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More "Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... erratic condition of mind that had come over an old friend, the result of heavy responsibilities and the rush of London life. Julie had no idea when she wrote that these symptoms were in reality the subtle beginnings of a breakdown, which ended fatally, and no one lamented the issue more truly than she; but she could not resist catching folly as it flew, and many of the flighty axioms became ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... many beautiful women, so that sensual excesses contributed to the semi-hysterical condition into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause of his breakdown. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was a general breakdown. Handkerchiefs played a more important part at the morning meal than the delicious bacon and fresh rolls that graced ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most utter and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Carlyle, the celebrated literary moralist, was born at Ecclefechan, Scotland, Dec. 4, 1795. He was educated at the village school and at the Annan Grammar School, proceeding to Edinburgh University in 1809. The breakdown of his dogmatic beliefs made it impossible for him to enter the clerical profession, and neither school-teaching nor the study of law attracted him. Supporting himself by private teaching, Carlyle made the beginnings of a literary connection. He fought his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... epilepsy, what was to prevent my being similarly afflicted? This was the thought that soon got possession of my mind. The more I considered it and him, the more nervous I became; and the more nervous, the more convinced that my own breakdown was only a matter of time. Doomed to what I then considered a living death, I thought of epilepsy, I dreamed epilepsy, until thousands of times during the six years that this disquieting idea persisted, my over-wrought imagination seemed to drag me to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... think with joy of the days to come when the misery and despair are replaced by gladsomeness and hope. That is a dream, but no Socialist rests upon the dream merely: the hope of the Socialist is in the very material fact of the economic development from competition to monopoly; in the breakdown of capitalism itself. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... at high pressure. In order that these might be carried out efficiently, the whole apparatus had to be carried down to the Hut. Here, Bickerton and Correll were continually in consultation with the meteorologist on the latest breakdown. Cups were blown off several times, and one was lost and replaced with difficulty. Most aggravating of all was a habit the clocks developed of stopping during the colder spells. The old-fashioned method of boiling them was found of assistance, but it was discovered ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... was the breakdown of the Confederate negotiations with Mexico. General Preston was refused recognition. In those fierce days of July when the fate of Atlanta was in the balance, the pride and despair of the Confederate Government flared up in a haughty letter to Preston reminding ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... pies, Elizabeth. The men have been put back by a breakdown. They won't be able to get through before five or half-past," he said, coming into the kitchen to investigate ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... was a series of letters published in fac-simile, one, signed by Parnell, expressing approval of Mr. Burke's murder. After an elaborate trial (extending to one hundred and twenty-eight days), the most sensational event in which was the breakdown under cross-examination, and the flight and suicide at Madrid, of Pigott, the wretched Irishman who had imposed upon the Times with forgeries, Mr. Parnell was formally cleared of the charge of having been ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... such gloomy utterances may be found in those superficial indications of chaos such as the breakdown of exchange and of international trade; the severe business depression; the waste and inefficiency of industry; the prevalence of unrest and sabotage, and the preparations for ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... place to put the lads from Freeport on the pedestal of fame more noticeably than this experiment. They had easily and modestly staged a complete breakdown of the hazing habit at Marshallton Tech. Strangely perhaps there was no blame nor suspicion put upon Bill and Gus for the subsequent edict from the faculty forbidding it. That seemed to be considered a natural aftermath ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... the applause that greeted Lottie's conclusion. Dan executed a miniature breakdown as an expression of his feelings, and it seemed as if Mr. Dimmerly's chuckling laugh would never cease. De Forrest looked uneasy, and Hemstead was in a trance of bewildered delight. Alice and Harcourt exchanged ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... superintendent, "I can send you over plenty. But the use of such stuff as that would leave some joints loose, and make a breakdown of the boat's ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... a very pleasant room, having in it the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. But I had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. And this breakdown of appreciation was due to what I did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly a deep ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... different civilizations have been substituted, and yet in temperament and character the Negro in all these countries is essentially the same. The so-called 'reversion to type' often pointed out in the Negro is in reality but the recrudescence of fundamental, unchanged race traits upon the partial breakdown of the social heritage or the Negro's failure successfully to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... against all failure. Should, for instance, the audience prove to be of a more discriminating and observant character than he liked or anticipated, and the exhibition in consequence be rendered critical, all he had to do was, to aver that the spirits would not come; it was no breakdown on his part Homer was sulky, or Dante was hipped, or Lord Bacon was indisposed to meet company, and there was the end of it. You were invited to meet celebrities, but it was theirs to say if they ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Rule—an issue as dead as mutton, is opposed to Tariff Reform, which has never been alive. Much as the majority of people detest the preposterously clumsy attempts to amputate Ireland from the rule of the British Parliament which have been going on since the breakdown of Mr. Gladstone's political intelligence, their dread of foolish and scoundrelly fiscal adventurers is sufficiently strong to retain the Liberals in office. The recent exposures of the profound financial rottenness of the Liberal party ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... did not really understand what was going on. 'By-the-bye, what is this same constitution they are making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting 'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... night, the Negroes had a "breakdown," often dancing all night long. About twelve o'clock they had a big supper, everybody bringing a box of all kinds of good things to eat, and putting it on a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... design, was indeed given her head in the weeks that followed, for Mrs. Salisbury steadily declined into a real illness, and the worried family was only too glad to delegate all the domestic problems to Justine. The invalid's condition, from "nervous breakdown" became "nervous prostration," and August was made terrible for the loving little group that watched her by the cruel fight with typhoid fever into which Mrs. Salisbury's exhausted little body was drawn. Weak as she was physically, her spirit never ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... gasped, and her face was convulsed with emotion. For one breathless moment, as we clutched hands and drew close together, I thought the breakdown had come at last, but she fought down her sobs, crying in ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that first question in these very informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less assured and more significant by undertaking the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... The supplies for the brain and nervous system are absorbed, and the seed diverted through sexual excesses in the marriage relationship, by fornication, or by any other form of immorality, the man's power must decline: that to this very cause may be attributed the failure and breakdown of so many ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge. Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his best clothes, drove up behind his mule. Fifth, that Denry drove right past the breakdown, apparently not noticing it. Sixth, that Jock, touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of course, while on duty a footman must be dead to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... companions. He was left in the snow, unconscious—his winnings gone. The wealth of his father and the devotion of his mother could not save him, and he went with pneumonia a few days later. It was said that this caused her breakdown—let us see. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... but your health is bad, and you're not going to take the funeral tomorrow. You've had a sudden breakdown, and you're going to get a call from some church in the East—as far East as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You understand? I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go. You'll do no good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Lewis, the Reverend Orme's breakdown, with its intimate worry displacing all lesser cares, the absorption of Ann Leighton as her husband's constant attendant—these things made of Natalie a woman in a night. She assumed direction of the house, and calmly ordered mammy around in a way that warmed that old soul, born to ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... this sort of climate would suit any one in ordinary health, inviting and stimulating to constant out-of-door exercise, and that it would be equally favorable to that general breakdown of the system which has the name of nervous prostration. The effect upon diseases of the respiratory organs can only be determined by individual experience. The government has lately been sending soldiers who have consumption from various stations in the United States ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... two bright spots of color in her cheeks: "Resting in the evenings is not going to help mother; Dr. Hawkes says she needs months and months of rest and unless she has it she will soon be having a nervous breakdown or something else; that working for nearly eight years in an office supporting herself and two daughters is enough to tire any woman out. Then to-day a wonderful invitation came from my father's relatives, who have never paid the least ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... in him—not much fight, as he himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too strong—too difficult for him. He bungled everything—even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but a choking tenderness—a fierce pity. He had to protect him—pull him through. He had promised so much—he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... indignation, into hectic mental uncertainties. Then, with the fatigue point well passed, he had marshaled the last of his own animal strength and essayed the final blasphemous Vesuvian onslaught that brought about the nervous breakdown, the ultimate collapse. She had wept, then, the blubbering, loose-lipped, abandoned weeping of hysteria. She had stumbled forward and caught at his arm and clung to it, as though it were her last earthly pillar of support. Her huge plaited ropes of hair had fallen down, thick brown ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... signs of much that bodes ill. The machinery is so highly geared, the tension and strain are so great, the effort and the output have alike so increased, that there is cause to dread the ruin that would come from any great accident, from any breakdown, and also the ruin that may come from the mere wearing out of the machine itself. The only previous civilization with which our modern civilization can be in any way compared is that period of Graeco-Roman civilization extending, say, from the Athens of Themistocles to the Rome ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... and avoided side streets. He became furtive and watchful; his eyes were forever flitting here and there; he chose the outer edges of the sidewalks, and he went nowhere after nightfall unattended. The time was past when he could doubt the constancy of his purpose; but he did fear a nervous breakdown, and even shuddered at the thought of possible insanity. Being in fact as sane a man as ever lived, his irrational nerves alarmed him all the more. He could not conceive that an event was immediately before him which, without making his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course, only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... ours, sandy soils may seem very open and friable on the surface but frequently hold some unpleasant subsoil surprises. Over geologic time spans, mineral grains are slowly destroyed by weak soil acids and clay is formed from the breakdown products. Then heavy winter rainfall transports these minuscule clay particles deeper into the earth, where they concentrate. It is not unusual to find a sandy topsoil underlaid with a dense, cement-like, clayey sand ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... somehow. Ask yourself a riddle. Tell yourself a few anecdotes. I'll be with you in a moment. I say, I wonder what the cove is doing at Belpher? Deuced civil cove," said Reggie approvingly. "I liked him. And now, business of repairing breakdown." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Protestantism never succeeded in France, either after the Reformation, when it ought to have prevailed, nor after the Revolution, when it ought not. The failure to establish the Protestant Church on the ruins of the old regime, to which Quinet attributes the breakdown of the Revolution, and which Napoleon regretted almost in the era of his concordat, is explained by Mr. Flint on the ground that Protestants were in a minority. But so they were in and after the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... really?" asked Wallace. "They're lucky. This beastly breakdown of mine has spoiled all my chances. My, I'd like to ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... fellow-creature might have all things good! another to live a living death that he might persist in the pride of life! She could not throw God's life to the service of the stupid Satan! It was a sad breakdown to the hopes that had ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Thornton Lyne had, as Tarling suspected rightly, been responsible for his mental collapse, might have supplied a great deal of information as to the events which led up to the day of the murder, and his dramatic breakdown had removed a witness who might have offered material assistance ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... interval than usual. Anne's hands and feet became nerveless bits of ice. Had his courage given out? Had he run away? Worse still, was he nerving himself to an ordeal to which he would prove unequal? A humiliating breakdown! Anne's blood pounded through her body as he finally emerged from the curtains, and she broke her fan, much to ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... entire deck of the brig. "Miss Trevor is still in her cabin, I take it, as I do not see her on deck. She has had a most trying and exhausting experience, and I hope, sir, you will afford her all the comfort at your command; otherwise she may suffer a serious breakdown. Fortunately, I am not without funds; and I can make it quite worth your while to treat us both well during the short time that I hope will only elapse ere you have an opportunity ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of civilization than that they are setting rapidly and irresistibly toward the general adoption of democratic forms of government. The oldest and greatest of the European nations, after trying almost every conceivable system, has returned, not so much from a deliberate preference as from the breakdown of every other, to that which had twice before failed as an experiment, but which now gives fair promise of successful and permanent operation—a republic based on universal suffrage. In many other countries what is virtually the same system in a somewhat different form seems ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... black box in the dark and the silence, down below where the spring can't get at it.... I had no sleep for two nights. On the second day a doctor at the hospital said that I must take at least three months' holiday. He said I'd had a nervous breakdown. I didn't know I had, and I don't know now. I said I wouldn't take any holiday, and that nothing would induce ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... have so far been the dangers with which we have had to contend. But the very worst feature of the defence is that no one trusts the neighbouring detachment sufficiently to believe that it will stand firm under all circumstances and not abandon its ground; consequently this fear that a sudden breakdown along some barricades will allow of an inrush of Chinese troops and Boxers makes men fight all the time with their eyes over their shoulders, which is the very worst way of fighting I can possibly imagine. And another hardly less important ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... now what public man it was who had died of a breakdown from overwork, but I heard Father Payne say, after dinner, referring to the event, "I wish it to be clearly understood that I think a man who dies of deliberate or reckless overwork is a victim of self-indulgence. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a week at Balmoral by the breakdown of the coach on these dreadful roads, I telegraphed to Hamilton for a conveyance; and the Superintendent of the Sunday School, dear Mr. Laidlaw, volunteered, in order to reduce expenses, to spend one day of his precious ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the ceiling. On the floor there were two straw mats, one piled on top of the other; and in a corner were spread a mattress and a bolster, nothing more. Inside there Coupeau was dancing and yelling, his blouse in tatters and his limbs beating the air. He wore the mask of one about to die. What a breakdown! He bumped up against the window, then retired backwards, beating time with his arms and shaking his hands as though he were trying to wrench them off and fling them in somebody's face. One meets with buffoons in low dancing places who imitate the delirium tremens, only they imitate it badly. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... begin before that summer morning. It was this way. We were three: the daughter-wife (who happened to see the magazine article that led to it all), her mother, and her husband. The head of the family, true to the spirit of the age, had achieved a nervous breakdown and was under instructions from his physician to betake himself upon a long, a ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... two generations were not to be discarded so quickly. Goldwin Smith asserted[1] that, whoever laid claim to the parentage of Confederation, the real parent was Deadlock. But this was the critic, not the historian, who spoke. The causes lay far deeper than in the breakdown of party government in Canada. Events of profound significance were about to change an atmosphere overladen with partisanship and to ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... is no further mention of the latter stages of Karl's passage in the wrecked boat to Zeebrugge, so it is presumed that he made that port without further adventure. He was evidently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and appears to have been suffering from very severe insomnia. He had been hunted for two days, during which he was perpetually on the verge of destruction, and the cumulative effect of such an experience is ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the early dawn. Don't tell me 'bout cotillions, or germans. No sir 'ee! That whirl at Anson City just takes the cake with me. I'm sick of lazy shufflin's, of them I've had my fill, Give me a fronteer breakdown, backed up by Windy Bill. McAllister ain't nowhere! when Windy leads the show, I've seen 'em both in harness, an' so I sorter know— Oh, Bill, I sha'n't forget yer, and I'll oftentimes recall, That lively-gaited sworray—"The Cowboys' Christmas Ball." ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... countess was overjoyed. But they found Madame Benet in a state of complete collapse. The conduct of the Germans had brought about a nervous breakdown. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... point for a long while, or to perform such rapid movements, or to retain the numbers correctly, does not lead to fatal accidents like those in the case of the unfit motormen, but it does lead to fatigue and finally to a nervous breakdown of the employees and to confusion in the service. The result is that the company is continually obliged to dismiss a considerable proportion of those who have entered the service and who have spent some months in going through the training school ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... keeping with his gray hairs, his sixty years, and his clerical profession. 