneth the ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... burned, or rather wasted away, without light or heat, the eye, in addition to the sombre hue which the absence of the sun cast over all things, was forced to dwell upon the long black masses of smoke which trailed slowly over the whole country, or hung, during the thick sweltering calms, in broad columns that gave to the face of nature an aspect strikingly dark and disastrous, when associated, as it was, with the destitution and suffering of the great body of the people. The general appearance of the crops was indeed deplorable. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the wind an appalling voice, half-shriek, half-roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... land of promise; the great goal to which the thoughts of every man in two vast hosts had been turned for many months past. On the furze-clad common of Chobham camp, on the long voyage out, at Gallipoli, while eating out their hearts at irritating inaction; on the sweltering, malarious Bulgarian plains, fever-stricken and cholera-cursed; at Varna, waiting impatiently, almost hopelessly, for orders to sail, twenty thousand British soldiers of all ranks had longed to look upon this Crimean shore. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... common dust, And the clay, stamped with His proper sign, Has right divine To the sweat, and the blood and the bended knee Of such, my gossips, as ye and me. Who cares? Not I Only let King and Hidalgo buy, With the red pistoles They wring from our sweltering bodies and souls, Treasures as full Of the worth of gold ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the state primaries—a sweltering first of August night in the tenement district of St. Louis, where the factory people eat their suppers and have their beds. Men in shirt-sleeves and women with babies sat on the steps for a breath of air, and the streets were a noisy welter ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... the most frequented and amusing resort in summer of the English colony and contingent from the broiling plains of the Punjab. Here the happy fugitive from the sweltering heat of the lower regions will find a climate as glorious as the scenery. He can enjoy the best of polo and golf, and, if he be not a misogynist, he will vary the 'daily round' with picnics and scrambles on foot or on horseback, in exploring the endless beauty ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the destructive act is a manifestation of Righteousness, which in such a connection means retributive justice. Awe-inspiring as it may be, the thunderstorm brings relief to a world sweltering in a stagnant atmosphere, and each blinding flash freshens the air. 'When the wicked perish, there is shouting.' The destruction of some hoary evil that has long afflicted humanity and blocked the progress of the kingdom which is 'righteousness and peace and joy,' is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Sebastian, where an unpicturesque collection of wooden houses stand upon a branch line on the Canadian prairie. The place is not attractive during the earlier portion of the short northern summer, when for the greater part of every week it lies sweltering in heat, in spite of the strong west winds that drive dust-clouds through its rutted streets. As a rule, during the remaining day or two the temperature sharply falls, thunder crashes between downpours of heavy rain, and the wet plank sidewalks provide a badly-needed ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... of the River Phasis, through whose windings the Argo sailed into the circumfluous sea, of the circumnavigation round that tranquil stream to the sources of the Nile; of the Argonauts carrying their sentient, self-speaking ship on their shoulders through the sweltering Libyan deserts, of the island of Circe, the enchantress; of the rock, with its grateful haven, which in the height of a tempest rose out of the sea to receive them; of the arrow shot by Apollo from his ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a bower of beauty and fragrance. The pungent odor of gummy boughs and of bark, under which still lurked the amber-colored sweat of heated days and sweltering nights, pervaded it. On one side of the cabin hung a huge piece of white cotton cloth, on which the Trapper, with a vast outlay of patience, had stitched small cones of the ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... towards and in marriage has been attained in average American society I should be the last to assert. The way in which American wives leave their husbands toiling in the sweltering city while they themselves fleet the time in Europe would alone give me pause. But I am here concerned with the relative and not the absolute; and my contention is that the average marriage in America is apt to be made under conditions which, compared with those of other nations, increase the chances ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... On a sweltering July day a long and ungainly shadow, stretching thirty feet upon the ground, crept noiselessly up an avenue leading to a fashionable hotel at a great summer resort. The sun was setting, and its slanting rays caused the shadow to assume the appearance of an anamorphosis of ludicrous proportions. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the stillness, the shrill melancholy of the crickets, which seemed to make all the vague forms of the country pulsate around him; the whole impression was a bath of freshness after the long strain of the preceding two years and his recent sweltering weeks in New York. At the end of ten minutes (his stroll had been slow) a figure drew near him, at first indistinct, but presently defining itself as that of a woman. She was walking apparently without purpose, like himself, or without other purpose than that of looking at the stars, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... broke on the long, long, moist, steamy night, and once more the sun rose to bless every thing but me. As the morning wore on, my torments increased with the heat, and I lay sweltering on deck, in a furious delirium, held down forcibly by two men, who were relieved by others every now and then, while I raved about Obed, and Paul, and the scenes I had witnessed on board during the chase, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... natural habits of life; but the species have generally been crossed one with another. Most of the members of the pig family breed readily in our menageries: even the Red River hog (Potamochoerus penicillatus), from the sweltering plains of West Africa, has bred twice in the Zoological Gardens. Here also the Peccary (Dicotyles torquatus) has bred several times; but another species, the D. labiatus, though rendered so tame as to be half-domesticated, breeds so rarely in its native ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the theatre, or a round of visits—a table dazzling with lights, and men and women ready to amuse, and be amused. But to sit down in broad daylight, when one has scarce swallowed one's morning chocolate, and face a sweltering