"Distressingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite stark and cold,—laid out in state upon the spotless linen apron, around which a fluted ruffle ran crisp and smooth. One tiny waxen hand held a broken lily, and the other was vainly pressed upon the lids of the rabbit's eyes, trying to close lovingly the pink orbs that now stared so distressingly through glazing film. The first passionate burst of grief had spent its force in the tears that left the velvety cheeks and chin as dewy as rain-washed rose leaves, while not a trace of moisture dimmed the large eyes that wore a proud, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... days—and we seem to have entered a different climate, with the usual weather of the Rocky mountains. Our march to-day was very laborious, over very broken ground, along the Santa Clara river; but then the country is no longer so distressingly desolate. The stream is prettily wooded with sweet cottonwood trees—some of them of large size; and on the hills, where the nut-pine is often seen, a good and wholesome grass occurs frequently. This cottonwood, which is now ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... counter-signs,—their range of proper names is so distressingly limited, and they make such amazing work of every new one. At first, to be sure, they did not quite recognize the need of any variation: one night some officer asked a sentinel whether he had the countersign yet, and was indignantly answered,—"Should tink I hab 'em, hab 'em for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... sure. We have to have a lot so we can all wipe dishes when the cook goes out. Will five dollars buy them, Cloudy?" asked Leslie distressingly. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... her for setting the well-meant advice in my letter at defiance, I was conscious of expecting to see her in tears; eager, distressingly eager, to hear what hope there might be of Philip's recovery. I saw no tears, I heard no inquiries. She was pale, and quiet, and silent. Not a word fell from her when we met, not a word when she kissed me, not a word when she led the way into the nearest room—the dining-room. It ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... money-maker cannot be wholly unfounded. What then are the vices of the money-making aim? In examining this question we shall first brush aside some things to which we have already referred. The pathological cases of mere crime, of sharp practice, of taking advantage of others, while mounting up into distressingly high figures considered absolutely, are much less important relatively; that is, they are infrequent and scarce enough to avoid obscuring the rule which they violate, the rule that honesty is indispensable ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... and picturesqueness are more popular than the attractions of Whitby, the railway deposits one in some distressingly ugly modern excrescence, from which it may even be necessary for a stranger to ask his way to the old-world features he has come to see. But at Whitby the railway, without doing any harm to the appearance of the town, at once gives a visitor as typical a scene of fishing-life ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... found himself, with Sylvie and her father and one of the Home Guardsmen from Sommers' lorry, lying behind an aircar somebody had knocked out with a bazooka, with two dead pirates for company and a dozen distressingly live ones ahead behind an improvised barricade. Behind, there was frantic firing; the rear-guard seemed to have run into trouble, probably from some gang that had come down from the upper level. He wondered what his father was doing ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the top of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown of the hill. On reaching this place Mrs. Yeobright felt distressingly agitated, weary, and unwell. She ascended, and sat down under their shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground with Eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose apparent indolence lurked passions even ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... faces knew this was the fact. The word "Irish" conveyed to most of them only the red-armed minions in their kitchens; the boys who ran noisily up alleyways with butchers' parcels; the short-tempered dames in battered hats who came—or distressingly did not come—to them on Monday mornings, and who frequently bore away with them bars of perfectly new soap; and the chuckles and sobs and moonlit whimsies of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory did not, in their minds, connect up ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... not see what good could be done thereby, and feared harm. But her wifely chivalry felt that he must get through his first serious practical trouble his own way. She saw that he felt himself distressingly young and inexperienced, and would not for the world have harassed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... right, through a small thicket of hazel-bushes, over some rocks, and on up the bleak fell-side. The sun had disappeared, and the little golden angels' wings had given place to sombre, grey clouds. It was growing distressingly dark. A spot or two of rain began to fall. The path, degenerated into a mere sheep track, was increasingly difficult to trace. Though neither would admit it, both the girls felt uneasy. They could not recognize any ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... trip and others subsequent many a little village showed us the Madeiran peasant pure and simple. Both sexes are distressingly plain; I saw only one pretty girl amongst them. Froggy faces, dark skins, and wiry hair are the rule; the reason being that in the good old days a gentleman would own some eighty slaves. [Footnote: As early as 1552 the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... getting rid of his money? Of course I am only talking about the medium rich; one need never apply to the very rich—they are always too poor. Well, that makes about two hundred a year. It's not much, but, thank God, it's safe as a house and it supplements the ladies. Women are so distressingly precarious, you know. You cannot count on a woman unless you have her actually under your thumb. Under your thumb, my boy; under your thumb. Don't ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the great "Baver of Trient," in Vienna. The Pinacothek contains the most complete collection of works by old German artists, anywhere