'Massa Joe' and the others striking in, the male and female darkies paired off two by two, and to a lively air began dancing a sort of 'cotillion breakdown.' Other dances followed, in which the little negroes joined, and soon the air rang with the creak of the fiddles and the merry shouts of the negroes. In the midst of it my arm was touched lightly, and, turning round, I saw Rosey ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... children (or for that matter, adults) in public, for if he seems anxious and distressed, or worse yet, if he informs the singers that he is afraid that they will not do well, his uneasiness is almost sure to be communicated to the performers and there will probably be a panic and perhaps even a breakdown. If the conductor seriously feels that the compositions to be performed have not been rehearsed sufficiently, it will be far better for him either to insist upon extra rehearsals (even at considerable inconvenience), or else upon a postponement of the performance. A good rule to ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had (p. 104) only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some 15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J day and included many of those drafted during the war. Category ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... existence in which she found herself alone with the still, broken body of her lover. For one brief instant her lips quivered, and a faint in-catching of the breath told of the woman, which, at the first return of feeling, had leapt uppermost in her. But before the maturity of emotion brought about the breakdown, a calm strength came to her aid and steadied her nerves and checked the tears which had so suddenly come into her eyes. Women are like this. At a crisis in sickness they rise superior to all emotion. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... He was passing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, pinioning him. The suit case was rudely wrenched ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... it's all rot! Do you think I believe for one instant—" He broke off. "And so's a nervous breakdown all rot, isn't it, and D.T.? They aren't real ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Compton listened with intense excitement; but the hunter treated the whole thing calmly, with set purpose. He had in his experience seen the effect of a terrible shock, in the complete breakdown of the victim, and, personally, he had known one man die from the shock to his system caused exactly by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a lion at night. He kept Venning's thoughts off the mental picture of the charging ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... almost a mind reader," laughed Grace. "I've been on the verge of a breakdown ever since we left Oakdale, and in this very instant I made up my mind to be brave and not cry a single tear. Look at Anne. She is as calm and unemotional as ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... sickness has bitterly delayed my work; and unless, as I say, I have the mischief's luck, I shall completely break down. VERBUM SAPIENTIBUS. I do not live cheaply, and I question if I ever shall; but if only I had a halfpenny worth of health, I could now easily suffice. The last breakdown of my head is ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little, that we are apt to see only the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, and it only after the breakdown of the old system that the real work of revolution can be said ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... remarks on the causes of the moral breakdown of the Empire and of the French army do not help us to much that is novel. He lays more than the usual stress on Ultramontanism as an influence. The death of the archbishop of Paris could have been prevented, he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... 13. Nervous breakdown. Epilepsy. Tumor or break in brain. Cranial neuralgia. Disease of neck bones. Adenoids. Ear disease. Eye ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... that the stronghold of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of Exclusionism appears the means of finding out—whether there are vast aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not—where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of vegetable matter and flesh, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... merely to keep it in existence, this does not vitiate the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; but as if they represented a degradation ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... what's the basic problem? Why do security measures strangle research? Isn't it a matter basically of a breakdown in the interchange of ideas? Sure, and it has come about because there has been no method of communication which would not get to and be used by our enemies. So, like yourself, I'm forbidden to publish the results of my work here in the journals. Why? Because those results are in my field of study, ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... automobile containing Feisul and Lawrence, which may be recognized easily as it will also contain myself and another civilian in plain clothes. At the psychological moment a white flag will be shown from it, waved perhaps surreptitiously by one of the civilians. In the event of breakdown of the automobile a horsed vehicle will be used and the same signal will apply. For the sake of myself and the other civilian, please instruct all officers to keep a sharp lookout and protect the party ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... that pressed like a weight upon him. Even before this time he had observed a little discrepancy between his father's words and deeds, between his wide liberal theories and his harsh petty despotism; but he had not expected such a complete breakdown. His confirmed egoism was patent now in everything. Young Lavretsky was getting ready! to go to Moscow, to prepare for the university, when a new unexpected calamity overtook Ivan Petrovitch; he became blind, and ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... to be reassured quickly. It was very seldom that her equanimity was disturbed, only in fact when her deepest feelings were concerned, and this made her breakdown the more complete. She apologised tearfully for her foolishness at rehearsal, which she set down to bodily fatigue. She had been to see poor Squinny that morning, and she thought he really was dying at last. He had cried so, and she hadn't known how to comfort him, and then when she ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... an idea that this was all going to be rather solemn if she let it be. But she was going to give her very best imitation of undiluted sunshine, the imitation she could give even when her head was splitting or when her mother had a nervous breakdown or when she was particularly romantic and curious and courageous. This brother of hers undoubtedly needed cheering up, and he was going to be cheered up, whether he ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... percent British other than Irish, 12 percent Scandinavian, and the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 percent. The strong predominance of the foreign element in American trade unions should not appear unusual, since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship system, the United States had been drawing its supply of skilled labor ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... meet with respectful treatment anywhere. He gave me a pass which would further insure my well being, and so, when a boat load of stores was shipped to Head of Elk the first of this week, I came with it. Everything hath gone off well until this breakdown, and I do not regret that, since it hath brought us together. So you see, Peggy, the matter is ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... out," said Mrs Davidson pitifully. "He'll have a breakdown if he doesn't take care, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... to conquer or to die, and that if defeated, he would never return to Paris alive. It was evident by their tone that at the time the proclamations were penned it was intended that the battle should take place on that day, and that the delay was consequent upon a breakdown in the arrangements and was not the result ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... the trees as they seemed to help him bear the pain miraculously. But on second consideration Don Quixote deemed it advisable to put it off till a later time, when they were closer to their village, in case Sancho should have a breakdown as a result of his flogging himself. Their conversation came to an end when Sancho began to shoot proverbs at his master out of the corner of his mouth at such a speed that Don Quixote was overwhelmed and ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of our happy preparations the bad news fell with bomb-like suddenness. The messenger who brought the telegram whistled shrilly and shuffled a breakdown on the doorstep while he waited to hear ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... adjoining room and came back in a minute dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo—Teutonic version—of a darky breakdown, stopping only to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... were symptoms of another breakdown, our middy became anxious, and entreated Hester to go on. With a strong effort ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... I fancy,' said Marcella. 'We had nearly an hour's talk before you came. But she won't be able to stand the work. There'll be another breakdown before long.