sirloin, or open a smoking veal pie! Indeed, dearest, our whole method of feeding smacks of a vulgar brutishness, more appropriate to a company of Topinambous than to persons of quality. Why, oh, why must ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... faded itself away in the hot sweltering court, and his lordship, at about seven o'clock, declared his intention of adjourning. Of course a cause celebre such as this was not going to decide itself in one day. Alaric's guilt was clear as daylight to all concerned; but a man who had risen to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... that of England. In some respects the parallel may hold good; but there is no question that Vancouver has more steady fine weather, is far less changeable, and is on the whole milder. Two marked differences I remarked—the heat was never sweltering, as is sometimes the case in England, and the wind never stings, as it too often does in the mother country. The climate is unquestionably ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... considered a sufficient quantity. The stirring utensil called a "theedle" had also got into its proper place, and by-and-by they heard the sound of the same as it beat upon the bottom and sides, guided by an experienced hand, and, every now and then, the sweltering and totling of the pot. This process was now interrupted by the getting of the grey basin into which the porridge behoved to be poured; and poured it was, the process being followed by the sound of "the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... inside the fort? The men, stripped to the waist and with handkerchiefs bound round their heads, stand at the guns all that sweltering day, with the coolness and the courage of old soldiers. The supply of powder is scant. They take careful aim, fire slowly, and make almost every shot tell. The twenty-six-pound balls {44} splinter the masts, and make sad havoc on the decks. Crash! crash! strike ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... I suppose. Hang it all! Women are all alike; once a man's down, he's forgotten," but he did not speak his thoughts aloud. He looked away across the sweltering plain, and said casually, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... three or four miles round the corner of the island, and up the narrow passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of the boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering, and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as loud as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... giving color and body to his famous 'Stout.' Body?—I should think so rather!—but only think where the body came from! Just recall to mind the filthiest gutter that ever you saw in your life, with the numerous ends of cigars that you perfectly remember having observed sweltering in it, and then take another pull at your GUINNESS, sir, and I wish you joy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... her answer. "I don't feel cold a bit, you know. I almost think I am sweltering before a big fire. Ah! how well one can ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Or suppose Jimmy crowds up to him a little too closely, and feeling that he can't breathe as freely as he wishes, gives him a hunch; or suppose Betty, during a temporary fit of fretfulness, induced by long setting in one posture, or overcome with the heat of a midsummer afternoon, or the sweltering temperature of a room where an old-fashioned box stove has been converted into a furnace; suppose Betty gives her seat-mate a sly pinch to make her move to a more tolerable distance, shall the teacher utter his rebuke in tones which might possibly be appropriate if a murder was about being committed? ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... of my dear mother's absence to make another effort; and, to my joy, I actually succeeded in reaching the doorstep, over which I tumbled into a pool of muddy water that lay before my father's cottage door. Ah, how vividly I remember the horror of my poor mother when she found me sweltering in the mud amongst a group of cackling ducks, and the tenderness with which she stripped off my dripping clothes and washed my dirty little body! From this time forth my rambles became more frequent, and, as I grew older, more distant, until at last I had wandered far and near on the shore ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... flannels, I should have been sweltering in a quarter of an hour. Dressed as I was, I was streaming with honest sweat in less than five minutes.... Before I had covered half a mile I tore off my overcoat and flung it behind ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... their hot, chafing saddles the sweltering roans lurched off suddenly through a great snarl of bushes into a fern-shaded spring-hole and stood ankle-deep in the boggy grass, guzzling noisily at food and drink, with the chunky gray crowding greedily against first one rider and ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Followed a day of sweltering heat, when the horses in the corral switched flies and sweated doing nothing; when all of the chickens crawled under the coolest shelter they could find, and panted with their wings spread away from their bodies; when the wind was like a blast from an open furnace, and no man of his ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... night it rained steadily nearly all night; and it has just recommenced. It is quite an agreeable change to see a leaden sky and hear the rain softly pattering on the tent roof, after many days of sweltering, dazzling heat, when one is in a comfortable tent. But it makes me think of and wish for a comfortable room at home, a good book, pipe, and an easy chair, the prospect outside beautifully dreary and ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... vanity, envy, shame, treachery, deceit, falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will be terrible companions, or rather foes, there. Eternal longings after society, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... looks like old times!" brightening up. "No, it never had. Do you think I forget our alley-house with its three rooms? the carpentering by day, and the arithmetic by night? the sweltering, sultry Sunday mornings in church, and the afternoons sniffling over the catechism among the rain-butts in the back-yard? Do you remember the preachers, the travelling agents, that put up with us? how they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Surrounded by a guard of honour from the West Kent Regiment, with towering mountains of brown lava in the distance, and with groups of Somalis, Arabs, Hindoos and Seedees gazing at "the great lord of the seas," the Prince received an address of welcome. From here, through sweltering days and heated nights, the Royal yacht traversed the Indian Ocean until Ceylon—"the pearl set in sapphires and crowned with ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... minute straight over there to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad to see you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got a palm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these sweltering afternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing about now? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, not Bushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tell you I knew Bushrod Carrington as ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... car, which was crowded with officers and deputies bound for the stock yards. The long thoroughfare lined with rotting wooden houses and squalid brick saloons was alive with people that swarmed over the roadbed like insects. A sweltering, fetid air veiled the distances. Like a filthy kettle, the place stewed in its heat and dirt. Here lived the men who had engaged in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... they are sweltering in the heat," he answered, smiling. "It is beautiful here. I can see the mountains through the open window, and the flowers tell me what the hillsides are like, in the sunshine. Taquisara says that your maid brings them every morning. Thank ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... moment later when the broad-beamed Evariste rapped at his study-door, and announced two gentlemen to see him. Straight upon her heels came Darco in a silk hat of splendid lustre, and a nobly frogged overcoat with costly astrachan at cuffs and collar, as though, instead of being the sweltering day it was, it had been mid-winter. Behind him came Pauer, in tweeds and a white waistcoat, his face gold colour with his ancient jaundice, and his eyes a pale saffron. They were both in the best of good humours, and Darco stood on tiptoe to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... issue was—who was to occupy the long ridge position first? It was frightfully hot; I have never known it hotter in England. I was glad of my Australian hat and light khaki uniform as I rode along the ranks of the sweltering infantry; the Scotch in their small glengarrys, the artillery with their old-fashioned forage caps, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... which I am now writing was the middle of March, the hottest and, in every respect, the worst month of the year in Singapore. Day and night the land was oppressed by the same stifling heat, a sweltering calidity possessing the characteristics of a steam-laundry, coupled with those of the stokehole of an ocean liner in the Red Sea. Morning, noon, and night, the quarter in which the Hotel of the Three Desires was situated was fragrant with the ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... public property! 'Solicitor's divorce suit!' A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within him. 'Damn them all!' he thought; 'I won't run away. I'll act as if nothing had happened.' And in the sweltering heat of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club, lunched, and went back to his office. He worked there stolidly throughout ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cheering were the sight! Alas! we think upon this seat of care, And ask, if peace, if harmony be there. We hear the clangours and the cries that shake The mad world, and their dismal music make; We see gaunt Vice, of dread, enormous size, That fearless in the broad day sweltering lies, 300 And scorns the feeble arrow that assails His Heaven-defying crest and iron scales; His brows with wan and withered roses crowned, And reeling to the pipe's lascivious sound, We see Intemperance ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... transiently manifested in our text. The vision passed, the ground that was hallowed by His foot is undistinguished now in the sweltering plain round the mound that once was Jericho. But the fact remains, the humanity, that was only in appearance, and for a few minutes, assumed then, has now been taken up into everlasting union with the divine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... an absorbent, has usually been recommended as the best material for under-clothing in sweltering weather, such as that of the present summer. An ingenious gentleman of this city, however, has discovered that a full under-suit of blotting-paper is by far more efficacious than flannel, and he has taken out a patent ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... trotting-matches had begun, and the vast majority of the visitors had abandoned the other features of the exhibition for this supreme attraction. They clustered four or five deep along the half-mile of railing that enclosed the track, and sat sweltering in the hot September sun, on the benching of the grandstand that flanked a stretch of the course. Boys selling lemonade and peanuts, and other boys with the score of the races, made their way up and down the seats ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... retreated with no other answer, and left the fugitives aft to the merciless, sweltering heat of the sun. By the time the sun went down, they were so fevered by the need of water that they had not the strength to bless the cool falling of the dark; they still carried the fire of the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... smile, and since that period, Heaven knows my merriment has been confined to particular and extraordinary occasions only. How then is it possible, that I can be grinning and playing the fool from morning to night, positively without any just incentive to do so, and sweltering at the same time under a sun that causes my body to burn with intense heat, giving it the appearance of shrivelled parchment. Fortunately these savages—for savages they most certainly are in the fullest extent of the word—cannot distinguish between ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... comedy and the Italian opera flourished like the green bay-tree. The German actors took refuge in the saloon of the Council-house. The lighting up of the Royal Opera-house cost two hundred and seventy-seven florins every night. The misty light of sweltering oil lamps illuminated the poor saloon ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... late last night, and had a most sweltering night of it. This day also cruel hot. However, I made a task or nearly so, and read a good deal about the Egyptian Expedition. Had comfortable accounts of Anne, and through her of Sophia. Dr. Shaw doubts if anything is actually the matter with poor Johnnie's back. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... alone diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... button his coat over his breast, and every body gave it up as a bad job. In at last, but with the heat of that exertion—the smell of the hot gas—the fetid breath of two thousand souls, not particular, many, as to the quality of their gin—what a sweltering bath follows! The usher sees a ticket clutched before him, and a breathless individual saying wildly, 'Where?' He points to a distant part of the house, and the way to it is through a sea of humanity. A sort of a Dead Sea, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Highnesses, their Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, together with the plain Excellencies and their army of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena) went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies and gentlemen who remembered ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... draught which might be set up by the heated iron roof over his head and the cool of the shade in the store. There was not much danger of taking cold; rather would a chill have been enjoyable as a change from the sweltering heat of the summer's day. The steady swing of the grasshopper's song—like the wavering hum of a telegraph pole pitched in a high, shrill key—came through the hot air on all sides, until it seemed to spring from the ground in answer to the heat-rays that beat upon it—a response from ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... thought what I was bringing on myself when I urged them to come to Church. The sight of that poor creature sweltering before me constrained me for once to make the service very short—perhaps the shortest I ever conducted in all my life! The day ended in peace. The two souls were extremely happy; and I praised God that what might have been a scene of bloodshed ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... side lay shallow sheets of stagnant water overlying a treacherous bottom of semi-fluid mud, which rose above the surface here and there in moist, sweltering banks, mottled over with occasional patches of unhealthy vegetation. Great purple and yellow fungi had broken out in a dense eruption, as though Nature were afflicted with a foul disease, which manifested itself by ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... glittering, many-mirrored restaurant where they ate dinner, with father in evening dress, with a very shiny white shirt-front, and mother looking lovely in her grey evening dress, that changes into pink and green when she moves. Robert pretended that he was too cold to take off his great-coat, and so sat sweltering through what would otherwise have been a most thrilling meal. He felt that he was a blot on the smart beauty of the family, and he hoped the Phoenix knew what he was suffering for its sake. Of course, we are all pleased to suffer for the sake of others, but we like them to know it unless we ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... steamships, side by side, worried their way toward the east, always within sight of each other by day, and with the rows of lights in each visible at night to the sympathetic souls on the other. The sweltering men poured water into the hold of the one and the pounding pumps poured water out of the hold of the other, and thus ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... loftiness. I love to "sit at ease and look down upon the wasps' nest beneath;" to listen to the dull murmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem, how like a swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill! How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying! How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch! They jabber and screech and ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... deepening to an intense blue. As the fermentation goes on, froth forms on the surface of the vat, the water swells up, bubbles of gas arise to the surface, and the whole range of vats presents a frothing, bubbling, sweltering appearance, indicative of the chemical action going on in the interior. If a torch be applied to the surface of a vat, the accumulated gas ignites with a loud report, and a blue lambent flame travels with amazing rapidity ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... moving feverishly, he led the mate to the mare off the trail, turned to the wagon with bracing shoulder, backed it clear of the prostrate animal, and swung it out of the way of future passing vehicles. It was sweltering work. When it was done, with the sun, risen to its fierce zenith, beating down upon him mercilessly, he strode off the trail, blowing and perspiring, and flung himself down in the baking sand, where, though ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... across which, and a few miles up on Suction Creek, he confidently expected to find the Flying U wagons. The coulee wound aimlessly, with precipitous sides that he could not climb, even by leading his horse. Happy Jack, under the sweltering heat of mid-June sunlight, once more mopped his face, now more crimson than ever, and relapsed into his habitual gloom. Just when he was telling himself pessimistically that the chances were he would run slap out on a cut bank where he couldn't get down to the river at ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... glinked in the glimmering gloam, Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee— When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam, From the sozzling and succulent sea. "Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!" She swore as she swayed in a swoon, And a doleful dank dumped over the deep, To the lay of ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... at my feet, a gendarme was sweltering under his three-cornered hat, and two soldiers had unfastened their knapsacks and used them as pillows. Near the bowsprit stood a cabin-boy looking into the stay-sail and whistling for wind, while the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... mighty power and influence of the great civilized guffaw meant. For had he not, during his diplomatic career, seen the primitive man laughed out of his cool, naked blessedness into a modern, cheap pair of sweltering pantaloons? But things were now equal, and this promised to be the most exciting diplomatic game in which he had yet engaged. The defeat of Spain and the annexation of the Philippines were trifles in comparison. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... water oaks in Jasper's yard was a welcome sight when the interviewer completed the long walk to the old Negro's place in the sweltering heat of a sunny July afternoon. The old house appeared to be in good condition and the yard was clean and tidy. Jasper's wife, Lula, came around the side of the house in answer to the call for Jasper. A large checked apron almost covered her ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the round-up days grew near, with frosty mornings when the mountains looked as flat as if they had been profiled from cardboard and stuck up along the horizon—until the lifting sun modeled them with shadows—with sweltering noons tapering slowly off to cool nights while horses raced after the flying cattle, driving and cutting out, and so to the corral brandings, where the three partners found their increase better than they ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... time Nance saw Mac Clarke was toward the close of the summer. Through the long sweltering hours of an interminable August morning she had filed and chipped bottles with an accuracy and speed that no longer gave cause for criticism. The months of confinement were beginning to tell upon her; her bright ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... a sultry, sweltering July afternoon in May, one of those escapades of the New York climate when the