to be found. There are in the hall of the Spanish masters, half a dozen of Murillo's inimitable beggar groups. It was a relief, after looking upon the distressingly stiff figures of the old German school, to view these fresh, natural countenances. One little black-eyed boy has just cut a slice out of a melon and turns with a full mouth to his companion, who is busy eating a bunch of grapes. The simple, contented expression on ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... many there who wished me well. My patients had all got wind of it; and they assembled by the pew-full, looking distressingly healthy. My neighbour, Dr. Porter, was there also to lend me his support, and old General Wainwright gave Winnie away. My mother, Mrs. La Force, and Miss Williams were all in the front pew; and away at the back of the church I caught a glimpse of the forked beard ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... how long the gasoline would last, and he was afraid they might be compelled to land in some spot a long way from his rock hangar. He said nothing, therefore, but strove to squeeze what bliss remained for him in the next minutes, distressingly few ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... to, you see, whether I liked it or not. It became impossible for me to remain an idle spectator any longer. Now that the Radicals have become so distressingly powerful, it was high time. And that is also why I have induced our little circle of friends in the town to bind themselves more definitely together. It was high time, I can ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... was hardly broken for even a man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell what the nervous creature might do with a woman's skirt flipping at her side! We begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the saddle—but with no avail! Consuelo was determined, indignant, distressingly reproachful! Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly—if he were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he would—but here I succumbed! And then I had the felicity of holding that little foot for one ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... under the scalp for some distance, and partially imbedded itself in the skull, where it still remained. He suffered intense agony, and would pass the whole night walking up and down the street in front of our tent, moaning distressingly. The bullet could be felt plainly with the fingers, and we were sure that it would not be a minute's work, with a sharp knife, to remove it and give the man relief. But we could not prevail upon the Rebel Surgeons even ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the bare idea of a temple that made it impossible. And there was this drawing here; what did it mean? He held it out to her. It represented a figure, distressingly like himself, robed ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... abroad with Ma Pettengill over wide spaces of the Arrowhead Ranch. Between fields along the river bottom were gates distressingly crude; clumsy, hingeless panels of board fence, which I must dismount and lift about by sheer brawn of shoulder. Such gates combine the greatest weight with the least possible exercise of man's inventive ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... might expect from a rude awakening of the Sphinx; then the tall ears straightened and the great bulk rose to the full majesty of its seventeen hands; and while slats, hip bones, and shoulder blades were distressingly prominent, a glance got the full story of Sol's wonderful deeds and matchless ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... understand it! Enriched bourgeois, parvenus! there's the roof beneath which you think to rest from your cruel labor and your many trials! And do you believe that you will not be made to feel, twenty times a day, that your share in the partnership is distressingly light in the scale against their money? On one side, the Iliad, the Cid, Der Freyschutz, and the frescos of the Vatican; on the other, three hundred thousand francs in good, ringing coin! Tell me which side they will trust and admire! The artist, the man of imagination who falls into the bourgeois ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped, and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future "standing a chance" of having an introduction to her, caused them to wipe them on their ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... as steamers. The situation had become acute. Through the great loss of tonnage in the Civil War, and through the steadily advancing change from wood to iron in ship construction and from sail to steam propulsion, the American merchant marine had been brought distressingly low. From 1861, when the United States was standing second in rank among the nations in the extent of her ocean tonnage, to 1866, this tonnage had declined from 2,642,648 to 1,492,926 tons: a loss of more than forty-three per cent; while England, ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... in a high note that echoes distressingly throughout the house, whereas you laugh like ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... lies within high and close fencing walls. There is not room for many pilgrims to walk abreast in that way; indeed, there is seldom room for two. There are some parts of the way where two or even three pilgrims can for a time walk and converse together, but for the most part the path is distressingly lonely. The way is so fenced up also that a pilgrim cannot so much as look either to the right hand or the left. Indeed, it is one of the laws of that road that no man is to attempt to look except straight on ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... extinct creature," and, judging from the earnest vehemence that is thrown into it, they convey the impression that their dictum is to be understood as emphatically original. Well, I will let that go, and will merely observe how distressingly superficial the knowledge is as to the rearing, training, and treatment which enabled those veterans to become envied heroes to us of the present day. Much entered into their lives that might be usefully emulated by the seamen ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... smack coming from it. Tess lifted the Bible, determined to let the men sit as she read, curled up in the wooden rocker, humming as she swung to and fro. A shadow dropped long upon the shanty floor. In the doorway stood Teola Graves, tall, thin, and