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and more. She trembled. She felt on the verge of a breakdown ... Carolus Fonta wondered if she was ill, if she could keep the stage until the end of the Garden Act. In the front of the house, people remembered the catastrophe that had befallen Carlotta at the end of that act and the historic ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... his energetic movement when among the men, had a sympathetic influence upon all about him. His voice had the same sort of influence upon them as the drum and fife on a soldier's march: it quickened their movements. We were often called in by our neighbour manufacturers to repair a breakdown of their engines. That was always a sad disaster, as all hands were idle until the repair was effected. Archy was in his glory on such occasions. By his ready zeal and energy he soon got over the difficulty, repaired the engines, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth, one reason why the engine of government is not ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... up, smiling. She recognized the characteristic utterance of her old friend Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... overwrought to a terrible degree. I am delighted that she is to get a rest. It will be life to her; and in the morning she will be all right. Her nervous system is on the verge of a breakdown. Did you notice how fearfully disturbed she was, and how red she got when she came in and found us talking? An ordinary thing like that, in her own house with her own guests, wouldn't under normal circumstances ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... was no more than a shambles. There were twenty odd men in it when the shells struck. Seven were carried out alive, and four of these died in the moving. In the other room, where the two doctors worked, no damage was done beyond the breakdown of a portion of the partition wall, and there was only one further casualty—a man who was actually having a slight hand-wound examined at the moment. He was killed instantly by a shell fragment which whizzed through the door-way. The two doctors, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the breakdown of national government, most regions have reverted to Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision for appeal ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the state of affairs at Scutari, revealed to the English public in the dispatches of "The Times Correspondent", and in a multitude of private letters, yet the reality turned out to be darker still. What had occurred was, in brief, the complete breakdown of our medical arrangements at the seat of war. The origins of this awful failure were complex and manifold; they stretched back through long years of peace and carelessness in England; they could be traced ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... plainly, that Daniel Otway wasn't the kind of man she ought to be friendly with. She was offended: it was one of the reasons why we couldn't go on living together. I believe, if the truth were known, it was worry about him that caused her breakdown in health. She's a weak, soft-natured woman, and he—I know very well what he is. He and the other one—both Piers Otway's brothers—have always been worthless creatures. She knew it well enough, and yet——! ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... limits of this country in the initial stages of a campaign. For the much larger force which we have actually found it necessary to employ our resources were absolutely and miserably inadequate. The result has been that the department, even by working under conditions which have nearly led to a breakdown, has been barely able to keep pace with ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... quiet—complete change," he said. "Nervous breakdown, according to the doctors—that's what they always call it, you know, when they can't find any other name for it. I've been overdoing it, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... there is a sort of reflex fright. He becomes either cautious and liable to sudden panics, or very rash indeed, or absolutely mechanical in his actions. The first state means the approach of a nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed, who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh frightened voice. If you came suddenly out here, you would think they were all mortally afraid. But it is ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... tall might easily have frightened Mr. Wordsley into a nervous breakdown by staring at him with that gaunt, hollow-eyed stare, but this creature, though manlike, was fully fifty feet tall, incredibly elongated, and stark naked. Its hair was long and matted; its cheeks sunken, its lips pulled back in an expression which might have been anything from a smile ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... Afghan disasters and triumphs, the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs, Lord Dalhousie's annexations, threw law reform into the background, and produced a state of mind not very favourable to it. Then came the Mutiny, which in its essence was the breakdown of an old system; the renunciation of an attempt to effect an impossible compromise between the Asiatic and the European view of things, legal, military, and administrative. The effect of the Mutiny on the Statute-book was unmistakable. The Code of Civil ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... used for the advancement of the Irish movement along constitutional lines, were brutally directed to the political execution of Mr O'Brien's friends, who, now that he had gone for good, and was reported to be in that state of physical breakdown which would prevent him from ever again taking an active part in Irish affairs, were supposed to be at the mercy of the big "pots" and their ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... eyes, Best of all. We're going to have some tea. Can you look like some one with a—with a nervous breakdown?" ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause of his breakdown. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... closed, following the announcement of the failure of several brokerage firms. Stock Exchanges throughout the United States followed the example set by New York. The Stock Exchanges in London and the big provincial cities, as well as those on the Continent, ceased business, owing to the breakdown of the credit system, which was made complete by the postponement of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... down just outside Lord Badington's house, perhaps they would give me shelter for the night; at least, I hope they would, and if they would not, well, it doesn't really matter, and we can go and stop at the hotel at Sandwich. It would have to be a real breakdown, for Lord Badington keeps motor-cars of his own, and his drivers would be sure to be ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... the Rocky Mountains at midnight on the 17th. The climate changes suddenly, and the cold is intense. We resume runners, have a breakdown, and are ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... think about it. But there is a sort of reflex fright. He becomes either cautious and liable to sudden panics, or very rash indeed, or absolutely mechanical in his actions. The first state means the approach of a nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed, who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh frightened voice. If you came suddenly out here, you would think they were all mortally afraid. But it is only giving orders for hours together ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Army, last March and April, were the inevitable and heroic prelude to the victorious recoil of August, and the final battles of the war. Inevitable, because no forethought or exertion on the British side could have averted the German onslaught, determined as it was by the breakdown of the whole Eastern front of the war, and the letting loose upon the Western front of immense forces previously held by the Russian armies. These forces, after the Russian debacle, were released against us, week by week, till in March the balance of numbers, which was almost ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most utter ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the car had a breakdown. The two clambered out and reconnoitered for help. There was nothing for it but to take the car back to Paris. A man was found on the road who was willing to take it in tow, but they had no rope for a tow line. Over in the field by the roadside the sharp eyes of the adjutant discovered some ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... scientific tests, can be made of everyday use in all class rooms. State and national headquarters for educators, and all large cities, can afford to engage scientists to apply vitality tests to school children for the sake of discovering, in advance of physical breakdown and before outward symptoms are obvious, what curriculum, what exercise, what study, recreation, and play periods are best suited to child development. It will cost infinitely less to proceed this way than to neglect children or to fit ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... you believed that you could by your own might, therefore you failed. He throws them back decisively on themselves as solely responsible. Nowhere else, in heaven or in earth or hell, but only in us, does the reason lie for our breakdown, if we have broken down. Not in God, who is ever with us, ready to make all grace abound in us, whose will is that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; not in the gospel which we preach, for 'it is the power of God unto salvation'; not in the demon might which has overcome ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... beginning of her breakdown the intervals between intelligent consciousness and insanity had been long. She was herself, or was able to keep herself fairly in hand, the greater part of the time, and chaos, when it came, lasted only for a few days or weeks. Recently this condition had been reversed. She ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... it seemed but a moment before he was leaning out of bed to reach a third. "You must forgive me, if I have rather let myself go about him," he ended. "I remember the first weeks of the war, when I had a nervous breakdown. His father's place is about two miles from here, and he used to come round and sit with me. I've only to shut my eyes to see him standing by the fireplace, with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his cheek on his hand, talking to me. And I'd ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... work, gaping at the insubordination. Madden flushed under the implication. He stepped forward to smash the long insolent face and white mustache, but it was plain the Englishman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... in those rough-going times, and a breakdown on a steep bit of road delayed us. Instead of reaching home at sunset, we did not reach the ford of the Neosho until eight o'clock. As I went up Cliff Street I turned by the bushes and slid down the rough stairway ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... alive who came near him, had in view the purchase of a little horse for his cousin, far better than that which the boy rode, when the circumstances occurred which brought all our poor Harry's coaches and horses to a sudden breakdown. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... while he preached God's word, the sin he had committed against God's law and man's. He visibly grew more pale, more thin, more distraught. The changes inspired his congregation with concern; they began to talk of overwork, of the danger of a breakdown; and seeing the dire possibility of losing so popular and pew-filling a pastor, they began to urge upon him the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... floor there were two straw mats, one piled on top of the other; and in a corner were spread a mattress and a bolster, nothing more. Inside there Coupeau was dancing and yelling, his blouse in tatters and his limbs beating the air. He wore the mask of one about to die. What a breakdown! He bumped up against the window, then retired backwards, beating time with his arms and shaking his hands as though he were trying to wrench them off and fling them in somebody's face. One meets with buffoons in low dancing places who imitate the delirium ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... afternoon of the opening ceremony the Countess's carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge. Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his best clothes, drove up behind his mule. Fifth, that Denry drove right past the breakdown, apparently not noticing it. Sixth, that Jock, touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of course, while on duty a footman must be dead ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... The world went on, but Cornelia's heart stood still; and at the end of the third week things came to this—her father looked at her keenly one morning and sent her instantly to bed. At the last the breakdown had come in a night, but it had found ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... begged like frightened children to be taken; but we dared not risk a breakdown and had to refuse. But never shall I forget the look that was ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned a ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... the Old Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the study of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... happy preparations the bad news fell with bomb-like suddenness. The messenger who brought the telegram whistled shrilly and shuffled a breakdown on the doorstep while he waited to hear ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... opportunities of study offered him at Temple College. A lady who had been brought up in refined and cultured society was compelled to support herself, her husband and child through his complete physical breakdown. She took the normal course in dressmaking and millinery, and has this year been appointed the Director of the Domestic Science work in a large institution at a very good salary, being able to keep herself and family in comfort. One ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... Timor (INTERFET) deployed to the country and brought the violence to an end. On 20 May 2002, East Timor was internationally recognized as an independent state. In March of 2006, a military strike led to violence and a near breakdown of law and order. Over 2,000 Australian, New Zealand, and Portuguese police and peacekeepers deployed to East Timor in late May. Although many of the peacekeepers were replaced by UN police officers, 850 Australian soldiers remained as ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... replaced by gladsomeness and hope. That is a dream, but no Socialist rests upon the dream merely: the hope of the Socialist is in the very material fact of the economic development from competition to monopoly; in the breakdown of capitalism itself. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... up Cackling Hen and a Breakdown so that the nimblest of the dancers might show out alone and so the frolic ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... pluck, and much ashamed of the breakdown of Friday and Saturday, Miss Arnold made her effort, and did remarkably well so long as people refrained from prodding her about her "strange adventure," the alleged details of which, in exaggerated form, were garrison property by this time. There could be no doubt, ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also was working long hours in extremely ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed. This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous breakdown, and are having ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... carrioles, of whom we procured three, at $36 apiece, to be resold to him for $24, at the expiration of two months; and then to supply ourselves with maps, posting-book, hammer, nails rope, gimlets, and other necessary helps in case of a breakdown. The carriole (carry-all, lucus a non lucendo, because it only carries one) is the national Norwegian vehicle, and deserves special mention. It resembles a reindeer-pulk, mounted on a pair of wheels, with long, flat, flexible ash shafts, and no springs. The seat, much like ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been improvised, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... stood at a respectful distance an appreciative and encouraging audience. And seated on the broad rail of the veranda were Melicent and Gregoire, patting Juba and singing a loud accompaniment to the breakdown. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... over again our government has been saved from complete breakdown only by an absolute disregard of the Constitution, and most of the very men who framed the compact would have refused to sign it, could they have foreseen its eventual development." Ford's Federalist, ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... have much amusement in slavery times. They had banjo, fiddle, melodian, and things like that. There wasn't no baseball in those days. I never seed none. They could dance all they wanted to their way. They danced the dotillions and the waltzes and breakdown steps, all such as that. Pick banjo! U-umph! They would give corn huskins; they would go and shuck corn and shuck so much. Get through shucking, they would give you dinner. Sometimes big rich white people would give dances ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics—all that ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened measure. The sing of I sing is the correspondent of the Anglo-Saxon singe; the infinitive sing, of singan; the imperative sing of sing. Ever since the breakdown of English forms that set in about the time of the Norman Conquest, our language has been straining towards the creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but it has not yet succeeded in ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... rocks. They strengthened and fortified the road. Its grandeur in so empty and impoverished a land was a boast or a threat of their power. The Republic succeeded the kings, the Armies succeeded the Republic, and every experiment succeeded the victories and the breakdown of the Armies. The road grew stronger all the while, bridging this desert, and giving pledge that the brain of Paris was able, and more able, to order the whole of the soil. So then, as I followed it, it seemed to me ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... office work were telling on him, although he scarcely realized to what extent, and but for a very fortunate circumstance—which seemed to Evan an extremely unfortunate one—he would have experienced a nervous breakdown before long. But more about ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... becomes a mere prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely as Browning himself; the verse that recalled a dance of naiads suggests a springless cart on a Highland road; Terpsichore is made to prance a hobnailed breakdown. The poem disappears, and in its place you have an indifferent copy of verses. You look at the pages from afar, and your impression is that they are not unlike Heine; you look into them, and Heine has vanished. The man is gone, and only an awkward, angular, clumsily articulated, entirely ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... "To my Father and Mother." I may add in this connection that while pursuing his indefatigable labors for the support of his large family, his father's sickness and death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... fierce determination to go through with her self-elected expiation, no matter what the cost, had a good deal to do with her ultimate breakdown. With unswerving resolution she had forced herself to obedience, to the performance of her appointed tasks in spite of their distastefulness; and behind the daily work and discipline there had been all the time the ceaseless, aching ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... town. The people were starving, and many deaths occurred daily from hunger. The British could do but little to relieve the suffering which they saw around them, for they themselves were—owing to the utter breakdown of all the arrangements undertaken by the Portuguese government, and to the indecision and incapacity of the Home Government—badly fed, and much in arrears of their pay. Nevertheless, the officers did what they could, got up soup kitchens, and fed ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... they have to be carried into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth, one reason why the engine of ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... looking toward the grave, purposely Sandy thought, talking to bridge over the last good-by, the chance of a breakdown. Suddenly she pointed down ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... have taken place to put the lads from Freeport on the pedestal of fame more noticeably than this experiment. They had easily and modestly staged a complete breakdown of the hazing habit at Marshallton Tech. Strangely perhaps there was no blame nor suspicion put upon Bill and Gus for the subsequent edict from the faculty forbidding it. That seemed to be considered a natural aftermath ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... sank down into the environment of the body. The mind sank down into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual," "devilish," a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of God; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand God; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... and nervous system are absorbed, and the seed diverted through sexual excesses in the marriage relationship, by fornication, or by any other form of immorality, the man's power must decline: that to this very cause may be attributed the failure and breakdown of so many men ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... a few minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... the chestnut where you want to mature them fairly early in the fall, it might work all right, because it will withhold the nitrogen in the breakdown of your sawdust. But apparently, it works pretty well. I think it was Mr. Sam Hemming who suggested using it in the rows. Most of our State Forests and Waters nurseries in their seedling beds, plant their seedlings, including chestnuts, make a mixture of sawdust and sand, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... declared she heard the sound of lips, and at last a voice came to her speaking the name of her father. His voice answered some of her questions correctly, but could not utter the pet name which her father used to call her. This breakdown of the individuality of the phantom voices is very characteristic. This ended the sitting. The voices had not been as strong as we had hoped for, but as we threw on the light we found a number of messages written upon the sheets ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... on that first question in these very informal days. We are witnessing a breakdown of all external forms of authority which, while salutary and necessary, is also perilous. Not many of us err, just now, by overmagnifying our official status. Many of us instead are terribly at ease in Zion and might become less assured and more significant by undertaking the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... passing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... and heart-racking in their cargoes of misery. Poor women have wept hysterically clasping my hand, a stranger's hand, for comfort in their wretchedness and weakness. Yet on the whole they have shown amazing courage, and, after their tears, have laughed at their own breakdown, and, always children of France, have been superb, so that again and again I have wondered at the gallantry with which they endured this horror. Young boys have revealed the heroic strain in them and have played the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... five the telephone bell rang and Jack languidly went to answer it. Then he came back into the drawing-room. "Radmore's had a breakdown," he said briefly, "he's afraid he can't get here ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... into the fight of helping men and women in the best way I can, don't you see? I suppose I must sound cheeky and brazen to talk this way, but I'm full of the joy of it all, and I've made the goal, you see, and for all the breakdown I've come out ahead. It's enough to ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... gentlemen were personal and intimate friends of the prisoners: some were connected by closer ties; and one of the most trying experiences for the prisoners was to witness the complete breakdown of the minor officials employed in the carrying out of this tragic farce. The judge's first order was for the removal of all ladies. The wives and relatives of many of the prisoners had been warned by them beforehand of what was likely to happen and had accordingly absented themselves, but ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... his famous private asylum in the very heart of Passy, intended, according to his prospectus, to provide a retreat for people suffering from nervous breakdown or from overwork or over-excitement, and to offer hospital treatment to the insane, in order to secure a kind of official sanction for his institution, he took the wise precaution to proclaim from the housetops that he would ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN28] The boy Husayn Gennah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... range of an airship a thoroughly reliable engine is a paramount necessity. The main requirements are—firstly, that it must be capable of running for long periods without a breakdown; secondly, that it must be so arranged that minor repairs can be effected in the air; and thirdly, that economy of oil and fuel is of far greater importance to an airship than the initial ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... qualifications of his secretaries were measured. Indeed, to the loss of his sight he had become, in some measure, reconciled; what really dominated every other consideration was the need of being able to meet the peculiar conditions which had arisen through the complete breakdown of ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... was not the first or only driver to complain of the packed course. The Mercury had scarcely departed when the Marathon car came in, its experienced and steel-fibred pilot on the brink of nervous breakdown. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... it all in—I let him p-put the noose around his own neck and tie the knot. Then I hung him." His convulsive giggling was terrible, forecasting, as it did, his immediate breakdown. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course, only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... herself with redoubled ardour to her mother, to prevent her from finding out how things were going. She would have a plain talk with her father the next time he came, very difficult as she felt it would be; things could not go on as they were; or at least, not without ending in a thorough breakdown. But what we purpose is one thing; what we are able to execute is ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... turned out in a body, felled trees and cleared a spot on the slope of a wooded hill, sawed logs and built two huts, one for Rothsay, and one for old Scythia. They were finished before night. And then the settlers had a house-warming, which was a breakdown dance to the music of the one fiddle in the settlement, and a supper of such eatables and drinkables as the place ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... words we perceive that "nerves" are uppermost, that the song and drink of the opening moment were bravado—that Sebald, in short, is close on a breakdown. He turns upon her with a gibe against her ever-shuttered windows. Though it is she who now has ordered the unwelcome light to be admitted, he overlooks this in his enervation, and says how, before ever they met, he had observed that her windows were always blind till noon. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... 'nervous breakdown' had lodged in her confused memory. The doctor had been very matter-of-fact, logical, and soothing. Overwork, strain, loss of sleep, the journey, anxiety, lack of food, the supreme shock, the obstinate ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... more pies, Elizabeth. The men have been put back by a breakdown. They won't be able to get through before five or half-past," he said, coming into the kitchen ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... if you take any more violent or irregular plunges, you may very greatly shorten your time. Should you insist on remaining in your regiment and doing your work, you have, I fancy, about two years more before a complete breakdown. You are a very strong man, and your lung-tissue is tough. Should you remain here under my care, you will live indefinitely, but I can hold out no hope of an ultimate recovery. If you return to England as an invalid, you will most undoubtedly ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... the line carried the monastery of St. Merri. An historic regiment that 42nd! After having fought against the "White" insurrection in the Vendee and the republican insurrection at the St. Merri monastery, caused the breakdown of Prince Napoleon's Boulogne adventure, occupied the Chamber of Deputies on the 2nd of December, and heroically lost its whole strength twice over in the siege of Paris, it has had the good fortune of being almost the only one of our regiments to keep its arms and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... for it has not appealed to me as an investment, but on three separate occasions I have yielded to the persuasions of a friend connected with one of the big institutions and have considered the subject. The first time was in 1887, following a breakdown from overwork. This illness my friend used as an argument to induce me to take out insurance, and I went so far as to agree to submit to a private medical examination by the leading physicians of his company for the purpose of ascertaining if my ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the instrument was constantly working at high pressure. In order that these might be carried out efficiently, the whole apparatus had to be carried down to the Hut. Here, Bickerton and Correll were continually in consultation with the meteorologist on the latest breakdown. Cups were blown off several times, and one was lost and replaced with difficulty. Most aggravating of all was a habit the clocks developed of stopping during the colder spells. The old-fashioned method of boiling them was found of assistance, but it was discovered that the best treatment was to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the room, with Boyesen behind him, into the hall. The elevator was just coming up, and as they reached it, it stopped at their landing, and Mrs. Boyesen stepped out. She had been delayed by a breakdown and a blockade. Clemens said afterward that he had a positive conviction that she would be on the elevator when they reached it. It was one of those curious psychic evidences which we find all along during his life; or, if the skeptics prefer to call them coincidences, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Dorking my health was in a very poor way. I imagine I must at the time have been on the verge of a pretty bad breakdown. The preceding six or eight months had greatly aggravated my digestive troubles, and I had also suffered a good deal from neuralgia. The constantly increasing stress of my domestic affairs, superimposed upon steady sedentary work in which the quest for new ideas was a continuous ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the doctor hurriedly; "with care, and under favourable circumstances, there might be no further breakdown for another year; but"—with a keen look at his patient—"I will ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said, "I've got a breakdown—that's what's the matter with me. My nerves were never good. I'm afraid of going mad. The anxiety of the last few weeks has been too much for me. I want to get out of the country quickly, and I don't know how to manage it. I can't think. Directly I try to ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... often true that monotony and discomfort are the cause of nervous and mental breakdown, witness the often-mentioned insanity among farmers' wives and the nervous breakdowns attributable to pain and strain, even though it be, as in many cases of eyestrain, so slight as not to be recognized ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... this time was in a mighty hurry about his literary supplies, I had to undertake again pretty much such a spell of work as I had undertaken with Val Strange, and with an almost equally unfortunate result. My methods of work have often brought me near a nervous breakdown, and by the time at which Rainbow Gold was finished, I was all but a wreck. It had been arranged between the editor of the Cornhill and myself that the completed copy of my book should be in his hands on a given ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... see the dilemma through to an end of some sort, but to my joyful surprise Bertie used all his wiles upon the family to induce them to stop at Fontainebleau. It was a beautiful place, he argued, and they would like it so much, that they would come to think the breakdown a blessing in disguise. In any case, he had intended advising them to pause for tea, and to stay the night if they cared for the place. They would find a good hotel, practically in the forest; and he had an acquaintance who owned a chateau near by, a very important ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... all, the theatre, more than any other source of so-called information, has been responsible for the breakdown of the barriers of social reserve in sexual discussions, and that means ultimately in erotic behaviour. The book which the individual man or woman reads at his fireside has no socializing influence, but the play which they see together is naturally discussed, views are exchanged, and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... "we have our sources. Confidential. Top secret. I'm sure you understand, commissioner." Hurriedly, he added: "What does the breakdown ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... luncheon party, wasn't it? That man's on the verge of a breakdown. Don't like it at all. That wife of his is overdoing it. Shall look him up again next week. His mind's not right. He forgot to pay for the lunch. I suggested that I should do it, and he let me. Something seriously wrong ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... opponent. In fact the two men had never been on really cordial terms since August 1914, when Aubrey had thrown up his post in the Foreign Office to apply for one of the first temporary commissions in the New Army. The news came at a moment when the Squire was smarting under the breakdown of a long-cherished scheme of exploration in the Greek islands, which was to have been realized that very autumn—a scheme towards which his whole narrow impetuous mind had been turned for years. No more Hellenic or Asia ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proceeding with such slow and faltering steps that the soldiers, impatient of the delay, recognised that the burden must be removed from His shoulders. The severity of the scourging was in itself sufficient to account for this breakdown; but, besides, we are to consider the sleepless night through which He had passed, with its anxiety and abuse; and before it there had been the agony of Gethsemane. No wonder His exhaustion had reached a point at which it was absolutely ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... bursting into a shout at this, for he knew that poor Bud must be very near a complete breakdown ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... or to perform such rapid movements, or to retain the numbers correctly, does not lead to fatal accidents like those in the case of the unfit motormen, but it does lead to fatigue and finally to a nervous breakdown of the employees and to confusion in the service. The result is that the company is continually obliged to dismiss a considerable proportion of those who have entered the service and who have spent some months in going through the training school of the company. As one single company, the Bell ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... fac-simile, one, signed by Parnell, expressing approval of Mr. Burke's murder. After an elaborate trial (extending to one hundred and twenty-eight days), the most sensational event in which was the breakdown under cross-examination, and the flight and suicide at Madrid, of Pigott, the wretched Irishman who had imposed upon the Times with forgeries, Mr. Parnell was formally cleared of the charge of having been personally guilty of organizing outrages, but his party were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Hiram Johnson, who was sent out by the opposition in the Senate to present the other side. Johnson also attracted large crowds. On the return trip, while delivering an address at Wichita, Kansas, September 26, the President showed signs of a nervous breakdown and returned immediately to Washington. He was able to walk from the train to his automobile, but a few days later he was partially paralyzed. The full extent and seriousness of his illness was carefully concealed from the public. ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... Thus, for hours on end he writhed under the belief that his present illness was due solely to the proximity of the Great Swamp, and lay and cursed his folly in having chosen just this neighbourhood to build in. Again, there was the case of typhoid he had been anxious about, prior to his own breakdown: under his LOCUM, peritonitis had set in and carried off the patient. At the time he had accepted the news from Polly's lips with indifference—too ill to care. But a little later the knowledge of what it meant broke ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... not vitiate the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; but as if they represented a degradation of the very ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... been working up to the limit for years," Mason remarked, "and he's not a particularly strong chap. I should say that he was about due for a nervous breakdown." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... complete sympathy. Particularly in Quebec, as John A. Macdonald was quick to see, there were many such, quite ready to rally to authority now that opportunity was open to all. Other factors hastened the breakdown of the old groupings. Economic interests came to the fore. In the {20} discussion of canal and railway projects, banking and currency, trade and tariffs, new personal, class, or sectional interests arose. Once, too, that the machinery of responsible government had been installed, differences ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... things before her final breakdown; and Hay and his sorrowing wife found their load of care far heaviest, for the strain of Indian blood, now known to all, had steeled the soul of the girl against the people at Fort Frayne, men and women both—against none so ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... can't discuss it further now. I have heard of such cases, but never so directly. But my duty now is to Mrs, Embury. I fear she will have a nervous breakdown. May I ask you, Miss Ames, not to talk about you—your vision to her? I think it ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the doctor; "it can profit us nothing, it can profit Myra nothing, for you to shatter your nerves at a time when real trials are before you. You are inviting another breakdown. Oh! I know it is hard; but for everybody's sake try ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... that your sermon last Sunday had caused a scandal. What was it you said? That, in a breakdown of Christianity like the present, we might leave talk of the public-houses and usefully consider Sunday closing of churches and ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Let it be granted, above all, that the admission that such spiritual tragedies do occur does not decrease by so much as an iota our faith in the validity of any spiritual struggle. For example, Stevenson has made a study of the breakdown of a good man's character under a burden for which he is not to blame, in the tragedy of Henry Durie in The Master of Ballantrae. Yet he has added, in the mouth of Mackellar, the exact common sense and good theology of the matter, saying "It matters not a jot; for he that is to pass judgment ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... towns behind the lines with gloomy looks, and whose tempers, never of the sweetest, became irritable and unbearable, so that the soldiers hated them for all this cursing and bullying. A certain battalion commander had a nervous breakdown because he had to meet ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... that, it had given her keen satisfaction to bring the girl there when she was threatened by a nervous breakdown in consequence of over-work. Agatha had been her confidential friend when they were at school, but since Mabel married she had sometimes felt that the confidence had been rather one-sided. She had told Agatha much, but ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... they would have none of his lagging ways, and compelling him to drive ahead, were soon forced to abandon the useless locomotive. Each such obstacle was a lengthy hindrance, and the kind gentlemen of our party were obliged to organise a breakdown gang to overcome the difficulty. Our trolleys, with all the baggage, had to be transferred to another line. Effort and energy were not spared, and the following midday brought us face to face with the first engine carrying Imperial soldiery towards Taiyueanfu. At Niangtzekwan Pass we were ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... boiler with a funnel and a tin pot. Pleasant three hours under a thin board-awning, in a broiling sun, off a poisonous mangrove-swamp! Presently she had to be started by the surf-boat lashed to one side, and a large canoe to the other. Finally, after a last breakdown, we saw steam-launch Effuenta lying high and dry upon the beach ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the house of Wormser was shaken. It wasn't a serious breakdown, but among the good things that had to be thrown overboard belonged—at the demand ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Quaking-Asp Grove and White Lodge and the Indian agency at night. I had a breakdown after going past Talpers's store—a tire to replace. By the time I climbed the hill on the Dollar Sign road it was well along in the morning. I saw a man coming toward me on a white horse. It was my brother, Willard Sargent, or Willis Morgan. He looked much like ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... the Negroes had a "breakdown," often dancing all night long. About twelve o'clock they had a big supper, everybody bringing a box of all kinds of good things to eat, and putting ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... to Wiggins, a patriot of the finest type—only prevented from going to the front by the claims of business, a family of nine, and a certain superfluity of adipose tissue. "When guarding a railway bridge as a special constable a troop train stopped through an engine breakdown. Numbers of finely built men in fur coats descended on to the line. Two of them came to me and, making signs of thirst, said, 'Vodka, vodka.' They embraced me warmly after I had offered them my pocket-flask, and then, shouting 'Berlin,' rejoined ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. It was clear that ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... desire of Lord John Russell, the whig section of the cabinet, and the general voice of the country, that Lord Palmerston should, at such a juncture, assume that most important official position. The result was a terrible breakdown in the administration of the war department, disastrous to the ministry, the army, and the country. The vacant secretaryship of the colonies was given to Sir George Grey, who was certainly unequal to its requirements. On ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a mind reader," laughed Grace. "I've been on the verge of a breakdown ever since we left Oakdale, and in this very instant I made up my mind to be brave and not cry a single tear. Look at Anne. She is as calm and unemotional as ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Neville had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... great opportunity of the Exposition, which would give Arthur Putnam a worthy field for his great genius, will be disappointed to know that the mermaid is his only contribution, and scarcely representative of his original way in dealing with animal forms. The untimely breakdown, some two years ago, of his robust nature prevented his giving himself more typically, for his real spirit is merely suggested in this ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him—Oh! had I heard?—Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into which of late ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... secret, deep down, painfully acquired knowledge, was trying to hold her back. She remembered her last stay in Paris, her hesitation then, her dinner with Caroline Briggs, the definite decision she had come to, her effort to carry it out, the terrible breakdown of her decision at the railway station and its ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... a hint of hysteric breakdown in the exclamation. "How can I—bear it!" She turned and went back to her writing table and there she sat down and hid her face, trembling in an ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... With growing astonishment he read that Operative Carnes of the United States Secret Service had collapsed at his desk that afternoon and had been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital where the trouble had been diagnosed as a nervous breakdown caused by overwork. There followed a guarded statement from Admiral Clay, the President's personal physician, who had been called into conference by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... police station? I must warn the police. That priest and corporal cannot have got so very far in two hours! They did not leave together: they had to meet somewhere: they may not know how to manage the car ... that means delay—a breakdown, perhaps!" ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... you've put the question squarely, I'm going to be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it 'brotherhood,' the 'solidarity of the race.' Sentimental mush. It's a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This idea is destroying ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... was surprised too, but, regardless of the ruling, proceeded to make a carefully-prepared reply to the speech which the Hon. and gallant Member had not been allowed to deliver. He frankly admitted that there had been a lamentable breakdown of the hospital arrangements, but steps had been taken to improve them, and a telegram from General LAKE showed that the treatment of the men wounded in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... warrant a hasty decision. The final judgment, if it is based on truth, will very strongly influence the nature of the peace, which will either establish good-will and stable conditions in the world, or lead to another and even more complete breakdown ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... wood to make them. Nearly three months had, however, passed, and winter in its most terrible form had settled on the Crimea, and yet the huts still appeared not to have reached the troops, though the French had done their best to make good the discreditable breakdown of our commissariat. 'There appears,' concludes Lord John, 'a want of concert among the different departments. When the Navy forward supplies, there is no military authority to receive them; when the military wish to unload a ship, they find that the naval authority has already ordered it ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... a Quakeress would meet with respectful treatment anywhere. He gave me a pass which would further insure my well being, and so, when a boat load of stores was shipped to Head of Elk the first of this week, I came with it. Everything hath gone off well until this breakdown, and I do not regret that, since it hath brought us together. So you see, Peggy, the matter is very simple ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... of the breakdown of primary relations? What problems are solved by the breakdown ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the other—would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way, culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her horizon that the memories of the past gradually ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... her own room, and brought back the smelling-salts and was most eagerly solicitous that Nina should conquer this passing attack of hysteria, as she deemed it. And, indeed, Nina managed to get through the rest of her part without any serious breakdown, to Estelle's ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... see that this kind of effort leads often to nervous breakdown and early death; always to a certain narrowing of sympathy and hardening of method even in the career itself. So we conscientiously "take up" a hobby or a sport and set aside some hour or day for indulgence in it. We make it a duty to lay aside for the time being all ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the schools for hearing children. This is very unsatisfactory and even dangerous, for if persisted in it results in wholly inadequate progress, uneven development, bad speech, irretrievable loss of time, and often in a complete nervous breakdown. This may not come for some years, but the nervous system, once undermined by the excessive strain of trying to keep up under impossible conditions, can never be fully repaired. Here is what a partially deaf woman writes of ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... his wife to a hospital for an operation, and won't be back for a couple of months, perhaps, and this man isn't even taking his place. He's just here for his health or for fun or something, I guess. He says he had a large suburban church near New York, and had a nervous breakdown; but I've been wondering if he didn't make a mistake, and it wasn't the church had the nervous breakdown instead. He isn't very big nor very little; he's just insignificant. His hair is like wet straw, and his eyes like a fish's. His hand feels like a dead toad when you have to shake hands, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... no more receive the news of the failure of existence or of the harmonious hostility of the stars with ardour or popular rejoicing than they would light bonfires for the arrival of cholera or dance a breakdown when they were condemned to be hanged. When the pessimist is popular it must always be not because he shows all things to be bad, but because he shows some ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... broadcast through the journals, thus displacing disappointment with such overwhelming sympathy as the distress of beauty and genius is sure to excite. For more than a week, now, the prevailing topic had been this young girl; first the promise of a brilliant debut, then the momentary triumph and sudden breakdown; now came the news of her illness, true, in so much that she was seriously ill, but exaggerated into a romance which gave her out as dying with a shock of a ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... cosmopolitan circles, one cannot be too cautious regarding one's acquaintances. They had been slightly too over-dressed and too familiar with the Count to suit me, and I had resolved that if I had ever to drive either of them I would land them in some out-of-the-world hole with a pretended breakdown. The non-motorist is always at the mercy of the chauffeur, and the so-called "breakdowns" are frequently due to the vengeance of the driver, who gets his throttle stuck, or some trouble which sounds equally serious, but which is remedied in one, two, three, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... feet tall might easily have frightened Mr. Wordsley into a nervous breakdown by staring at him with that gaunt, hollow-eyed stare, but this creature, though manlike, was fully fifty feet tall, incredibly elongated, and stark naked. Its hair was long and matted; its cheeks sunken, its lips pulled ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... mental tone as would lead in turn to moral acolasia, sensual excess, and physical ruin. But in Sir John's case the cause was not adequate; he had, so far as I know, never wholly given the reins to sensuality, and the change was too abrupt and the breakdown of body and mind too complete to be accounted for by such events as those of which he ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... studying the dramatic side of revolutions so much, and the practical work of revolutions so little, that we are apt to see only the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, and it only after the breakdown of the old system that the real work of revolution can be said ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... constitutional outlet is not afforded for such grievances, so long must unconstitutional means be appealed to; but the question which the breakdown of the old regime suggests seriously to all thinkers is whether there are not ample means within the Constitution, and I think it is the universal opinion of the more moderate that there is; and it is just these moderates whose views will be the more welcome because ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... seem almost hopeless. He became obsessed with the idea that the people with whom he had to deal were "out to get him." His fears of the job and of his associates grew to the point where a nervous breakdown ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... meantime Frank had discovered that the breakdown had been caused by a defect in the ignition apparatus which it would take some time to repair. Both he and Harry went to work on it after supper, however, and by midnight they ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... long-drawn-out persecution, but she was becoming aware that, strive as she might, her endurance had its limits. She was but human, and she was intensely sensitive to unkindness. Her nerves were beginning to give way under the strain. There were even times when she felt a breakdown to be inevitable, and only the thought of her step-mother's triumph warded it off. Once down, and she knew she would be a slave, broken beyond redemption to the most pitiless tyranny. And so, though her strength was worn threadbare through perpetual strain, she clung to it still. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... silence; then they clapped; then they shouted friendly words to him. You could feel throughout the room an intense desire that he should succeed. He responded a little to the encouragement, but could not remember his verses. He struggled, struggled, did a hurried little breakdown dance, bowed and vanished into the wings, to be beaten, I have no doubt, by the Jewish gentleman. We watched a little of the "Drama of the Woman without a Soul," but the sense of being in a large vat ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... up from Magna Graecia and whose formal acceptance into the state-cult formed one of the earliest incidents in the breakdown of the old agricultural religion, was Castor, with his twin-brother Pollux, although brother Pollux was always an insignificant partner, so much so that the temple which was subsequently built to them both was referred to either as the temple of "Castor" ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... as possible for the others to sit. None of the players may move forward after once landing on the backs. If all of the bungs succeed in seating themselves without any break occurring among the buckets, it counts one in favor of the buckets. When such a breakdown occurs, the two parties change places, the bungs taking the place of the buckets; otherwise the game is repeated with the same bungs and buckets. The party wins which has the highest score to its ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
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