population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discomforts without having had time to get seasoned to them. I went into the Park. I had come away from the Chaikins' under the impression that if I could raise two ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... blue in the sweltering heat-haze, lay Siroeh, walled in with sun-baked mud and listless. Through a wooden gate at one end of the village filed a string of women with their water-pots. Oxen, tethered underneath the thatched eaves or by the thirsty-looking trees, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... dusty road runs through level fields, till it reaches yonder shoulder of the downs, already golden three-parts up with ripening corn. Thitherwards lies my inevitable way; and now that home is almost in sight it seems hard that the last part of the long day's sweltering and delightful tramp must needs be haunted by that hateful speck, black on the effulgence of the slope. Did I not know he was only a scarecrow, the thing might be in a way companionable: a pleasant suggestive surmise, piquing ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort, on kissing him. "It's wonderful here, after the city," she proclaimed; "and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wonder if I shall be able to write a few lines legibly. There is still a good deal of motion, but a cool breeze, which is such a relief after the sweltering six weeks we have spent. Ahead of us is a great conical-shaped mountain, the sacred mountain of Fusiama (etymologically 'the matchless mountain'), and somewhere nearer on the long range of bold coast which we are approaching, we expect ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the details of the wedding. The breakfast was to be at Sherwood, and there were not to be many people. Indeed, the distance would keep many away, a fact for which no one of those principally concerned was at all sorry. John Harrington, sweltering in the heat of New York, and busier than he had ever been in his life, received an engraved card to the effect that Mr. Thomas Sherwood requested the pleasure of Mr. Harrington's company at the marriage of his grandniece, Miss Sybil Brandon, to Mr. Ronald Surbiton, at Sherwood, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... mending the political waggons of other people, and from his many talks to the waggoners knowing more about all the roads than any of them. The wheat on a thousand fields was baking that day, and the 'Peg was roasting alive. Since that I have always pictured Dafoe sweltering, terribly in earnest, whittling the legs of the Round Table and telling somebody how it is that west of the lakes neither of the old Ottawa parties has now any ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... required the subtle perception of long intimacy to name remains tumefied and discolored by corruption and exposure, mangled and gnawed by fishes, by reptiles, and by birds;—it demanded the great courage of love to look upon the eyeless faces found sweltering in the blackness of cypress-shadows, under the low palmettoes of the swamps,—where gorged buzzards started from sleep, or cottonmouths uncoiled, hissing, at the coming of the searchers. And sometimes all who had loved the lost were themselves among the missing. ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... are not the proper emblems of Senatorial debate. Let him remember that the swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to this body. The Senator has gone on to infuse into his speech the venom which has been sweltering for months—ay, for years; and he has alleged facts that are entirely without foundation, in order to heap upon me some personal obloquy. I will not go into the details which have flowed out so naturally from his tongue. I only brand them to his face as false. I say, also, to that ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the Ministry, and encouragement on paper, he had accomplished nothing; and that he had no money with which to accomplish anything. Day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, when the whole land lay sweltering with the moist heat of flood-time, in the period of the khamsin, in the dry heat which turned the hair grey and chapped the skin like a bitter wind, he slaved and schemed, the unconquerable enthusiast, who built houses ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... warm and lovely in the woods and on the water, hideous and sweltering in the stench of the camp. I saw captives die of heat and flies, but I could do nothing. My men took cue from me, and we all laughed and chaffered. I even took a turn at spear throwing, but was too discreet ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... effort we reached the base of a hill with a steep soft slope, and a sort of knife-edge ridge at the top, where an Australian outpost had been surrounded a few days before. Australian and Turkish dead still lay as evidence of the fight, and the stench from their bodies produced by the sweltering heat did not diminish the ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... a little flat, just under a steep wall of reddish cliff. Here he and Chuck Evans unhitched and here the horses were tethered. Helen looked about her curiously, and at first her heart sank. There was nothing to greet her but rock and sweltering patches of sand and gravelly soil, and sparse, harsh brush. She turned and looked back toward the sweep of Desert Valley; there she saw green fields, trees, grazing stock. It was like the Promised Land compared with this bleak desolate spot her father had chosen. She turned to him, words of expostulation ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... letter, and there was much putting of heads together over it; but the messenger knew the purport, and the boy made up his mind to go, for he felt, he had said to himself, like one of the silly and lazy carp sweltering in the castle moat; so he dressed himself in his best and went. The men-at-arms were sorry to see their playmate go, though they had done him little but evil; and the old priest, half in tears, brought a small book and gave it to the boy; the old nurse ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... go—or rather a "no go!" Triangle had bought tickets for all, and ordered the carriage at four; it was now three P. M., of a hot, roasting day. It would be "on-possible," as Mrs. T. said, to go without a girl; so poor, sweltering Triangle rushed down to the "Intelligence Office," where, from the sweating mass of female humanity awaiting a market for their time and labor, Triangle selected a stout, hearty Irish blonde, warranted perfect, capable, kind, honest, and the Lord only knows ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and cold never visited Golden Valley. Spokane and the Bend country, just now sweltering in a torrid zone, might as well have been in the Sahara, for all the effect it had on this garden spot of all the Inland Empire. It was hot in the valley, but not unpleasant. In fact, the greatest charm in this secluded vale was its pleasant climate all the year round. No summer cyclones, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... months; drifting, in the hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave was over he would return to his swampy, sour-green, under-manned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native Doctor, the native Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-kempt City, and the undisguised insolence of the Municipality that babbled away the lives of men. Life was cheap, however. The soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was filled ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... morning. The broad streets glowed in the sun, and the white-shuttered houses stared at the hot thoroughfares like closed bakers' ovens set along the highway. Philip was oppressed with the heavy air; the sweltering city lay as in a swoon. Taking a street car, he rode away to the northern part of the city, the newer portion, formerly the district of Spring Garden, for in this the Boltons now lived, in a small brick house, befitting ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... smoking; live; on fire; dazzling &c v.; in flames, blazing, in a blaze; alight, afire, ablaze; unquenched, unextinguished^; smoldering; in a heat, in a glow, in a fever, in a perspiration, in a sweat; sudorific^; sweltering, sweltered; blood hot, blood warm; warm as a toast, warm as wool. volcanic, plutonic, igneous; isothermal^, isothermic^, isotheral^. Phr. not a breath of air; whirlwinds of tempestuous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... humid. I then reflected upon the comparative poverty of the French language, which I was told had only that one word for the condition we could call by half a dozen different names, as humid, moist, damp, sticky, reeking, sweltering, and so on. I supposed that a book of synonyms would give even more English adjectives; I thought of looking, but my book of synonyms was at the back of my table, and I would have to rise for it. Then I questioned ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... cucumber," said her uncle. "Hard to realize how sweltering hot it is down there in the street, isn't it? Betty, what's your Safety work going to ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... a cripple in Montenegro six months, but in the summer crawled down to the Bocche de Cattaro and on the sweltering shores of the Adriatic built himself a primitive sweat bath. In a few weeks he was better, and in a few months cured. He then went to the mines in America, for he dared not return to Macedonia. He saved L800 and returned with it to his ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... the afternoon, a sweltering afternoon, after the doctor's visit that, as the Twins, bent on an aimless ride, were lazily wheeling their bicycles out of the cats' home, a sudden gleam came into the eyes of the Terror; ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... encamped round Rabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take his share of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siesta in the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of his sweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on his palace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if his heart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills that he ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... greatest enjoyment from this annual carnival among the trout who has been tied to London all through May, sweltering in a stuffy office and longing for the country. Though his sympathies are bound up heart and soul in country pursuits, he has elected to "live laborious days" in the busy haunts of men. He does it, though he hates ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and cloth-of-gold...fire —fire everywhere! ... and the madly affrighted multitude, stunned by the abrupt shock of terror, stood for a moment paralyzed and inert, . . then, with one desperate yell of wild brute fear and ferocity, they rushed headlong in a struggling, shrieking, cursing, sweltering swarm toward the great closed portals of the central aisle. As they did so, a tremendous weight of thunder seemed to descend solidly on the roof with a thudding burst as though a thousand walls had been battered down at one blow, . . the whole edifice rocked and trembled ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... nation's fate hung on it. I pitied Paul; Slender of form and delicate, he bore The toils and duties of the hardiest. Ill from exposure, or fatigued and worn, On picket hungered, shivering in the rain, Or sweltering in full dress, with knapsack on, Beneath the blaze of the mid-summer sun, He held his spirit—always still the same Patient and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the Russians. Madame Garschine has been reading Russian to me; and I cannot tell prose from verse in that delectable tongue, which is a pity. Johnson came out to tell us that Corsica was visible, and there it was over a white, sweltering sea, just a little darker than the pallid blue of the sky, and when one looked at it closely, breaking up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flew swiftly by and the month of May was gone. Summer was early that year, and the first day of June dawned sultry and still over the sweltering city. It was a half-holiday at the Chestnut School, so Peace returned home at noon, hot, perspiring, but radiant at the thought of no more lessons till the morrow. She came a round-about way in order to pass the great gates of the stone mansion, hoping to catch a glimpse of ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... weaker taken one by one. Traun, in the long June days, had such a march, through the Spessart Forest (Mayn River to his left, with our old friends Dettingen, Aschaffenburg, far down in the plain), as was hardly ever known before: pathless wildernesses, rocky steeps and chasms; the sweltering June sun sending down the upper snows upon him in the form of muddy slush; so that 'the infantry had to wade haunch-deep in many of the hollow parts, and nearly all the cavalry lost its horse-shoes.' A strenuous march; and a well-schemed. For at the Kinzig River (Conti still ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... over these details, Mamma Harris not objecting, they left the city of New York by the five o'clock train on the Hudson River Railroad, on the evening of the Fourth of July, just when the city was sweltering in its most deadly heat and all ablaze with patriotic fireworks. Leslie had certain patrio-political engagements which occupied him until after noon on that day, rendering it impossible to leave by the morning train. Leaving by that at five o'clock, they ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Potts. 'He 's no new hand and you don't think him so either, Fleet. I've looked into the fellow's eye and seen a leery old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff. However, 'perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carlsruhe road for nothing.