distressingly pale. Tessibel had not seen her since the day she had carried the babe to the hill-house. That was three whole weeks ago. Tess moved awkwardly from the chair, motioned for Ezra Longman to get up, and stuttered out an invitation for the girl ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... also, that the military families of the Kwanto in general and of Kamakura in particular began to find their incomes distressingly inadequate to meet the greatly increased and constantly increasing outlays that resulted from following the costly customs of Kyoto as reflected at the shogun's palace. Advantage was taken of this condition by professional money-lenders, by ambitious nobles, and even by wealthy farmers, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... an old miner, distressingly filthy, who hobbled to his meals on feet that had been frozen into clubs. He had a little gold loaned at interest, and on this he lived in tragic parsimony. He and the old scout sat much together, usually without ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... distressingly: but that perhaps was its misfortune rather than its fault. It did not seem very happy; nor was it composed of people who looked as if they might have attained to distinction, or even to ordinary usefulness, by following any other pursuit. On the whole, one felt that it might as well ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... going back in time, show that the planet had a day of approximately forty hours, the diameter was nearly nine thousand miles, which would probably mean an inconveniently high gravity for the terrestrians and a distressingly high gravity for the Ortolians, used to their world even smaller than Earth, with scarcely 80 percent ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Rosie; "mamma told me they were both very ill: Gracie especially—her head aching badly, her throat distressingly sore, and her fever very high; but that she was ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... in some ways, however. The future is not such a distressingly unknown quantity as it was then. We don't have to say, 'Let X (a very slim X at that) equal Jack's chances, and minus Y equal Joyce's.' If we could only determine the value of the chances of Mary, we'd soon ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... basement with a low, grateful thud; no hitch; no delay of any kind. We were certainly out of luck that trip. The demon of a joyrider who operated the accursed device jerked a lever and up we soared at a distressingly high rate of speed. If I could have had my way about that youth he would have been arrested ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... his mistress received Anthony's report was distressingly obvious. Also the faces of Mrs. and Miss Wrangle fell noticeably. Indeed, the bell which summoned Lyveden to speed their departure rang but a few ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars were 'My dear true friends,' 'Fellow-soldiers glorious,' and 'Brothers inseparable.' He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... name DODD in large, plain letters both on the side of the nut and on the stick. I have seen some that are stamped J. Dodd, but not many. Fig. 32 shows (actual size) a very early Dodd head, than which nothing, I think, could be more distressingly ugly. It is remarkable that such a caricature should have emanated from the same man who produced those shown in Plates III. and IV. Plate III. consists of photographs (actual size) of two violin bows, and one tenor bow, Plate IV. giving ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... the very doorstep of the ranch, one arm, pinged by a dastardly rifle-bullet, dangling helplessly by his side. (It is, by the way, always the arm or shoulder; the cinema never allows him to get it distressingly in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... no mistake had been made. It was a fact that the metal, in virgin purity, had been discovered scattered in various places on the ledges of the Grand Teton. In a little while thousands had obtained specimens with their own hands. The quantity was distressingly small, considering the number and the eagerness of the seekers, but that it was genuine artemisium not even Dr. Syx could have denied. He, however, made no attempt to ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... manner of saying things, could I find fault. He seemed generous, broad-minded, and, for a sailor, very much of a man of the world. It was easy for me to overlook his excessive suavity of speech and super-courtesy of social mannerism. It was not that. But all the time I was distressingly, and, I suppose, intuitively aware, though in the darkness I couldn't even see his eyes, that there, behind those eyes, inside that skull, was ambuscaded an alien personality that spied upon me, measured me, studied me, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... never saw her little affairs; she supposed him perfectly satisfied with his home and children and club and business, and incidentally with his beautiful figurehead of a wife. They had quarrelled distressingly, several years ago, when he had bored her with references to her "duty," and her influence over Nina, and her obligations to her true self. But that had all stopped long since, and now Isabelle was free ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... jolting of the ambulance over the city stones, and his impatience and eagerness to get across the intervening space made dust, and heat, and weariness of travel seem but as feather weights, not to be cared for, nor indeed considered at all; though, in fact, his arm complained, and his leg ached distressingly, and he was faint and weak without confessing it long before the tiresome ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... success in the creation of a work of art the personal flavor or perfume of the artist himself were predisposed to place Little Eyolf very high among his writings. Nowhere is he more independent of all other influences, nowhere more intensely, it may even be said more distressingly, himself. From many points of view this play may fairly be considered in the light of a tour de force. Ibsen—one would conjecture—is trying to see to what extremities of agile independence he can force his genius. The word ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... luck was coming back, it was easy for him to find grounds for comfort. It might be that Lars was silent because he wished to make what he would say all the more impressive. But he was certainly withholding his thanks a distressingly long while. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... amazement, but with pride and satisfaction. His three sisters, all grown into womanhood, the youngest being sixteen, were at first rather shy of him. They had not forgotten how he used to annoy and vex them. They early perceived the change, and became distressingly fond of him. It would be so nice to have an elder brother to go with them everywhere. And such a brother! so fine-looking, who had an air so distinguished, a face so poetical and classical! O, wouldn't all the other girls envy them this splendid brother? They would make a grand party, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... horse-hair furniture, very slippery and hard, stood against the wall; the table had its gift books, albums, worsted mat and ugly lamp; the mantel-piece its china vases, pink shells, and clock that never went; the gay carpet was kept distressingly bright by closed shutters six days out of the seven, and a general air of go-to-meeting solemnity pervaded the room. Merry longed to make it pretty and pleasant, but her mother would allow of no change there, so the girl gave up her ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... classes, and on all occasions when one or two human beings gather together even in "His name." Your recital of the church sewing-bee, where all the good Christian women described their diseases and the different operations they and their friends had undergone, is as amusing as it is distressingly realistic. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... something else had been given to her to make her insensible. There was a convulsive movement in her body as she turned round; her limbs before she did so seemed dead, her breathing resembled a groan, her breast heaved distressingly, she opened her eyes, but saw nothing. The more I reflected, the less I understood the agitation of Camille, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... a world of darkness. His head throbbed distressingly. Querulously he wondered where he was and what ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... her arm round the little girl, a tiny weight for thirteen years old, and took her into the room where she had last seen her father. She was sobbing violently, not without passion, and the more distressingly because she carefully stifled every sound, and the poor little frame seemed as if it would be rent to pieces. 'Cherry, dear child, don't,' said Constance, sitting down and gathering her into her arms; 'do try and calm ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... periods of intense activity followed by much longer periods of enforced idleness" or something to that effect. Of the "intense activity" of war we as yet had had no experience but with "enforced idleness," we were all too distressingly familiar. In civilian life we had been very busy men; and here we had been plunged into a world where for months at a time there was almost nothing to do—and what was worse, there was no place to go to ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... this is like a very material kind of pleasure, in which the senses for a moment forget the soul. For a moment only, for is it not the soul, a kind of discontented crying out against pleasure and pain, which comes back distressingly into this after all pathetic music? All modern music is pathetic; discontent (so much idealism as that!) has come into all modern music, that it may be sharpened and disturbed enough to fix our attention. And Tschaikowsky speaks straight ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... the proper cut of a carefully tailored business suit could not conceal a certain bunchiness about the shoulders which had nothing at all in common with office efficiency. The shoulders were outrageously broad, the barrel of his chest was scandalously deep, the hands distressingly large and brown, considered in intimate association with filing systems and adding machines. And the keen blue eyes, sometimes gazing with a far-away, unbusiness-like look out into the grimy, roaring ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... he lifted his eyes from his plate he looked at Pauline, who was next to her. When she caught him he blushed and stirred in his chair so uneasily that it creaked and crackled; and his normal difficulties with his large hands and the small knife and fork were distressingly increased. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... off my cuffs, and put on this distressingly big apron of yours, which hangs behind the door; ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... State prison. I then begged him to inform me how I should approach his honor the judge, before whom he must be brought if prosecuted. Should I ask the court to show him mercy, and send him but for two years? or would it require a longer sentence to effect a permanent change in his life? He wept distressingly, and said: 'Oh, save me from such a fate, if not for mine, for my mother's sake. Beg and pray of the firm to show me mercy, and I will be careful and honest for the future.' One of the gentlemen called upon me and inquired if I ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... take off his muddy shoes in the woodshed. Woe to him if he ever brought a splinter of whittling, or a fragment of nutshell, into the distressingly ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... upon the Castle a few minutes before the appointed hour. He went alone, that he might show a certain contempt for Count Vos Engo. Notwithstanding the fact that he started early enough for the Chamber, he was distressingly late for ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... side, seems to like Miss Batchford on better acquaintance. When I first presented him to her, he rather surprised me by changing color and looking very uneasy. He is almost distressingly nervous, on certain occasions. I suppose my aunt's ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... cover many troubles especially common among women, where the weight of the internal organs becomes distressingly felt. These are usually supported without our being conscious of their weight at all. But in weakness, or after long fatigue and standing, it becomes felt as a severe downward pressure. This is often caused ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... we see every day illustrated. The act of substitution is no novelty, although I hear men talk as though the idea of Christ's suffering substituted for our suffering were something abnormal, something distressingly odd, something wildly eccentric, a solitary episode in the world's history; when I could take you out into this city, and before sundown point you to five hundred cases of substitution and voluntary suffering of one ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... distressingly brisk and healthy, and I should say, my dear, not of a sympathetic nature, which is always a ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... girls looked across the river, where groups of other girls were quitting a large building. They could be seen but dimly, but even at that distance something in the prevalent droop suggested that they, too, had found the day "distressingly warm." ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... partially across for a roof. He still slept, but as they looked at him, they saw the fever was rapidly increasing; a still brighter flush was on his cheeks; his lips were parched, and his breathing distressingly ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... relief we found that our dam at the foot was holding out bravely, and that comparatively little water was trickling through the bank into the shrubbery. The flow at the upper end, however, was distressingly small, and though a whole night had passed we could still see the heap of stones under which the pistol was buried rising up from the shallow ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... indeed, but you were such dear little girls then, and now you are growing distressingly tall; I do not half like it." Miss Brown shook her head disapprovingly as she looked ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... With my distressingly sceptical nature I believe little that I do not see. I started next morning to observe for myself. My bearings were roughly North-West. Seeing me determined, several of the Kutial Shokas changed their mind and volunteered to follow me. They were of considerable help in many ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... that it almost immediately affects the stomach, producing painful vomiting with severe retching. The eyes are heavy and painful, the head hot and aching, the extremities pale and cold, pulse very weak, and about fifty-six beats per minute; the action of the heart distressingly weak, with total prostration of strength. This shivering and vomiting continues for about two hours, attended with great difficulty of breathing. The hot stage then comes on, the retching still continuing, with the difficulty of ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... one thing you can do," I said. "You can tighten this distressingly loose jacket. If you won't, then get out. And I don't care if you fail to come back for a week or for the whole ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... might make something of her if she was only longer. Sometimes he stretched her on the floor, pulling her legs out straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and then he measured her carefully with his mother's old boots. Her growth proved to be distressingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have grown an inch since last night, and then next day she had ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... generally the case in the foggy season. There is another law, of newer origin, to prohibit the taking of children under a certain age into a public house. On the passage of this act there at once sprang up a congenial and lucrative employment for those horrible old-women drunkards who are so distressingly numerous in the poorer quarters of the town. Regardless of the weather one of these bedrabbled creatures stations herself just outside the door of a pub. Along comes a mother with a thirst and a child. Surrendering ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... do not want education for themselves nor for their children. These people swell the death lists in Southern cities' health offices to such distressingly large numbers. They are often cared for and buried by funds from the city treasury. Would it not pay to try compulsory education? To try teaching them to help themselves, to ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... enough for me; Belle is very good, but somehow her goodness makes a fellow uncomfortable. She is what I call distressingly good; one doesn't want to be treated like a wild beast in a menagerie, and to be every now and then stirred up with ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... orator, however, was not immediate. He tasted all the bitterness of failure on more than one occasion; but after temporary discouragement he redoubled his efforts to correct the faults that were made so distressingly plain to him by the unsparing but salutary criticism of his audience. Without doubt, these conflicts and rebuffs of his earlier years served to strengthen and deepen the moral character of Demosthenes, as well as to improve his art. They contributed to form a man capable of spending his whole ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... responsibility save a faint, intermittent respect for parental mandate. Now they tower before me in the glory of budding manhood and maidenhood; lovable, yet haughty; with star-like eyes and brows perplexed by all the problems of the universe; God-like in their devotion to principle, though distressingly eager for pocket-money. ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... question of syphilis is considered. They not infrequently offer innumerable opportunities for intimacies which may or may not fall short of actual sexual relations. Attention has been called to this situation by social workers among wage-earning girls. It has been a distressingly frequent experience in my special practice to find that the young man, overwrought by the excitement of wooing, has exposed himself elsewhere to infection and unwittingly punished the trustfulness of his fiancee by infecting ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... as to the probability; for, though during the close of the fourteenth century, throughout the fifteenth, and at the commencement of the sixteenth, books purporting to be of their writing were constantly being recovered, it was invariably under distressingly suspicious circumstances; exactly the Roman author that was wanted turned up; and always for a certainty that Roman author for whom the highest price had been offered; the monastery was rarely famous, seldom in Italy, but obscure and situated in a barbarous country; the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... found Chaucer distressingly archaic. When Sir Francis Kynaston, temp. Charles I., translated "Troilus and Criseyde," Cartwright congratulated him that he had at length made it possible to read Chaucer without a dictionary. And from Dryden's time ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... himself. As for the time- honoured phrase, "unfit for publication," without being cynical, we may regard it as the sign of a precaution more or less commercial; and we may think, without being sordid, that when we purchase six huge and distressingly expensive volumes, we are entitled to be treated rather more like scholars and rather less like children. But Mr. Bright may rest assured: while we complain, we are still grateful. Mr. Wheatley, to divide our obligation, brings together, clearly ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been very simple, merely the securing of a blanket over the roan's distressingly bony spine, and putting a bit in his refractory mouth. As I anticipated, there had been a crisis over my lack of a saddle at the last moment, various officers and N.C.O.'s laying the blame, first on me (of all people), and then on each other, but chiefly on me, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... swing and maidens, carrying pitchers of water on their heads and singing, dance round an altar while drums are beaten. Parallels to this may be found to-day. The image of Krishna, or even a priest who represents Krishna, is swung to and fro in many temples, the use of drums in worship is distressingly common, and during the Pongol festivities in southern India young people dance round or leap over a fire. Other remarkable features in the Mahavrata are the shooting of arrows into a target of skin, the use of obscene language (such as is still used at the Holi festival) and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... though not fastidious in dress, and stood firmly and with dignity. I noted particularly his hair and his smile, the former black in color, plentiful, fine in quality, and parted distressingly straight; ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... juncture are not made known to us by himself in the least; or credibly by others in any considerable degree. As indeed in these confused Prussian History-Books, copulent in nugatory pedantisms and learned marine-stores, all that is human remains distressingly obscure to us; so seldom, and then only as through endless clouds of ever-whirling idle dust, can we catch the smallest direct feature of the young man, and of his real demeanor or meaning, on the present or other occasions! But it is ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... desired. But, happily, in our great numbers enough were found to do even the stupendous work at hand, and to do it well. In spite of moral lapses, not a few, in spite of instances of mental incompetence, far too many, and in spite of physical handicaps, distressingly large—in spite of all this, I say, the United States surprised the world with the quickness with which we pulled ourselves together, and with the marvelous efficiency with which we mobilized all our resources. Many losses of course there were—losses ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... finished his after-dinner nap and was now awakening to activity. This dog's size, according to the Major, was "about 4x6; but you can't tell which is the 4 and which the 6." He was distressingly shaggy. Patsy could find the stump of his tail only by careful search. Seldom were both eyes uncovered by hair at the same time. But, as his new mistress had said, he was a wise little dog for one who had only known the world for a few months, and his brain was exceedingly alert. After ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... older man stood about and vainly tried to impress people who came in and asked questions which invariably had to be referred to his repair boy, the precocious expert stripped the wheel down to something that looked to Claire distressingly like an empty milk-pan. Then the boy didn't seem to know exactly what to do. He scratched his ear a good deal, and thought deeply. The older man ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... rarely does any considerable damage. Augustus Caesar was so persuaded of its salutary character, that he deified it, as it were, by raising an altar to it under the name of the Circian wind. The winters of Avignon, however, are sometimes rendered by it most distressingly cold. The Rhone is frequently covered with ice sufficiently strong to support loaded carts, and the olive trees sometimes perish ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... shock, however shattering to his equanimity, soon, lost effect. The man evidently remained unconscious, in fact had barely moved; while the moan that Kirkwood heard, had been distressingly faint. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... that whole week, we rumbled on through the interminable forests of Poland, and the distressingly dirty hamlets and towns scattered along the road. My first night out was trying, for it was very cold; but, having secured from a dealer in the first town where we stopped in the morning a large sheet of felt, I wrapped my legs ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... lonely night. When he went to the roost where the whole Robin family had been sleeping for several weeks, he found it distressingly silent, after the gay chatter that he had grown accustomed to hearing there. And try as he would, he could not keep just a hint of sadness out ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... much as suggest. Womanly sympathy, tenderness, and trust, those qualities which constitute a far deeper and more abiding charm than statuesque beauty, are equally absent from an impersonation which in its earlier phases is almost distressingly labored. While the actress is entertaining her guests with improvised comedy, moreover, no undercurrent of emotion, no suggestion of suppressed anxiety is perceptible. It is not till this double role, ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the town. On the east side, it is true, there are new streets of dull and commonplace terraces, which one day an awakened England will wipe out; there are other elements of ugly sordidness, which the lack of a guiding and controlling authority, and the use of distressingly hideous white bricks, has made possible, but it is quite conceivable that a visitor to the town might spend a week of sight-seeing in the place without being aware of these shortcomings. This fortunate circumstance is due to the truly excellent planning of Cambridge. It is ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... In the very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to 'Up, guards! and at 'em.' Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... were born to,—a multitude of these and, doubtless, an equal number of jail-birds, outwardly of the same feather, sought the American Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage to the blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was passively admitted by the servant. Mrs. Frankland, as she called herself, received him in the large music-and-dancing room on the first-floor front, and not in any private little parlour as he had expected. This cast a distressingly business-like colour over their first meeting after so many years of severance. The woman he had wronged stood before him, well-dressed, even to his metropolitan eyes, and her manner as she came up to him was dignified even to hardness. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... About this time there appears to have been some uterine lesion, for a well-known gynaecologist went down to the country to see her. Eventually 'she became unable to do anything almost for herself, for the nervous irritability had distressingly increased. To touch her bed, the ringing of a bell, sometimes the sound of a voice, sunlight, &c., affected her so as to make her almost cry out.' 'If she stood up, or even raised her hands to dress her hair, they immediately became blue and deadly cold, and she was done for.' ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... of the day—the one meal at which Johnny encountered his younger brothers and sisters. It partook of the nature of an encounter, to him, for he was very old, while they were distressingly young. He had no patience with their excessive and amazing juvenility. He did not understand it. His own childhood was too far behind him. He was like an old and irritable man, annoyed by the turbulence of their young spirits that was to him arrant ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... which he often made fun of me was my Talmud gesticulations, a habit that worried me like a physical defect. It was so distressingly un-American. I struggled hard against it. I had made efforts to speak with my hands in my pockets; I had devised other means for keeping them from participating in my speech. All of no avail. I still gesticulate a great deal, though much less ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its prolixity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... ambush behind over-ingenuity. Go gently but firmly to the point—that seemed to her a safe rule for guidance. If she could only anchor her dear old fairy godmother in a haven of calm knowledge of the facts, she was less distressingly concerned about the sister and daughter. The former of these was the more prickly thorn of anxiety. Still, she was a wonderfully strong old lady—not like old Mrs. Picture, a semi-invalid. As for the latter, she scarcely deserved to be thought ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the dresses of the brides and young matrons were usually of the most unexpected hues for, according to our conception of color, the Chinese can scarcely be counted conspicuous for their good taste. Purple and blue, orange and red, pink and lavender clash distressingly, but ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... was distressingly scanty, the whale being what is technically known as a "dry skin." The blubber was so hard and tough that we could hardly cut it up for boiling, and altogether it was one of the most disappointing affairs we had yet dealt with. This poorness of blubber was, to my ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... preeminent endowments and the services which they might enable him to render justified him in the use of unworthy means; that his sense of real as distinguished from apparent personal dignity was distressingly inadequate; and that, in general, like many men of great intellect, he was deficient in greatness of character, emotion, fine feeling, sympathy, and even in comprehension of the highest spiritual principles. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the girls within riding distance from camp. Jennie Miller was reported engaged to an AJ man, and besides, she lived too far away and was not pretty enough to be worth the effort of a twenty-five mile ride just to hear her play hymns distressingly on an organ with a chronic squeak in one pedal. There was Alice Boyle at the AJ, and there was Mary Hope Douglas, who was growing to be quite a young lady,—pretty good-looking, too, if she wouldn't peel her hair back so straight and tight. Mary Hope Douglas, Tom decided, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... continually disappointed—from no forgetfulness on her part, but from sheer inability to leave home—was the last drop in poor Margaret's cup, and she was sobbing away as if her heart would break. Mr. Hale was distressingly perplexed. He rose, and walked nervously up and down the room. Margaret tried to check herself, but would not speak until she could do so with firmness. She heard him ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... into a fury; the rain was pouring in torrents; and the ship rolled distressingly in the rising sea. It was near dawn before Dan succeeded in getting to sleep at all, but from then on for several hours he slept heavily. When he awoke the storm, like many storms that come out of the south, had exhausted itself. The rain had ceased, the wind had fallen, and ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... passed, a new misery began to oppress her. She was hungry,—seriously, distressingly hungry. She had been too happy to eat the day before! Though she had sipped and tasted many delicious beverages and viands, which the Prince had pressed upon her, she had not taken any substantial food, and now she began to feel faint for the want of it. As noon ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... who now became the romantic friend of Miss Marks, and a sort of second benevolence to me. She must have been under thirty years of age; she wax very small, and she was distressingly deformed in the spine, but she had an animated, almost a sparkling countenance. When we first arrived in the village, Mary Grace was only just recovering from a gastric fever which had taken her close to the grave. I remember hearing ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... was called "Thunderer," and the man who had got hold of him said that his name was the only good thing about him, for he roared like the sea. I wished heartily that some one would steal my horse, but every one seemed to be most distressingly anxious to keep as far away from him ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... over Tim's startled face. There was no other expression in it. The tension was distressingly acute. One sentence, however, came to the lips of both adventurers. They uttered it under ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... mention all the uses of such a manual. One who has been accustomed to speaking, but fears he is getting into a rut, can turn to this text-book and find something which is not so distressingly his own, that his friends expect him to parade it ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Muriel. "She likes you as well as she likes the rest of us. I don't believe she is awfully, terribly, fearfully fond of girls. When she was young she must have been one of those stiff, prim goody-goodies; the distressingly snippy sort that made all her friends so tired." ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... walk spoke volumes. The pilots shouted derisively at the sound of the siren, a distressingly noisy contrivance designed to arouse sleepy pilots and turn ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... water (for it would not do that she should be aground next day when we ought to be starting for Eppes Creek); and it was gratifying this time when we cast our anchors, to see them go plumping out of sight as anchors should, instead of looking so distressingly unnautical with flukes sticking up in ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the converts, and seized him by ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... bravely—she was herself so brave—what there was to tell, that two weeks ago her husband was alive, and that he was now on his way to England—perhaps in England itself. She took it with an unnatural quietness. She grew distressingly pale, but that was all. Her hand lay clinched tightly on the seat beside her. He reached out, took it, and pressed it, but she ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Reading, it always seemed to us, that "David Copperfield" was cut down rather distressingly. That, nevertheless, was unavoidable. Turning in off Yarmouth sands, we went straight at once through the "delightful door" cut in its side, into the old black barge or boat, high and dry there on the sea-beach, and which ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... calmly corrected Miriam. "We are early, but you and Grace are distressingly early. I suppose you found ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... or wink his eyes, his face all blanched with the despair of a captive awaiting, in agonizing suspense, the hour of final and terrible doom—all as dismal apprehension had been picturing it for the last eighteen hours to the distressingly ingenious fancy of Burlman Reynolds? O by no means! True it was, our little master was there, and a captive. True, that since our last glimpse of him, where perched he sat on the topmost rail of the corn-field fence back yonder, he had taken many a pitiful, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Philip in the way which had formerly had the power of making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to point out that what he was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with the obvious what more is there to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the cure, sitting at piquet with Madame de Sevenie, after dinner, would cough distressingly and, reminded that he had a bed to reach somehow through all this welter, anathematise the elements, help himself to a pinch of snuff, and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... ruminate—is uneasy, paws the ground, rests her head on the manger while she is standing, and on her flank when she is lying down—hemorrhage frequently comes on from the uterus, or when this is not the case the mouth of that organ is spasmodically contracted. The throes come on, are distressingly violent, and continue until the womb is ruptured. If all these circumstances be not observed, still the labor is protracted ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... retired to rest, my brother-in-law's prophecy that there was 'worse to come' was distressingly fulfilled. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... fact it did, Mr. Prohack would have slept instantly and with ease. Now, despite delicious contact with the pillow, he could not 'get off.' And his mind, influenced by his body, grew restless, then excited, then distressingly realistic. His mind began to ask fundamental questions, questions not a bit original but none the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... large, dark, melancholy face covered profusely with black hair. He wore corduroy trousers and clumsy boots—his feet and hands were enormous—together with a green coat and a red handkerchief which was carelessly twisted round his hairy throat. On his tangled locks—distressingly shaggy and unkempt—he wore no hat, and he looked like a brownie, grotesque, though somewhat sad. But even more did he resemble an ape—or say the missing link—and only his eyes seemed human. These were large, dark ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... my distaste for the society of strangers must, of course, interfere with my deriving information from them. Still, as you say, I must inevitably see and learn much that is new to me, and I take pleasure in the hope that when I return to you I shall be less distressingly ignorant than you ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... mother's India shawl. Rugs where queer stiff little men and animals that looked as if a child had drawn them, wandered about among curlicues and odd geometrical patterns. A tiger-skin, head and dangling claws distressingly lifelike, hung in the middle of one wall. She was spell-bound for a few minutes with the strangeness of ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... meeting with Elizabeth, Carlos is distressingly mawkish. She pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to the throne, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. Then he exclaims ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas |