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... business. There was really nothing about that seemed fit for the purpose. Hilda saw what I sought, and pointed mutely to a stunted bush beside a big granite boulder which rose abruptly from the dead level of the grass, affording a little shade from that sweltering sunlight. I tied my mare to the gnarled root—it was the only part big enough—and sat down by Hilda's side, under the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. I realised at that moment the force and appropriateness of the Psalmist's simile. The sun beat ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the cold of a French winter claimed the life of Toussaint, his antagonist fell a victim to the sweltering heats of the tropics. On November 2nd, 1802, Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and to his ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes dictated at St. Helena, Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to some strictures for his indiscretion in ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... lies, perhaps, floating in a tropic haze five miles off, and the attacking party must pull slowly, in a sweltering heat, up to the iron lips of her guns. The greedy, restless sea is under them, and a single shot may turn the eager boat's crew at any instant into a cluster of drowning wretches. When the ship is reached, officers and men must clamber over bulwarks and boarding-netting, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Dennis's terrace awaiting the envoys. Below, the misty plain rose on and on till it gathered into an amber surge in Monte Morello and rippled away again through the Fiesolan hills. Nearer, torrid bell-towers pierced the shimmering reek, like stakes in a sweltering lagoon. In the centre of all, the great dome swam lightly, a gigantic celestial buoy in a vaporous sea. The spell that bound us all was doubly potent that day. The sense of a continuous life that had made the dome and the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Strasse late on the night of their last day at Baireuth, and Michael, who had leaned out of his window to remind him of the hour of their train's departure the next morning, turned back into the room to begin his packing. That was not an affair that would take much time, but since, on this sweltering August night, it would certainly be a process that involved the production of much heat, he made ready for bed first, and went about his preparations in pyjamas. The work of dropping things into a bag was soon over, and finding it impossible to entertain the idea ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... made-believe he was a clubman, and enjoyed himself artlessly. The sun got farther around and the south window was a sheet of burning radiance. It became rather too warm, and on Carroll making a motion to move his chair into the shade, every other man moved into the sunshine, and sat sweltering and smoking in a fatuous vainglory. The canary bird hopped faster and faster. The gold-fishes swam with a larger school of bright reflections. A bumblebee flew in the open window and buzzed dangerously near the hero's head. Willy Eddy rose and, ostentatiously, at his own ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said the old man; and the scouts agreed with him. The heat was, indeed, sweltering. It was one of those days of early summer which seem borrowed from the dog-days, and the scouts, tough as they were, were dripping with sweat as they marched along with shirt-sleeves rolled nearly to their shoulders, their shoes and stockings thickly powdered ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the late afternoon of a sweltering July day. The near hills slumbered in the sunshine. Far away beyond them grey peaks of Alpine spurs, patched with snow, rose in faint outline against the sky. The valley lay in rich idleness, green and ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... forwards amidst yells of execration and gratified hate on that hot August morning in front of the Church of the Carmine little more than one hundred years ago. His body was left on the gallows to be insulted by the mob throughout the long sweltering day, and then, stripped of all its clothing, was finally flung with other corpses of noble men and women into a charnel-house at Sant' Alessio al Lavinaio. Who it was that placed this quaint little memorial to the murdered ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... sleep enough by midnight to fit me for my work, but it was always a failure. I went on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched, straight along through the four hours. I can still see myself sitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the sweltering night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, white face of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleeting unconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering like fiends, others jabbering like idiots. They are there young and old; a few—the maniacs those—are chained; all are crawled over by vermin, most are crusted with excretions. The sight made me ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... watched the sanguine strife, Clothed in the golden panoply of war. Upon his brow the stately monarch wore The crown of all the tribes of Israel, A-fire with jewels flashing in the sun In bitter mockery of his trampled heart. Noble in mien, yet, with a sorrowing soul, Anxious his gaze—for in the sweltering surge Three sons of Saul were battling with the rest; His first-born, Jonathan; Abinadab; And Melchi-shua—idols of his life! Around him like a hurricane of hail The pinioned shafts with aim unerring sped, Bearing dark death upon their feathery wings. The clashing ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... particular route across the Atlantic, and that is, that by it the ship passes within only 200 miles of Greenland. The great circle that directs the shortest route from the north of Ireland to the Straits of Belle Isle passes within the cold region, and hence, while you were all sweltering in heat in London, we were compelled to bring out our ulsters and all our warm garments, to enable us to cross with any degree of comfort. The advantage of this particular route is supposed to be the fact that only five days are spent upon the ocean, and the remainder of the voyage ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... animation and sparkle and enjoyment, and for him it would have stopped utterly. He would be in some unheard-of sun- blistered wilderness, where natives and pariah dogs and raucous- throated crows fringed round mockingly on one's loneliness, where one rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collector or police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance one had hardly two ideas in common, where female society was represented at long intervals by some climate-withered ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... had had to battle with the elements of Nature in very nearly their extremest forms and in every variety. We started in the sweltering heat of the plains of India in the hottest season. We passed the lower outer ranges of the Himalaya in the midst of torrential rain, like the heaviest thunder-shower in England, continuing all day ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... succours of light cannonry Lately come up, relieve the English stress; Kellermann's cuirassiers, both man and horse All plated over with the brass of war, Are rolling on the highway. More brigades Of British, soiled and sweltering, now are nigh, Who plunge within the boscage of Bossu; Where in the hidden shades and sinuous creeps Life-struggles can be heard, seen but in peeps. Therewith the foe's accessions harass Ney, Racked that no needful d'Erlon ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... what am I doing in Dera Ishmael? And if not . . ? Mon Dieu, but it's an ignominious tangle. I'm as bad as Alice in Wonderland in the wood. I seem suddenly to have lost my identity: and in my mad anxiety and impatience to get here I never thought anything about it till I was sweltering in that horrible barge this morning. Shall I live altogether in my room? It would be ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... salmon or the grouse. I declare to goodness that I work like a nigger and get nothing but kicks for halfpence! I'd chuck politics to-morrow if it weren't for Lucy; and why on earth she likes to be shut in town, and sweltering in hot rooms, playing this kind of game, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... sauntered toward the scrub shack, leaving one or two to festoon the bunting over the stand where the colors shone as if they had been varnished by that master decorator, the sun, as a last finishing touch to his sweltering day's work. The emblem patrol sauntered over to the flag pole and sprawled beneath it to rest and await the moment of sunset. Several canoes moved aimlessly upon the glinting water, their occupants idling with the paddles. ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... seen innocent women die in the tortures of the damned—while their drunken husbands have lived to carouse over their coffins. Children,—mere babes—are afflicted with diseases for which often no cause can be assigned and no cure discovered—while over the whole sweltering mass of human helplessness and ignorance, Death stalks triumphant,—and God, though called upon for rescue with prayers and tears, withdraws Himself in clouds of impenetrable silence. It is all hopeless, useless, irremediable! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to the hotel to put down their impressions in diaries and note-books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in the verandas. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood some-what higher than the level of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking caravansary for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... sweltering midsummer afternoon, a year after the events just related, Rome lay panting for breath and counting the interminable hours which must elapse before the unpitying sun would grant her a short night's respite from her discomfort. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Vassars must be very innocent,' Tom replied, with a laugh, 'not to know that Gov. is one's respected sire: the old man, some call him, but I am more respectful. My gracious, though! isn't it sweltering? I'm nearly baked, you make me walk so fast!' and he wiped the great drops ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... hitched to a rack according to the instructions he had left with his overseer. Mounting, he started homeward in a brisk canter through the clear moonlight. He was soon in the main road, and exhilarated by the crisp mountain air, after a sweltering ride in the dusty train. He had reached the boundary fence of Drake's farm when he thought he heard some one crying out. He reined in ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... ye the Lord! Not where the pale-faced multitude meet In the sweltering lane and the dun-visaged street, But here where bright ocean, thick sown with green isles, Feeds the glad eye with a harvest of ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, the dead, The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable, The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of ancients, Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more are in ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... remembrances and suspicions belong rather to the plains, into which we are about to descend. Here we feel distinctly that we are in the tropics. The sweltering heat, tempered, indeed, by the land and sea breezes, but still sufficiently oppressive, and almost the same day and night, leaves no doubt of this fact. Vegetation, too, appears more distinctly tropical. The character of the landscape in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... moments quite still. The place was silent with the peaceful calm of a sweltering August day. Hervey's eyes moved from one vaguely outlined grave to another, and unconsciously he counted them. Thirteen graves in all were visible amongst the long grass. Then his eyes turned upon the ruined hut. The roof had ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... idiot. You're a scorpion—a brimstone scorpion! You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. "My dear friend, will you ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... cross-legged on a mossy rock, and waited. To-day, she wore a blue print dress, instead of the red one. It was always a matter of amazement to the man that in such an environment she was not only wildly beautiful, but invariably the pink of neatness. She could climb a tree or a mountain, or emerge from a sweltering blackberry patch, seemingly as fresh and unruffled as she had been at the start. The man stood uncomfortably looking at her, and was momentarily at a loss for words with ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... There was not wind enough to puff out a candle flame. The sails hung limp and idle from the masts, yet the vessel rolled as in a storm, heaving on a tremendous swell so violently that it would seem her masts must be shaken out of her. The air was sweltering, the sky the color of burnished copper, out of which the sun beat remorselessly in almost perpendicular beams. Pitch ran from every seam of the decks, great blisters like bubbles rose upon the woodwork; the decks were no sooner swabbed than—presto!—it was as ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... mother was in a position, and could not be with Clara, the young actress spent the sweltering months in a cheap boarding-house, where a kindly landlady was willing to let her board bill run over until the fall, when salaries should begin again. Clara never forgot that kindness, for she was in real need of rest after her first season of continuous work. Although her ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... It was a sweltering afternoon of little air, and that little as hot and dry in the nostrils as the atmosphere of a laundry on ironing day. Beyond and above the trees a fiery blast blew from the north; but it was seldom a wandering puff stooped to flutter ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung |
