|
|
|
More "Distressing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pernicious is not only poison to those who, from any cause of corporal debility or mental affliction, are liable to the above diseases;—but it is also too frequently found to render the most healthy victims of these alarming complaints. And as nervous disorders are the most complicated in their distressing circumstances, the greater care should be taken to avoid such aliments as produce them, as well as to choose those which are the most proper for their relief and prevention. Those who are now suffering from the inconsiderate use of ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... urgently distressing circumstances, sir. The fact is, that he inherited nothing from his father but a most scandalous list of debts, which he most honorably sold every farthing of his own little property to pay—relying for his subsistance upon the small stipend be was to receive from Mr. Thomas. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... an agonising pause, during which each member of the Club secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others. Only Mrs. Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse. At last Mrs. Ballinger said, with an attempt at a high tone: "Well, really, you know, it was last year that we took psychology, and this winter we ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another direction ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... army that night was distressing in the highest degree. They were hungry, exhausted, dejected, and seventeen hundred dangerous wounds demanded immediate attention. There was but one surgeon of the expedition who survived, and he was a man ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... with an off-handed alacrity that was distressing to the responsibility burdened personality of the accredited representative ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... and consent, there could be no condition that would render it voidable at the election of either. Every law and precedent was in favor of the inviolability of the Putney marriage, and yet so powerful were the family influences and so distressing would have been the results of a finding in his favor, that the lower court preferred to disregard precedents and law rather than illegitimatize the innocent children of Jeremiah and Mary. The same view was taken by the higher court, which absolved Mary of "being fully acquainted with the legal ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the least distressing—the least unsatisfactory idea," said he, in much agitation. "I thought Mr. Delrio an excellent young man; and she," indicating his companion, "tells me you know him ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... my part," I cried gladly. We shook hands. Jasper, Jr. slapped me on the back. "It's a most distressing, atavistic habit I'm getting into, knocking people ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... bigger fool than I looked or look a bigger fool than I was, and he pressed me quite earnestly to repeat some foolishness after him, about 'being a gold key,' when he said 'he was a gold lock,' I was very glad to get away from him, it was so distressing." ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... even changing her dress we were married—in the colonel's quarters, with every officer and every member of every officer's family on the reservation—even the children—standing by. And the women said, 'How distressing, Mr. Wickett, to have to leave in the morning!' and the men said, 'Tough luck, Dick'—and be sure I thought it was tough luck, and it would have been tough luck only by this time the entire post had got busy and got word to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Ling by the distressing nature of the oversight he had permitted that he could find no words with which to comfort Mian, who, after some ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... as a small province, lying in the estuary of a great South American river. It is wild and not beautiful, but the grass growing on its low plains seems to possess exceptionally nourishing and flavouring qualities. It resounds with the lowing of innumerable herds—a deep and distressing sound under the open sky, rising like a monstrous protest of prisoners condemned to death. On the mainland, across twenty miles of discoloured muddy water, there stands a city whose name, let us say, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the monstrous suggestion that capitalists fomented America's entrance into the war because they feared that otherwise the amounts loaned by them to the Allies might be jeopardized or lost, is a truly distressing manifestation of the willingness of some of our people—I trust not many—to believe evil of men simply because they have ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... to the great Earl, and the amount of estate to which her husband had become heir. There were those among them who could not understand Susan's genuine grief, and there were others whose consolations were no less distressing to one of her reserved character. She made brief answer that the squire was threescore and fifteen years old, his wife nigh about his age; that her husband was now their only child; that he was descended from a son of the great Earl John, killed at the Bridge of Chatillon, that ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... American army, was captured by Col. Harcourt of the British army. It was regarded as a very distressing event; and preparations were made to capture a British officer of the same rank, so an exchange could be effected. Col. Barton of the Rhode-Island militia, a brave and cautious officer, was charged with the capture of Major-Gen. Prescott, commanding the royal army at Newport. On the night ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... breathing-time during which their hopes were revived and their numbers recruited. It was observed, too, that the princes, of whose cruelty they had reason to complain, generally ended their career under very distressing circumstances. An ecclesiastical writer who is supposed to have flourished towards the commencement of the fourth century has discussed this subject in a special treatise, in which he has left behind him a very striking account of "The Deaths of the Persecutors." [308:1] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint Steve in terms ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of the army was equally distressing. Drastic drafting had long since taken into the army all the able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Boys from fourteen to eighteen, and old men from forty-five to sixty, were also pressed into service as junior and senior reserves, the Confederacy ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Polyansky, while he tried not to listen and wrote in his diary: "Where am I, my God? I am surrounded by vulgarity and vulgarity. Wearisome, insignificant people, pots of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women. . . . There is nothing more terrible, mortifying, and distressing than vulgarity. I must escape from here, I must escape today, or I shall go out of ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... blow was a heavy one. In the years following the war it added seriously to her financial embarrassment, and it has in many ways obstructed her prosperity. As a punitive measure, for the chastening of Virginia, it cannot be defended. Assuredly there was no ground for distressing Virginia by penal enactments that did not apply equally to every other State of the Confederacy. Common justice revolts at the selection of one man for punishment from eleven who have all been guilty of the same offense. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of prudence to serve you; but I must not exceed my ability, which is not very great; and I have several families on my hands who are by misfortune alone brought to want. I do assure you I cannot at present answer for such a sum as this without distressing ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... that I at once associated with distant musketry. All was then still, still as the grave, and, on glancing at the watch I wore strapped on my wrist, I saw it was two o'clock. A species of nervous dread now laid hold of me, and a thousand and one vague fancies, all the more distressing because of their vagueness, oppressed and disconcerted me. Moreover, I was impressed for the first time with the extraordinary solitude—solitude that seemed to belong to a period far other than the present, and, as I glanced ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... thought of returning empty-handed to his half-starved companions. The gray trees were not far away; he might reach them and make a mile or two on the back trail before dark, though he was weary and hunger had given him a distressing pain in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the gentleman under such distressing circumstances should be characterised by extreme delicacy and a chivalrous resolve to avoid occasioning any possible annoyance or uneasiness to the fair author of his pain. If, however, he should have reason to suppose that his rejection has resulted from mere indifference to his suit, he ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... told you my story. I conjured him to allow me to sit up with him and share any danger which might arise, but he implored me with irresistible earnestness not to add to his troubles by thwarting his arrangements. Seeing that I was really distressing him by my pertinacity, I at last allowed him to close the door and to turn the key upon the outside. I shall always reproach myself for my want of firmness. But what can you do when your own father ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of movement, and his mind was affected. The medical attendant called in said that he might linger thus for some time, but that, even if he recovered his intellect, which was more than doubtful, he would never be able to resume his profession. I could not leave Louise in circumstances so distressing,—I remained. The little money Duval had brought from Paris was now exhausted; and when the day on which he had been in the habit of receiving his quarter's pension came round, Louise was unable even to conjecture how it was to be applied for. It seems he had always gone for ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... election of bishops sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The highest febrile temperature was reached when, at an ordination in 1843, two of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Headquarters and a sentry on duty and we silently filed up the long communication trench which was deep in dust as rain had not fallen for months. We passed fatigue parties coming down for rations and the dust was most distressing. The relief of trenches is usually a long and tedious process—handing over stores, getting receipts, pointing out anything of exceptional interest and generally getting settled down for ten or fourteen days. The Regimental Headquarters were about 200 yards behind the front line and connected ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... not forgotten Susan's behaviour in the past, and did not wish to have her for a friend. It was the more distressing because Susan had made a plan which she thought a very pleasant one, and was anxious to carry out. It was to ask her mother to allow her to have Sophia Jane on a visit in London. She would then be able to show her many things ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... and her father experienced that most distressing of motor experiences—waiting, while the afternoon that would have been so good for driving went by them. Every fifteen minutes they came in from sitting on a dry-goods box in front of the garage, and never did the repair appear to be any ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... it is simply a very distressing incident which I have been trying to forget ever since. It is all very well for you to laugh, but if you ever mention the subject again I'll leave you and go ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... One of the most distressing days we have seen was last Tuesday, when two hundred and fifty all broken down, stood and sat, three long hours, waiting and hoping that the Commissary would send bread or rations, but none came, and we could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... This was in the drawing of the awful appearance of a "wopps" at a picnic (p. 76, Vol. XVII.), where the novelist appears as the handsome, but not very striking, youth attendant on the young lady who is overcome at the distressing situation. It must be admitted that ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Speaker on that night was of the most distressing nature. A sincere and ardent enemy of the measure, he headed its opponents; he resisted with all the power of his mind, the resources of his experience, his influence, and his eloquence. It was, however, through his voice that it was to be proclaimed and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... been removed from his soul Walter moved away. The whole world had suddenly become a different place. Although the calamity of Lola's disappearance was none the less distressing at least on his own particular horizon there no longer loomed the spectre of discharge and all the disgrace that accompanied it. He could have tossed his cap into the air for very joy and gratitude. In his relief ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the pale-green shovel-hats I have designed must be more or less in the spirit. I must work in the dark and let my instincts guide me. The great love I bear to my people will certainly save me from distressing their noble spirit ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... face was distorted by an expression of pain, and she wondered if he, like some Europeans, found the barbarity of the desert music ugly and even distressing to the nerves. While she wondered a voice began to sing, always accompanied by the four instruments. It was a contralto voice, but sounded like ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the Sheikh Burrachee alluded to was a relative whom he had seen at some time, and was to rejoin. For anything recalled to him by words he remembered at the time, though it passed from his brain the moment afterwards, neither pleasing him nor distressing him. His mind was like a lake, and ideas suggested in any way resembled clouds passing rapidly above it, reflected for a minute on the surface, and then gone. It was rather a curious thing that what Arabic he had picked up had not passed from him; ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... poetry; for, the instant a man has composed a verse in feet, and has woven a more delicate meaning into it by means of circumlocutions, he straightway concludes that he has scaled Helicon! Take those who are worn out by the distressing detail of the legal profession, for example: they often seek sanctuary in the tranquillity of poetry, as a more sheltered haven, believing themselves able more easily to compose a poem than a rebuttal charged with scintillating epigrams! ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... these people were most peculiarly and unpleasantly situated. Conscious in their own minds that the sentence of the law had been fulfilled upon them, it must have been truly distressing to their feelings to find that they could not be considered in any other light, or received into any other situation, than that in which alone they had been ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... own memory, too, when the victorious Sylla ordered Damasippus,[252] and others of similar character, who had risen by distressing their country, to be put to death, who did not commend the proceeding? All exclaimed that wicked and factious men, who had troubled the state with their seditious practices, had justly forfeited their lives. Yet this proceeding was the commencement of great bloodshed. For ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... massive a support for a creature so aerial. But mortal beauty must share human sorrows. The eyes of the beautiful being showed tokens of tears; her colour was heightened as she listened to her aged companion; and it was plain, from his melancholy yet displeased look, that the conversation was as distressing to himself as to her. When they sate down on the bench we have mentioned, the gentleman's discourse could be distinctly overheard by the eavesdropping soldier, but the answers of the young lady reached his ear ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... threaten him; but I told him the distressing truth, that I am very much afraid I shall fail if compelled to attempt a solo in public, for I know the audience at Mrs. Brompton's will be critical, and I ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... again tried to smother that tiresome little yawn, which seemed most distressing, when he desired to be most polite. Then he flicked off a grain of dust from his immaculate lace ruffle and buried his long, slender hands in the capacious pockets of his white satin breeches; finally he said with the most ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said in a tone of great displeasure, "Truly, the return of a parent is a cause for grief; yet I hardly expected my presence to be quite so distressing to my only child. I had no idea that she had already learned to dislike ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... distressing event lately took place at Castellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near Mentone. All the young people of the place being assembled in a dancing-room, one of the young men was seen to fall suddenly ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... an eternity he lay thinking, unable to come to any rational conclusion. The distressing effect of the light rays increased, rather than diminished, as his nerves became more and more unstrung. It seemed, even with, his eyes closed, that he could feel the weight of the cone of light upon his face. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... not suspect. I thought there was no need of distressing her. I wanted to tell you while I was able, because—" Harry hesitated, then he continued: "Father wanted to tell you how sorry he was not to make any better provision for you," he said, pitifully. "He didn't want you to think it was because he cared any the less for you. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Nickleby, crying bitterly, 'he is a brute, a monster; and the walls are very bare, and want painting too, and I have had this ceiling whitewashed at the expense of eighteen-pence, which is a very distressing thing, considering that it is so much gone into your uncle's pocket. I ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... of all his wishes without effort on his part, leaving nothing for his hopes, desires or struggles. The feeling that life is destitute of any motive or necessity for action, must be of all others the most distressing and insupportable to a rational being. The Marquis de Spinola asking Sir Horace Vere what his brother died of, Sir Horace replied, "He died, Sir, of having nothing to do." "Alas!" said Spinola, "that is enough to kill ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... height of thirty to forty feet. But the ground was covered with long, coarse grass, which was tinted a soft green in summer, but in winter was yellow and dry. At all seasons the haulms were so hard that the toes of one's boots wore out with distressing quickness. It was in winter that the grass ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... was very severe, and many soldiers were frozen at the outset. On January 29 the little band, five or six hundred French and Canadians, left Fort Saint-Louis, unfortunately without waiting for a party of Algonquins who should have acted as scouts. It was a distressing march. The soldiers had to walk through deep snow, and the unfamiliar use of snowshoes was a great trial to the Europeans. At night, no shelter! They had to sleep in the open air, under the canopy of the sky and the cold light ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... circumstances; but they complained of the men, who disliked and despised them. One soldier received thirty lashes for stealing fowls from them; and an order was issued forbidding soldiers or sailors, on pain of summary punishment, to leave their quarters without permission, "that an end may be put to distressing this distressed people." Two of the prisoners, however, while trying to escape, were shot by ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... intelligent and learned priest. He was superior of a community, and he directed, here in Paris, the only review which ever was really mystical. He was a theologian much consulted, a recognized master of divine jurisprudence; then he had distressing quarrels with the papal Curia at Rome and with the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris. His exorcisms and his battles against the incubi, especially in the female ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... to play one more very shameful, distressing, and final role in the free life of Liubka. She had already complained to Lichonin for a long time that the presence of Simanovsky was oppressive to her; but Lichonin paid no attention to womanish trifles: the vacuous, fictitious, wordy hypnosis of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... After these distressing scenes, in which my own spirit exhausted itself in suffering and in painful contemplation of the past; after recovering from that frenzy, a strange access of love, an extreme exaltation, led me to treat my mistress like an idol, or a divinity. A quarter ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... he said, "my case is far different from yours. You had an honorable origin and an honorable past. Nor were any of your adventures discreditable to you, even if some situations you have been in were distressing then and are humiliating to remember. You have nothing to be ashamed of unless it be such a trifling peccadillo ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... holding escaped from them and rattled down to the floor with a sharpness that I hear at this hour. Lord Iffield had already seized her arm; with a violent jerk he brought her round toward him. Then it was that there met my eyes a quite distressing sight: this exquisite creature, blushing, glaring, exposed, with a pair of big black-rimmed eyeglasses, defacing her by their position, crookedly astride of her beautiful nose. She made a grab at them with her free hand ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... to Rome, and all that he suffered there, without declaring that much of his correspondence during his government, especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey home, is very distressing. I have told the story of his own doings, I think, honestly, and how he himself abstained, and compelled those belonging to him to do so; how he strove to ameliorate the condition of those under his rule; how he fully appreciated the duty ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... much you may suffer from that most distressing and inconvenient complaint, a speedy and effective release from your sufferings is now offered ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... very distressing to his wife; and one day as she was sitting picking the lice out of Kora's head, she began to cry and Kora felt her tears dropping on to his back; he turned round and asked his sister-in-law why she was crying. She said that she could not tell him, as it would only make him ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... delighted to see her mixing with other young people," he replied; "she has a dull time, poor child, as a rule, and has felt the disappointment about her uncle's property more than she cares to confess. Mrs. Courtenay's illness is very distressing. My wife was speaking to the doctor yesterday: he considers Sir William Garrett ought to be sent for at once; in a few weeks ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... when you took your walks abroad," she said, smiling. "No one else seems to have discovered so distressing a state of affairs ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... invocation of the saints by the helpless were drowned in the united yelling of half-starved troopers in their almost superhuman struggle for existence. Fortunately the best order possible, under such distressing circumstances, was maintained by the splendid officers supporting Monet. They were men personally known to many of us years before. Lieut.-Colonel Dujiols commanded the vanguard; the rearguard was under Major Roberto White; the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... steward in him, though I can hardly say they were completely deweloped. I did look forward to the day when I could consign him to Mr. Leach as my own predecessor, when Captain Truck and I should retire, as I have no doubt we should have done on the same day, but for this distressing accident. I dewoutly pray that Toast is deceased, for I would rather any misfortune should befall him in the other world than that he should be compelled to associate with Arab niggers in this. Dead or alive, ladies, I am an advocate for a man's ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... we walked about in the plaza and listened to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... an orator's worth. When he praises, he praises with all his heart. When he raises the strain of moral indignation we can almost always beneath the orator's enthusiasm detect the rhetorician's art. We shall have occasion to notice in a future page the distressing loss of power which at a later period this affectation of moral sentiment involved. In Cicero it does not intrude upon the surface, it is only remotely present in the background, and to the Romans themselves ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... pay as well for masses, confessions, and all the rest of his own hocuspocus? There followed a social chat, well liquefied, after which we took our ceremonious leave. Once outside, I learned the distressing fact that the shape of the padre's bows had required crystals costing twelve cents, instead of ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Susan Walker Morse. In the mean time the distressing news had come from Charleston of the sudden death of Dr. Finley, to whose kindly affection and influence Morse owed much of the pleasure and success of his several ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... he steadily watched her. At that moment something within her was struggling, like a little, anxious, active creature, striving fiercely, minute though it was, to escape out of a trap. It seemed to her that it was the introduction of Hamza into her life by Baroudi that was furtively distressing her. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Council of State. The violent hostility in which you have lately indulged, without the shadow of a pretext, against the King's government, has rendered this measure inevitable. You will readily understand how much it is personally distressing to myself. My friendly feelings towards you induce me to express a hope that you may reserve yourself for the future, and that you will not compromise by false steps the talents which may still advantageously serve the ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... G. Prevost. There he married (22d June 1842), and spent the remainder of his life devoting himself to the preparation of those devotional commentaries, which are still so well known. He suffered for the greatest part of his life from a distressing and disabling chronic asthma—from the time that he came back to Oxford as Fellow and Tutor—and he died in 1865. The old friends met once more shortly before Isaac Williams's death; Newman came to see him, and at his departure Williams accompanied ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... ruinous cost, for he was now in the position, fatal to a governor, of a party man. Even from this situation he might perhaps have been able to extricate himself: so great was the respect felt for his rare qualities of mind and character. But a distressing malady almost incapacitated him for the discharge of public business, and at length, in November 1845, forced him to resign. At this time there was some apprehension of difficulties with America, arising from the Oregon question, and, in view of the possibility ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the night, had they aroused themselves, in expectation of the return of the fathers, or of a signal for action. But the night wore away, and the morning dawned, without bringing either the one or the other. But notwithstanding this distressing state of suspense, they had a confidence too undoubting in the firmness and prudence of their leader, to think of approaching the Indian camp until they should receive ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... which he relied to turn the tide of dollars in his direction was called "A Passion in a Suburb," and was described as "a psychological study of madness," by Algernon Boyesen. It was horror for the sake of horror, which is always distressing, and it was a failure. It was food neither for the elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... We cannot get him to attend our young men's class with all the baits and traps we can set for him. Where does he spend his Sabbath-day and week-day evenings? We cannot find out until we hear some distressing thing about him, that, ten to one, he would have escaped had he been a reader of good books, or a student with us, say, of Dante and Bunyan and Rutherford, and a companion of those young men and young women who talk about and follow such intellectual tastes and pursuits. Now, if you are such ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... game goes merrily on, with Sandy collecting steadily on his hunch and Cora Wales telling her husband the truth about himself every time one of these three numbers didn't win; she exposed some very distressing facts about his nature the time she put five apiece on the three numbers and the single-o come up. It was a mad life, that last hour, with a lot of other enraged ladies round the layout, some being mad because they hadn't had money to play ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... The most distressing surmises as to the cause of the disappearance of our companions, now began to suggest themselves. We were so astounded by this decisive evidence of the presence of strangers upon the island, that we scarcely knew what to do next, but at last concluded to ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... wonder that—with all this misery and death about him, and the sight of it distressing him—Noll should grow sick at heart? The gloom of the old stone house and the desolateness of his new home, when compared with the one which he had left, had, at first, been all that his fresh young spirits could bear; and, having grown to like his new abode in a measure, he found, even ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... views, the sight of the dreadful people that they brought about her. In reality, Olive was distinguished and discriminating, and Adeline was the dupe of confusions in which the worse was apt to be mistaken for the better. She talked to Ransom about the inferiority of republics, the distressing persons she had met abroad in the legations of the United States, the bad manners of servants and shopkeepers in that country, the hope she entertained that "the good old families" would make a stand; but he never suspected that she cultivated these topics (her treatment of them struck ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... one instant; yet it was frightful to conceive the extent of combined villany and power which he must have employed in the perpetration of his designs. Let me do myself justice in one respect. The evil of parting from Miss Vernon, however distressing it might in other respects and at another time have appeared to me, sunk into a subordinate consideration when I thought of the dangers impending over my father. I did not myself set a high estimation on wealth, and had ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and also slept in that posture, his lower jaw dropped by its own weight, when the voluntary power of the muscles was suspended. The mucus of his mouth and throat became quite dry, and at length was succeeded with sloughs; this was a most distressing circumstance to him, and was in vain endeavoured to be relieved by supporting his jaw by slender steel springs fixed to his night-cap, and by springs of elastic gum. The sloughs spread and seemed to accelerate his death. See Class ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... him, because although at first he would have gone almost any length to detect the persons, on reflection he was pleased that there was not evidence to bring them into a court of justice, the publicity and annoyance of which would have been inconceivably distressing to me. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... dear Connie," said Lady Marcia, with a preoccupied look. "We have just heard distressing news. The ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their troops, after having been blocked up in their camp till from want they were obliged to submit to the most humiliating conditions, were inhumanly massacred by Gulus'sa, the son of the Numidian king. The Romans chose this distressing juncture to declare ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... teeth; they do not seem to be aware how much the comfort, appearance, and future health of the child depends upon it. Nor do they subsequently impress upon the minds of their children how necessary, on their part, is the observance of certain rules for the preservation of the teeth, and how distressing are the effects which result from their neglect. It is proposed, here, to say a few words for the information and guidance of the ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... manner of laughter, and the point at which laughter first occurred, you know where the most educated and the least educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in ber die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not its nature, but the nature of the observer. It would seem that the criminalist might save himself much work by observing the laughter of his subjects. The embarrassed, foolish snickering of the badly observing witness; the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... this power of realisation is acquired, the coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives, and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... progress is confused and put on a wrong footing when the consciousness of happiness or unhappiness, is made the primary test. The happiness of the child is quite apart from that of the adult. Regardless of distressing circumstances, the child is able to laugh and play, and this because he is a child; a child in his ignorance of actual life, and in his inability to perceive the true conditions in which he lives. Not otherwise, I take ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... vicinity, to abstain from mutual hostilities, which was strictly observed during the war, to the mutual advantage of both parties; who were thereby delivered from the horrors of a predatory, murderous warfare, equally distressing ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... have maintained a constant geniality in their humor, even in the treatment of distressing themes. For example, Josh Billings made the announcement that one hornet, if it was feeling well, could break up a whole camp meeting. Bill Nye, Artemas Ward and many another American writer have given in profusion of amiable sillinesses to make the nation laugh. It ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... order that members might consult their constituents and sound the public feeling. During this recess it may be conceived that neither side was slack in its efforts. Franklin for his share contributed a pamphlet, entitled "Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs." "Mischievous and distressing," he said, as the frequent disputes "have been found to both proprietaries and people, it does not appear that there is any prospect of their being extinguished, till either the proprietary purse is unable to support them, or the spirit of the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... on, fatiguing, distressing in its length and its happenings. Progress was necessarily slow, the perils of the road increasing as the little cavalcade wound deeper and deeper into the wilderness. There were times when the coach fairly crawled along the edge of a precipice, a proceeding so hazardous that Beverly ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of patriotism in England during the last year or two is a serious and distressing matter. Only in consequence of such a decay could the current lust of territory be confounded with the ancient love of country. We may imagine that if there were no such thing as a pair of lovers left in the world, all ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... proletariat in Coriolanus; "it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.... Ay, and it makes men hate one another." For this distressing result of peace, the reason is given that in times of peace men have less need of one another than in seasons of war, and the crude argument closes with the cry: "The wars for my money." There is irony in this suggestion of the mercantile ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... at Mrs. Wood solemnly for a minute, and then he said he would. Then he bade Mrs. Wood good-morning, bowed himself out and walked around to look for the widow. When the real widow heard the news, she was deeply affected, and she sobbed in a most distressing manner. Subsequently she went into mourning. The life insurance company paid her the money due upon the major's policy. The major's lodge passed resolutions of regret, his family divided up his property, and the community settled down comfortably in the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... said Mr. Brown, following the good lady down stairs, "how distressing for me! and to say that he ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the "whistle" which the animal makes, will be a secret unknown to any one except herself and the horse. In the large majority of cases, roaring is a disease which increases with time, and the accompanying noise is distressing to all lovers of horses who hear it. Kickers, even with red bows on their tails, should on no account be ridden; for they are a danger to man, woman, horse, and hound, and are the cause of many accidents every hunting season. It would appear ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... prescribed for spasmodic asthma, and undoubtedly with some success; and the manner in which it affords relief in this distressing disease has been pointed out, when speaking of the narcotic and antispasmodic effects of this drug. But suppose it capable of relieving the paroxysm, when administered to a person unaccustomed to its deadly stimulus, it will by no ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... had—but, by God's blessing, Have not been troubled with them lately. Now I have answer'd all your questions without pressing, And you an equal courtesy should show.' 'Alas!' said Juan, ''t were a tale distressing, And long besides.'—'Oh! if 't is really so, You 're right on both accounts to hold your tongue; A sad tale saddens ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Madame Theophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice—named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer—scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted this as a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Cot grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the mail,—papers, letters, packages. Here comes news from home, sweet, tender, tearful, hopeful, sad, distressing news; joyful news of victory and sad news of defeat; pictures of happy homes, or sad wailing over homes destroyed! But the mail has arrived and we cannot change the burden it has brought. We can only pity the man who goes empty away from the little group assembled ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... Sir Penthony. "Miss Amherst, if you wish to make me eternally grateful you will point them out to me. There is nothing so distressing as not to know. And once I was introduced to a beauty, and didn't discover my luck until it was too late. I never even asked her to dance! Could you fancy anything more humiliating? Give you my honor I spoke to her for ten minutes and never so much as paid her a compliment. It was too cruel,—and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the sound dictates of reason and experience, we, in peace, neglect our military establishment, we must, with a powerful and skilful enemy, be exposed to the most distressing calamities." ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... missionary expressed his surprise at finding the different classes so little affected by the prejudices of sect in their intercourse with members of the mission. The illness of Mr. Lanneau became at length so distressing, as to require his absence from the field for nearly two years. Before his return to the East, which was early in 1843, the Committee had expressed an opinion, that it was expedient to suspend further efforts at Jerusalem. Mr. Lanneau, however, resumed his abode there until the visit ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... whole year round, but most at the equinoxes, as shown in the table on the following page. The winds, though somewhat less steady, are still very determinable. With an easterly tending, they deflect north and south, following the sun. In the drier season they blow so cold that the sun's heat is not distressing; and in consequence of this, and the average altitude of the plateau, which is 3000 feet, the general temperature of the atmosphere is very pleasant, as I found from experience; for I walked every inch of the journey dressed in thick woollen clothes, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... which they might be said to have almost a personal interest. The conversation turned to other matters; but across the way they saw enacted some of the preliminaries and accompaniments of a mysterious complication that finally became as distressing and as disastrous as ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... whole distressing story. It was all a long time ago and the details do not matter now. It was to be expected that a man like the old Doctor should love, love once, and love as few men do. And that is what he did—and the girl left him because he ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... my situation! How distressing for a daughter to find her heart militating with her filial duty! I know my father loves me tenderly; why then do I reluctantly obey him? [Heaven knows! with what reluctance I should oppose the will of a parent, or set an example ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... support of the British Government.' The Ameer arranged that the Vakeel of the Indian Government should visit Simla, carrying with him full explanations, and charged to lay before the Viceroy sundry grievances which were distressing Shere Ali. That functionary took back to Cabul certain minor concessions, but conveyed the message also that those concessions were contingent on the Ameer's acceptance of British officers about his frontiers, and that it would ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and slightly wounded—had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes feigned—or so it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... gift; he met misfortune with patient passivity Resistance he found a mistake. But for all this a certain sense of superiority was, never wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat, fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients; but, here and there, a student of human nature found it ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Ikey said to herself desperately, "what makes me so stupid. I'm afflicted with chronic mental nearsightedness. Most distressing. This is really a tragedy I'm mixed up in—a tragedy. And tragedy's a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... New York: the whole American navy had not more than seventeen vessels. In moral resources Great Britain was decidedly stronger than America. Parliament was divided, but the king was determined. On Oct 15, 1775, he wrote: "Every means of distressing America must meet with my concurrence." Down to 1778 the war was popular in England, and interfered ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... this most distressing position—when he sat with his mother in shame and retirement in obscure lodgings, which had been taken for them by one of their former servants, and with no immediate means of livelihood—then first the folly of his past career revealed itself to his mind in its full proportions. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... indissolubly connected with it, cannot but regard with pain and abhorrence any cause which tends towards the demolition or destruction of the monuments of the past. To these it is a significant and distressing fact that hardly any modern English buildings or streets possess the qualities which give the value and charm to the old cities, towns, and villages of which we are the grateful inheritors. If any reader is inclined to doubt the truth of this ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... wished you good night, the postman, who had been delayed by the snow, brought me a very distressing letter. The senior vicaire informs me that my book has been a source of grief to Monseigneur, and has already overshadowed the spiritual joy with which he looked forward to the festival of our Lady of Mount Carmel. The work, he adds, is full of foolhardy doctrines and opinions which have ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... gift of the holy bishop and his acolytes even at that time of torment in the hospital cell. The same faint Presence, like a plum tree blossoming in the dark, stole through the young man's senses, luring and distressing him with its infinite suggestions of ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... was one of those good souls who saw no harm in the vilest of creatures; faults were hidden by her veil of sympathy. When distressing reverses or abject despair visited any one, Mrs. Allison's affability and indescribable tenderness smoothed over the troubled situation and brought forth a gleam of gladness. Quiet, kindly, magnanimous, tolerant, she could touch hearts to the depths in a manner both ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... a bed-place was considerately resigned to me. It consisted of a crib in a small room, no larger than a closet; however, as the horizontal position still continued most distressing to me, a bed of down could not have procured me repose, for I do not think I ceased coughing for three consecutive minutes the whole night. And it was no small aggravation to my misery, to know that I was the means of disturbing ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... I called upon Gov. Wise, who occupied lodgings at the same hotel. He was worn out, and prostrated by a distressing cough which threatened pneumonia. But ever and anon his eagle eye assumed its wonted brilliancy. He was surrounded by a number of his devoted friends, who listened with rapt attention to his surpassing eloquence. A test question, indicative of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... and distrusted the President as the author of the protective policy which had cost their industries so dear; but now, after his declaration favoring reciprocity,—with his full recognition of the brotherhood of nations,—and in view of this calamity, so sudden, so distressing, there had come a ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... if they'—Miss Abingdon again referred to that distressing body of young women of the present day—'I wonder if they have ever kissed a lover's letter, or have slept with his picture underneath their pillows at night? Or have they ever lain sleepless for an hour because of a loved ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... a disordered state of the stomach, caused, the surgeon says, by the oppressive and overpowering heat which we have experienced for the last few days, and the general effects of which seem more distressing to the ship's company than is often experienced under a higher range of the thermometer; the deprivation of all power, or energy, is one of its most unpleasant consequences. I am inclined to think that one reason for its great ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... and power alone Never make a blessing; Seek not e'en a throne By one wretch distressing. Better toil a slave For the blood-earned penny, Than be rich, and have ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... desired to speak to me. This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost savage vehemence of gesticulation she suddenly tore ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... matters which water may contain, are more considerable, and of greater importance, than might at first be imagined. It cannot be denied, that such waters as are hard, or loaded with earthy matter, have a decided effect upon some important functions of the human body. They increase the distressing symptoms under which those persons labour who are afflicted with what is commonly called gravel complaints; and many other ailments might be named, that are always aggravated by the use of waters abounding in ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... beautiful. Her eyes dared him; her lips invited him; all her charms rose up and besought him. For a moment, Kenkenes was startled. If he had believed that Ta-meri loved him never so slightly, his sensations would have been most distressing. But he knew and was glad to know that he awakened nothing deeper than a superficial partiality, which lasted only as long as he was in her sight to please her eye. In spite of his consternation, he could think intelligently enough to ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Thursday, March 23rd.—A distressing report in the papers this morning, that the Galloper had been blown up by the Germans, made the friends of Sir FREDERICK SMITH anxious. Had he, on one of his periodical visits to the trenches to see Friend WINSTON, stumbled across an enemy mine? Happily the report was grossly exaggerated. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... a rapid view of the destroyed ramparts of the town and returned to the hospital, where there were men whose limbs had been amputated, many wounded, many afflicted with ophthalmia, whose lamentations were distressing, and some infected with the plague. The beds of the last description of patients were to the right on entering the first ward. I walked by the General's side, and I assert that I never saw him touch any one of the infected. And why should he have done so? They were ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Equally distressing and pitiable is it, to see females, young or old, losing all presence of mind the moment a horse takes fright, or a gale of wind capsizes the vessel in which they are travelling, and by their erratic ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... particular phase, he felt with gratitude, could not last for ever; whatever impended (even the gallows, he bitterly and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to be a relief. To calculate cubes occurred to him as an ingenious and even profitable refuge from distressing thoughts, and he threw his ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Hendricks, Vice-President of the United States, died to-day at 5 o'clock p.m. at Indianapolis, and it becomes my mournful duty to announce the distressing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... enormous proportions.... Are you aware that rumours of war are becoming wide-spread?... Public opinion is in a most unsettled state.... Things are bad on the Bourse, too—going from bad to worse!... Really, it is all most distressing!" ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... He did not suppose that this young girl, timid to excess, with a sensitiveness almost a disease, would be able to hear without flinching such a terrible revelation. He expected a burst of despair, tears, distressing cries. She might perhaps faint away; and he stood ready to ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... As nothing is more distressing than the sight of human misery when we are unable to silence it, I returned as speedily as possible to Bruxelles with ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... he forwarded a letter to Messrs. Ricardo. "I wrote to you a few days ago," he said, "from Malta, and, as the packet sailed with a fair wind, you will receive that letter very shortly. You will thereby perceive the distressing suspense in which I have been held, and the inconvenience to which I have been exposed, by remaining on board this small vessel for a period of five months, during all the heat of a Mediterranean summer, without exercise or recreation. This situation has ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... limiting factor is not the neighbor but water; and I wonder if this is, perhaps, one of the things which makes this country seem to enjoy a kind of peace one does not find elsewhere. The struggle of living thing against living thing can be distressing in a way that a mere battle with the elements is not. If some great clump of cactus dies this summer it will be because the cactus has grown beyond the capacity of its roots to get water, not because one green fellow creature has bested it in some limb-to-limb struggle. In my more familiar East ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... in any court. But the mere suggestion of a court, of a public inquiry, alarmed her, not for herself but for Sommers, who would suffer grievously. And it did not seem easy to discuss the matter with him as she must now; it would bring up distressing scenes. Her face burned at the thought. The woman's tale was plausible. Had Sommers wondered about the death? Gradually it came over her that Sommers had always suspected this thing. She was sure of it. He had not spoken of it because he wished to protect ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... be revenged upon Genius. Greatness must be punished by itself or another. Joseph Bourgogne was no exception to the laws of the misery of Genius. He had a distressing trait, whose exhibition tickled the dura ilia of the reapers of the forest. Joseph, poet-cook, was sensitive to new ideas. This sensitiveness to the peremptory thought made him the slave of the wags of Damville. Whenever he had anything in his hands, at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... know, that Miss Challoner committed suicide. But the circumstances do not fully bear out this theory, nor can Mr. Challoner be made to accept it. Indeed, he is so convinced of its falsehood, that he stands ready to do anything, pay anything, suffer anything, to have this distressing blight removed from his daughter's good name. Mr. Brotherson was her dearest friend, and as such may have the clew to this mystery, but Mr. Brotherson may not be in a condition to speak for several weeks. Meanwhile, Mr. Challoner must suffer from great suspense ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... mechanism. And thereupon, while he sat, enjoying the sense of well-being that follows a substantial meal, between the lines of that triumphant apology he evoked, by way of contrast, the panorama of his own life, his wretched childhood, his haphazard youth, no less distressing to recall, the days without food, the nights without a place to lay his head. And suddenly, when the reading was at an end, in the midst of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those outbursts of Southern effusiveness which compel one to think aloud, he cried, protruding his ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... impossible for Mrs. Lyndsay to contemplate leaving England without great pain. The subject was so distressing to her feelings, that she endeavoured to forget it as much as she could. The manner in which it had been forced upon her by Mrs. Ready, was like probing a deep wound with a jagged instrument; and after that lady's departure, she covered her ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... step before he repented of it. His letters to his brother George, who with other friends bestirred himself for Coleridge's release as soon as his whereabouts was discovered, are rather distressing in their self-abasement. The efforts of his friends were successful and in April he returned to the University, where a public admonition was the extent of his punishment, and he continued in receipt of ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hours—and the ground wind was strong. Nevertheless, neither passengers nor instruments were injured, and M. Janssen was fully established by the day of eclipse on his observing ground at Oran, on the Algerian coast. It is distressing to add that the phenomenon was hidden by cloud. In the month that followed this splendid venture no fewer than fifteen balloons escaped from Paris, of which four fell into the hands of the enemy, although for greater security all ascents were now ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... taken away; I know it's there," persisted Amy, who had evidently been distressing herself with the question how a heart, sinful on earth, could be fit for the pure ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... Dispatch gives a most distressing account of the bibulous hooliganism which is becoming more rampant week ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... noble sir," sighed Burgsdorf, "would that I did not know, for it is a most sorrowful knowledge to an old soldier and in a most distressing condition is ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... accompanied by frequent thunder-showers, which have not the effect one would expect, that of cooling the heated atmosphere. I experience a degree of languor and oppression that is very distressing, and ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... to undertake it. I was aware that of all the hundred versions of Appomattox, not one was really correct. Therefore I was extremely anxious that he should leave behind him the truth. His throat was not distressing him, and his voice was much better and stronger than usual. He was so delighted to have gotten Appomattox accomplished once more in his life—to have gotten the matter off his mind—that he was as talkative as his old self. He received Susy very pleasantly, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of these notes issued a full dollar's worth of silver bullion is at the time deposited in the Treasury as a security for its redemption. Upon this subject, as upon the tariff, my recommendation is that the existing laws be given a full trial and that our business interests be spared the distressing influence which threats of radical changes always impart. Under existing legislation it is in the power of the Treasury Department to maintain that essential condition of national finance as well as of commercial prosperity—the parity in use ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... courage. But her lies did not stand her in much stead with Cuckoo, who had, from the start, no intention whatever of believing any word she might say. So war of a novel kind came about between them. Mrs. Brigg was forced to live and hear herself named thief, a distressing circumstance which she could scarcely surmount with dignity, whatever she might manage in the way of fortitude. Denial only armed forces for the attack. Battles were numerous and violent. Cuckoo, who had in some directions ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... followed were spent in mournful motionlessness at the back of that room where the trembling host of lights seemed to give animation to dead things. During the two days various activities brought me distraction, at first distressing, then depressing. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the cab door. She caught it in hers, kissed it, and pushed it away. The cab drove off at the same moment—I started into the road, with some vague idea of stopping it again, I hardly knew why—hesitated from dread of frightening and distressing her—called, at last, but not loudly enough to attract the driver's attention. The sound of the wheels grew fainter in the distance—the cab melted into the black shadows on the road—the woman in white ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... later her experience in war work in France where for three years she had given rare service in hospital work had somehow made her even more inaccessible to her mother. And now the situation had been rendered more distressing by her determination "to find something to do." She was firm in her resolve that she had no intention of patiently waiting in her home, ostensibly busying herself with social duties but in reality "waiting if not actually angling for a man." She bluntly ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... confessed that their art was impotent to alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,—'twas for the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street. Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... by sudden involuntary twitchings of the different muscles of the body, the disease being sometimes confined to one limb, sometimes to two, and frequently pervades the whole system, giving the dog a distressing and painful appearance. These involuntary motions, it is very true, are generally restricted during sleep, although in old chronic cases of long standing they often continue in full activity without any remission ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... have got rid of everybody," Berrington said. "It has been a most distressing business, and I am afraid that there is worse to come. Dr. Andrews has just telephoned. He has seen Sir Charles's medical man, and they have decided that there must be an inquest. I don't suggest that anything is wrong, but there ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed, in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in the direction ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... filled with teams belonging to Sigel's train, and the dust was very oppressive. At length it became so distressing to our animals that the General permitted us to separate from him and break up into small parties. I made the rest of the journey in company with Colonel Eaton. Our road lay through the most picturesque region we had seen. The Ozark Mountains filled the southern horizon, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of, where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like, that these last few months had driven her nearly mad. Cowperwood had so definitely insisted on her keeping in the background—he had told her so very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole procedure. Nearly all that she had had ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... trees of the fields and plantations writhed like miserable men as the air wound its way swiftly among them: the lowest portions of their trunks, that had hardly ever been known to move, were visibly rocked by the fiercer gusts, distressing the mind by its painful unwontedness, as when a strong man is seen to shed tears. Low-hanging boughs went up and down; high and erect boughs went to and fro; the blasts being so irregular, and divided into so many cross-currents, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... Fleet Street. We exercised this voluntary deafness on the occasion. But not long afterwards, we were compelled, during an attack of disease which affected the nervous system, to hear the whole discordant performance repeated again and again, with a pertinacity which was really very distressing. Such a case prepares us to give credit to a far more remarkable story, related in one of the works of Macnish. A clergyman, we are told, who was a skilful violinist, and frequently played over some favourite solo or concerto, was obliged to desist from practice on account of the dangerous ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... willing but mechanical hostess scraping the white ashes from the embers, parcelling out these into little heaps of fire upon the hearth, throwing salt into the swinging pot with a hand the colour of which may be distressing to the imagination, then tasting the soup: all this, and much more, I leave her to accomplish in the gathering darkness of the kitchen, and, sparing her the pain of lighting lamp or candle while there is still a gleam of day, I wander ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Chesapeake was not yet ready for action. Her crew was undrilled in the use of ordnance, her decks littered, appliances for reloading were wanting, and at the supreme moment neither priming nor match could be found. Under these distressing circumstances, the boarding officer of the Leopard took the deserters and sailed for Halifax. The sight of the dismantled Chesapeake, with its dead and dying, aroused the people irrespective ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... company of Americans who are discussing public affairs the stranger is struck by what seems the lack of logical connection between the statements of facts and the judgments passed upon them. The facts may be most distressing and yet nobody seems much distressed, still less is any one depressed. The city government is in the hands of grafters, the police force is corrupt, the prices of the necessaries of life are extortionate, ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Irish Sabbath, the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the storms of heaven. Can anything be more distressing than to see a venerable man pouring forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, and depending for his food upon the little offal he gets from his parishioners? I venerate a human being who starves for his principles, let them be what they may; but ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... that Joe had left for her, the news of Miss Susie's illness caused her temporary distress. But her mind did not dwell for long on the distressing part of it, but got busy with the problem in hand, went into conference with itself over it, analyzed and dissected it to its complete satisfaction, and then put out the resulting dicta on the bulletin board of her consciousness. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... few could blame him for that misstep; I cannot think the distressing necessity will ever arise again. Should Heaven spare his life he will become your staff, upon which you can soon ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... the afternoon in yawning over a novel, and the evening in the excitement of the tea table and the party, and the ball room, to retire, perhaps at midnight, with the mind and body and soul in a feverish state, to toss away the night in vapid or distressing dreams. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... at the entrance like a bull at a gate, Castro followed, and I toiled after them with the men. Up we went, some cheering, but the majority with closed lips, saving their breath. In our fatigued state the climb was fearfully distressing: men sank to the ground gasping, or fell while trying to grasp the overhanging rocks with ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... perhaps as well that Chris had more than enough to think of. Otherwise the wrench at leaving home might have been even more distressing than it was. His last day passed like a flash, though from his attitude no one, certainly not Becky, would have guessed that the next morning he would not be there to eat his breakfast in the sunny kitchen window. Amos, quick to sense all Chris's moods, knew something was afoot, and when ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... any one else should even for a moment attach credence to the monstrous suggestion that capitalists fomented America's entrance into the war because they feared that otherwise the amounts loaned by them to the Allies might be jeopardized or lost, is a truly distressing manifestation of the willingness of some of our people—I trust not many—to believe evil of men simply because they ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... But one distressing incident interrupted the serene progress of that wonderful supper—when the paper cup of ants and bugs and beetles and flies that Sarah had captured before sitting down, upset directly into her saucer of home-made ice cream. Even that catastrophe could ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... springing from the ground where he lay and jerking his pipe from his teeth—was it not enough for a world's pity that to her it seemed so? How it seemed to the Callenders in particular was a point no one dared raise where he was. To them had come conditions so peculiarly distressing and isolating that they were not sharers of the common lot around them, but of one strangely, incalculably worse. Rarely and only in guarded tones were they spoken of now in Kincaid's Battery, lately arrived here, covered with the glory of their part in Bragg's ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... about this time, that was singularly distressing to me, and which I confided to no one, not even that excellent physician who kept a quiet and observant eye fixed upon me during all this ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... civil one, in a manner between parents and children, both being of Trojan stock: for from Troy came Lavinium, from Lavinium, Alba, and the Romans were descended from the stock of the Alban kings. However, the result of the war rendered the quarrel less distressing, for the struggle never came to regular action, and when the buildings only of one of the cities had been demolished, the two states were incorporated into one. The Albans first invaded the Roman territories with a large army. They pitched their camp not more than five miles from the city, and ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... says in his journal, 'at beholding the emaciated countenances of the doctor and Hepburn, as they strongly evidenced their extremely debilitated state. The alteration in our appearance was equally distressing to them, for since the swellings had subsided we were little more than skin and bone. The doctor particularly remarked the sepulchral tone of our voices, which he requested us to make more cheerful if possible, unconscious that his own ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... of Charity clung to his belt in silence for a while. After a mile or two she began to free her mind in regard to the distressing situation of her companion and herself. She informed Berkley that the negro drivers had become frightened and had cut the traces and galloped off; that she and the other Sister were on their way to the new base at Azalea Court House, where thousands of badly wounded were being gathered from the battles ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the morning!" But beneath all this show of gallantry, my heart like that of many another hero on equally desperate occasions—my heart was ill at ease. I have often thought that my feelings, for the whole of that distressing afternoon, must have been very like those of a person about to go, for the first time, up in a balloon. I returned to Reeves' Hotel, College-green, where I was lodging. "I'll pack my portmanteau (the contents ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... epistle which he would send to the Captain. When, however, he had settled himself at his writing-table, and taken up his friend's letter to read it over once more, the sad condition of this excellent man rose again vividly before him. The feelings which had been all day distressing him again awoke, and it appeared impossible to him to leave one whom he called his friend in such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the Radical papers reported it. I hoped you might have seen it. But when we got down here this afternoon, and there was nothing from you, both Miss Hallin and Edward felt sure you had not heard—and I walked over. It was a most painful, distressing ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... most pressingly urgent, is a more comfortable, decent and healthy housing. Until this is effected, all other efforts to raise them mentally and morally must fail of their expected result. The London Times, and other metropolitan, and many local, journals publish almost daily distressing accounts of the miserable tenements occupied by the men and women whose labor makes England the garden of fertility and beauty that it is. Editors are making the subject the theme of able and stirring articles, and some of the most eloquent members of Parliament are speaking of ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... faith discover in them a greater fulness than ever. My friend R. informs me she has seen J.H., who had sent to request me to visit her. She wished to tell me the Lord had blessed her soul. May she be made fully meet for glory.—My husband still continues very ill. Had a distressing night. The enemy assaulted him. My faith seems to have no wings.—Enabled to rise.—I asked him if Christ was precious? He replied, 'Yes.' He is apparently near death. Hitherto my mind has been graciously supported though sometimes painfully ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... had had a long succession of still-born children. It was a story that Philip was not unaccustomed to: the husband had been a soldier in India; the legislation forced upon that country by the prudery of the English public had given a free run to the most distressing of all diseases; the innocent suffered. Yawning, Philip undressed and took a bath, then shook his clothes over the water and watched the animals that fell out wriggling. He was just going to get into bed when there was a knock at the door, and the hospital ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ordeal of the parting with Mrs. Norton, but when the time came for it he found his fear of a distressing scene quite uncalled for. She said goodbye to him in a pleasantly friendly, though somewhat casual, manner, and did not offer to accompany him to the station as she had a previous engagement. And long before the little train had zig-zagged down the seven thousand feet to the foot of the Himalayas ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the long carry to the 18th green, hardly seemed to further the interests of perfect golf. The warmest acknowledgments are therefore due to a number of ex-open champions, who kindly turned their backs on what proved one of the most distressing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... I," No second misery prompts the sigh. When long I sought, alas, in vain, My husband's love and bliss to gain, In Rama all my hopes I set And dreamed I might be happy yet. I, of the consorts first and best, Must bear my rivals' taunt and jest, And brook, though better far than they, The soul distressing words they say. What woman can be doomed to pine In misery more sore than mine, Whose hopeless days must still be spent In grief that ends not and lament? They scorned me when my son was nigh; When he is banished I must die. Me, whom my husband never prized, Kaikeyi's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Orville made one; for I naturally concluded him to be some low-bred, uneducated man; and I thought my idea was indubitably confirmed, when I heard him say to Sir Clement Willoughby, in an audible whisper,-which is a mode of speech very distressing and disagreeable to bystanders,-"For Heaven's sake, Willoughby, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Besides, that would take us too far. Allow me only to remind you of the old saying, "Jupiter, you are angry; therefore you are in the wrong." I meant to say that all those onslaughts upon systems—general propositions—are especially distressing, because together with these systems men repudiate knowledge in general, and all science and faith in it, and consequently also faith in themselves, in their own powers. But this faith is essential to men; they cannot exist by their sensations alone they are wrong to fear ideas ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... thee thus, my son," he cried, "This peerless maiden for your bride, Bids each distressing thought depart, And joy again possess my heart. Fair princess, thine the happy fate, To heal the wounds of mutual hate; No longer shall this bosom know, An Eastern-Saxon as my foe; And she, who bids that passion rest, Doubt not, shall be supremely ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... sleep was profound, but by and by the associations of blows and wounds carried him back to the field of Evesham. The wild melee was renewed, he heard the voice of his father, but always in that strange distressing manner peculiar to dreams of the departed, always far away, and just beyond his reach, ever just about to give him the succour he needed, but ever withheld. The thunderstorm that broke over the contending ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about these distressing controversies was that they seemed to absorb the whole energies of the nation. No period is less productive in modern German history than the age immediately following the triumph of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun so liberally and hopefully, became, temporarily at least, narrower ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... this connection, that the Hylocichlae differ more decidedly in their notes of alarm than in their songs. The wood thrush's call is extremely sharp and brusque, and is usually fired off in a little volley; that of the Wilson is a sort of whine, or snarl, in distressing contrast with his song; the hermit's is a quick, sotto voce, sometimes almost inaudible chuck; the Swainson's is a mellow whistle; while that of the Alice is something between the Swainson's and the Wilson's,—not ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... with your Excellency's letter of the 6th instant, on a subject not more distressing to you, Sir, than to myself. I have at various periods of the war written to Congress and to the States, endeavoring to convince them of the necessity of passing the most vigorous laws, to prevent the inhabitants ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... bred black cattle, and horses as well; he planted trees, cut canals, and raised banks. The house he hardly touched. He gained physically by this new interest, which made him more active and hardy, and his character improved at the same time. The melancholy which had been so distressing to him decreased, and he became more cheerful, his self-confidence increased, as he had more intercourse with people, whilst the fits of anger, rage and despair which used to come over him without any cause, making him seem like an epileptic to the servants, grew rarer and rarer until they ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... be the most delightful period of my life if it were not for that distressing announcement, the two months of purgatory between now and the day of the wedding, and then the—calamity. I know it will be a calamity. I can't get through ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... throng of soldiers that accompanied him, and his actions themselves most of all indicated the existence of one sole ruler. Many robberies, outrages, and murders took place. And not only were the existing conditions most distressing to the Romans, but they dreaded a far greater number of more terrible acts from Caesar. For when the master of the horse never laid aside his sword even at the festivals, who would not have been suspicious of the dictator himself? (At the most of these festivals Antony presided at the orders of Caesar. ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... awoke before he could answer her, and for a long time he was full of unspoken answers explaining that in view of her deliberate unfaithfulness the position she took up was absurd. She had spoilt her own fur. But what was more penetrating and distressing in this dream was not so much the case Amanda stated as the atmosphere of unconquerable intimacy between them, as though they still belonged to each other, soul to soul, as though nothing that had happened ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... lungs all night, or in the fouler atmosphere of overcrowded cabins, they were especially subject to miasmatic fevers. Many died, and of those who survived, a great number, after they had outgrown the more immediate manifestations of disease, retained in nervous disorders of all kinds the distressing traces of the maladies which afflicted their childhood. In the early life of Lincoln these unwholesome physical conditions were especially prevalent. The country about Pigeon Creek was literally devastated by the terrible malady called "milk- sickness," which carried ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... spite of bitter trials and distressing times, Washington never lost faith that in the end the American cause would triumph. A beautiful story is told showing the faith of this courageous man while in the midst of these pitiful ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... in my mind because he was so fine and large, and because he summed up in his person and behavior a philosophy which, budding before the war, hibernated during that distressing epoch, and is now again ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... servants of God, Renwick was trained for his life-work in the school of temptation; he experienced painful mental conflicts, and the assaults of the tempter, at a very early period. It is recorded that, at six years of age, he was conscious of distressing doubts, in relation to the Divine existence and perfections. These exercised and agitated his mind for a period of two years. In answer to prayer, and by meditation on the power and goodness of God, as seen in creation, he overcame the temptation, ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... to describe the deep, the distressing sorrow that overwhelmed us all. I will not speak of myself, but of those who loved him less, because they had seen him less. Not only Mavrocordato and his immediate circle, but the whole city and all its ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Many distressing thoughts took possession of Sir Thomas as he lay in bed. He had made up his mind that he would in no way break the law, and he didn't know whether he had not broken it already by giving these people tobacco and wine. And yet it would have been impossible for him to have refused ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... tried to smother that tiresome little yawn, which seemed most distressing, when he desired to be most polite. Then he flicked off a grain of dust from his immaculate lace ruffle and buried his long, slender hands in the capacious pockets of his white satin breeches; finally he said with the most ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... breaking in upon him, "that's too curious, because, do you know, I thought you never had rain at all, and I do detest rain so. It's too distressing when one has a new frock or must go to some stupid place to see some one. But I'm too awfully glad that you've come here, Mr. Trojan. We do want waking up a little, you know, and I'm sure you're the very ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... take Ruth with us upon our journey; that was certain; she must stay here with her brother. She would be safer in Norhala's home than where we were going, of course, and yet to leave her was most distressing. After all, I wondered, was there any need of both of us taking the journey; would not ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... youth;—the rogues have generally all the good looks. There was nothing else remarkable about him but his quickness; he was perpetually on the alert; by constant activity, the rust was never allowed to collect on his faculties; his sharpness was distressing,—he appeared subject to a tense strain. Now his quill scratched over the paper unconcernedly, while he could join as easily in his master's conversation; nothing seemed to preoccupy him, or he held a mind open at every point. It is pitiful to remember him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... unenviable at best and they well deserve the benefit of extenuating circumstances. For not even a genius can efficiently tackle problems with the elements of which he lacks acquaintanceship, and the mass of facts which they had to deal with was sheer unmanageable. It was distressing to watch them during those eventful months groping and floundering through a labyrinth of obstacles with no Ariadne clue to guide their tortuous course, and discovering that their task was more intricate than they had imagined. The ironic domination ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that brought them to disgrace. Some, from their admission, were farmers' daughters, and had been decoyed from their relatives, and brought to London, and subsequently deserted by their seducers. Some were nursery- maids—others, girls seduced from boarding schools. Their tales were truly distressing—some had only been six months in such infamy, others twelve months, and some ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... had been long bedridden, and to whom she had sent some clean bedclothes, had been moved into another room with complete new furnishings, while the occupant of this room had been sent elsewhere, so that the distressing sense of over-crowdedness for sick and well was ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... had rescued from want and woe.' It is not quite clear who were the persons alluded to by Finch. Keats's brother George (then in America) was presumably one: he is, however, regarded as having eventually cleared himself from the distressing imputation. I know of no one else, unless possibly the painter Haydon may be glanced at: as to him also the charge appears to be ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... noon, as I came to the Emperor, he received me in a very friendly way. We first settled about summoning the Reichstag, and then his Majesty said, 'I have received a very distressing letter'—an allusion to the Chancellor's official letter of resignation, which he had placed in the Emperor's hands through Tschirschky, Foreign Minister. 'As I then,' continued Hohenlohe, 'explained the necessity of my resignation on the ground of my health and age the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... in the existing currency, and especially the scarcity of small change, a scarcity so peculiarly distressing to the poorer classes, strongly recommend the carrying into immediate effect the resolution already entered into concerning the establishment of a mint. Measures have been taken pursuant to that resolution for procuring some of the most necessary artists, together ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... manufacturing and domestic trade, the farmers of the grain states found themselves in distressing circumstances. The Ohio Valley was yielding a product far in excess of the demands that existed and each year found a large amount of unmarketable grain left in the fields and granaries. Many foreign nations refused admittance to American food products and though the grain-growing ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... pause, during which each member of the Club secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others. Only Mrs. Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse. At last Mrs. Ballinger said, with an attempt at a high tone: "Well, really, you know, it was last year that we took psychology, and this winter we have ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... claim her altogether. Among those who knew best the doctor and his ward there had been an ardent championship of Nan's rights and dignity, and a great curiosity to know the success of the visit. Dr. Leslie had answered all questions with composure, and with a distressing meagreness of details; but at length Mrs. Graham became sure that he was not altogether free from anxiety, and set her own quick wits at work to learn the cause. It seemed a time of great uncertainty, at any rate. The doctor sometimes brought one of Nan's bright, affectionate ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of it, can you lend me a couple of thousand pounds for twelve months?" Would that generally be as efficacious as though the would-be borrower had introduced his request with the general paraphernalia of distressing solemnities? The borrower, at any rate, feels that it would not, and postpones the moment till the fitting solemnities can be produced. But John Gordon could not postpone his moment. He could not go on residing indefinitely ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... buttle, and he liked these amazing freaks who were, it appeared, fellow-inmates with him of this highly desirable residence. He wished that old Mr. Pett could have been present. He had conceived a great affection for Mr. Pett, and registered a mental resolve to lose no time in weaning him from his distressing habit of allowing the office to interfere with his pleasures. He was planning a little trip to the Polo Grounds, in which Mr. Pett, his father, and a number of pop bottles were to be his companions, when ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... for directly to Somerville Villa; and, three days after the distressing scene I have endeavored to describe, Vizard brought his wrecked sister home. Her condition was pitiable; and the moment he reached Vizard Court he mounted his horse and rode to Hillstoke to bring ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of the Royal Society spared no pains to stamp the accuracy of these observations with their testimony. They seem to have thrust Captain Sabine's name perpetually on their minutes, and in a manner which must have been almost distressing: they recommend him in a letter to the Admiralty, then in another to the Ordnance; and several of the same persons, in their other capacity, as members of the Board of Longitude, after voting him a THOUSAND ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... crowds to the palace. The sultan received and embraced him with great joy; complaining at the same time, with a fatherly tenderness, of the affliction his long absence had occasioned; which, he said, was the more distressing, as fortune having decided in favour of prince Ali his brother, he was afraid he might have committed some ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... brings us to July 23rd. Now, you know, it becomes extremely important to me to know anything you will tell me about the progress of your brother's trouble, if it is possible for you to speak of it.' 'Of course. Well, the sense of being watched whenever he was alone was the most distressing thing to him. After a time I took to sleeping in his room, and he was the better for that: still, he talked a great deal in his sleep. What about? Is it wise to dwell on that, at least before things are straightened out? I think not, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... with, and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... against them; and although they are totally unknown to me, and although I cannot countenance or approve of their foolish and wanton proceedings; yet, as the law of England presumes every man to be innocent till he is convicted of guilt, and as they have appealed to ME in their distressing situation, as the only man to whom they can look up for assistance; shall I, because there appears to be personal danger and difficulty in the undertaking, shall I refuse or neglect to do my best to enable them to obtain a fair trial? shall I abandon them, and refuse ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the effect he had intended it to have. It set the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means of getting to Salisbury; it brought to light the distressing fact that V.V. had the beginnings of a chafed heel. Once he had set things going they moved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. He found himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate the painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... open air. Nay, had it lost a thousand of its best men in the way in which it lost so many at the storming of New Orleans, the blank ere now would have been completely filled up. The calamities of fire or of decimation even, however distressing in themselves, never yet ruined a country: no calamity ruins a country that leaves the surviving inhabitants to develope, in their old circumstances, their old character ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... relied upon, not only as facts, but as far below the whole truth. She had been, for a long time, afflicted with a drunken husband. At length the sheriff came and swept off all their property, not excepting her household furniture, to discharge his grog bills. At this distressing crisis, she retired to an upper room, laid her babe upon the bare floor, kneeled down over it, and offered up the following petition: "O Lord, if thou wilt in any way remove from me this affliction, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... was discovered by Captain Carteret in Her Majesty's sloop Swallow, I was the more desirous to take that route.... We passed through the Straits of Macassar and arrived at Batavia after a tedious and distressing ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... always an effort to restrain her within certain limited bounds. The embargo, passed without limitation of time, (a thing unprecedented,) was fastened upon the bosom of her commerce, until life was extinguished. The ostensible object of this measure, was to force Great Britain to terms, by distressing the West Indies for food. But while England commanded the seas, her colonies were not likely to starve; and for the sake of this doubtful experiment, a certain and incalculable injury was inflicted upon the Northern States. Seamen, and the numerous classes of mechanics connected with ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... it with the facts of history." Again his tongue failed to serve him in prayer; again he yielded to his doubts; again he commenced shrieking at the very top of his voice. And this proved a most fortunate expedient, for an Indian girl, straying that way, overheard these distressing cries, and surmising that they proceeded from the grotto, hastened to the door, and letting down a little trap, a stream of light was admitted into the cave, when she discovered the general, who as suddenly started to his feet, and forgetting his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Ship which I live in. My Nieces are now here; in the town, I mean; and my friend Cowell and his Wife; so I have more company than all the rest of the year. I try to shut my Eyes and Ears against all tidings of this damnable War, seeing that I can do no good to others by distressing myself. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... shore; but so boisterous was the weather, that, for a long time, it was impossible for a boat to approach within speaking distance of the rocks. During this period, the living man found himself in a most awful and distressing situation: he knew not how to dispose of the corpse; for if he threw it into the waves, which was his only means of getting rid of it, he feared that he might be charged with the murder of his companion; and yet ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... resided in her capital. With much dignity the queen replied, "I should, with great pleasure, accede to the invitation of the people of Paris; but time must be allowed me to soften the recollection of the distressing events which have recently occurred, and from which I have suffered so severely. Having come to Paris preceded by the heads of my faithful guards, who perished before the door of their sovereign, I can not think that such an entry into the capital ought to be followed by rejoicings. But the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... most part the five men remained in complete idleness. Hatteras was pensive and always lying on the bed; Altamont was drinking or sleeping, and the doctor took good care not to rouse him from his slumbers, for he was always afraid of some distressing quarrel. These two men seldom spoke to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... do? I cannot explain myself now." Well, I held my peace, and so did she for a quarter of an hour. Then she began with me again, examined me on the whole debate, and at last asked me directly, which I thought the best speaker, my father or Mr. Pitt. If possible, this was more distressing than her anger. I replied, it was impossible to compare two men so different: that I believed my father was more a man of business than Mr. Pitt. "Well, but Mr. Pitt's language?" "Madam," said I, "I have always been remarkable for admiring Mr. Pitt's language." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents—in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... exhausted, began to cry. A man's sobs are fraught with distressing hoarseness. Miette, quite frightened as she felt the poor fellow shaking in her arms, kissed him on the face, forgetting she was burning her lips. But it was all her fault. She was a little simpleton to have let a kiss upset ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of difficulties as must undoubtedly render it impossible for us to perform the tour. Every thing, however, has succeeded with us far beyond my most sanguine expectations. We have, it is true, met with little disasters occasionally, but far from distressing, and they rather gave us additional resolution and spirits. We have both enjoyed most excellent health; and we have been so inured to walking, that we are become almost insensible to fatigue. We have several times performed a journey of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... little culinary article, alternately in his hand and under his arm, as seemed most convenient to him. Unfortunately the day was warm, the way long, and the minister fat; so that he became heartily tired of his burden before he got half-way home. Under these distressing circumstances, it struck him, that, if, instead of carrying the pot awkwardly at one side of his person, he were to carry it on his head, the burden would be greatly lightened; the principles of natural philosophy, which he had learned at college, informing him, that when a load ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... exchange her for her; what do you say to that? that old brother Hsueeh is also one of those men, who, while eating what there is in the bowl, keeps an eye on what there is in the pan! For the last year or so, as he couldn't get Hsiang Ling to be his, he made ever so many distressing appeals to Mrs. Hsueeh; and Mrs. Hsueeh while esteeming Hsiang Ling's looks, though fine, as after all a small matter, (thought) her deportment and conduct so far unlike those of other girls, so gentle and so demure that almost the very daughters of masters and mistresses couldn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... again. Then it flashed across her mind that the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need be told of the means by which the sisters' lives had been cut apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Iris said she loved his rival. Very well. To attempt to dissuade her was to throw her more closely into that rival's arms. The right course was to appear resigned, saddened, compelled against his will to reveal the distressing truth. Further, he counted on Anstruther's quick temper as an active agent. Such a man would be the first to rebel against an assumption of pitying tolerance. He would bring bitter charges of conspiracy, of unbelievable compact to secure his ruin. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... meeting-house on the Sabbath and on Lecture days were sometimes painfully varied, though scarcely interrupted, by a very distressing and harrowing custom of public abasement and self-abnegation, which prevailed for many years in the nervously religious colonies. It was not an enforced punishment, but a voluntary one. Men and women who had committed crimes or misdemeanors, and who ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and he rose from it ailing, suffering, dwarfed and altogether changed. Of all the dark shadows upon life I think that change through illness and organic decay in the thoughts and spirits of those who are dear and close to us is the most evil and distressing and inexplicable. Suddenly he was a changeling, a being querulous and pitiful, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and his hands full of headless arrows. He was laboring under violent paroxysms; three benevolent individuals essaying to hold him. But repeatedly breaking loose, he burst anew into his delirium; while with an absence of sympathy, distressing to behold, the rest of the assembly seemed wholly engrossed with themselves; nor did they appear to care how soon the unfortunate lunatic might demolish himself by his ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... manner of termination of these cases are variable. If the coffin joint has been invaded, and a septic arthritis exists, the condition is at once grave. An open and infected tendon sheath, while not so serious, constitutes a condition which is distressing, and recovery is slow even under the most favorable conditions. Where a heavy, rigid and sharp nail enters the foot, in such manner that fracture of the third phalanx (os pedis) occurs, this complication makes for a protraction of the condition. Experience teaches that the natural course and ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... though I have been off work and off—as you know very well—letter-writing. Yet I have sometimes more than twenty letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail. And Fanny has had a most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now beginning to get over. I have just been to see her; she is lying—though she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven—in her big cool, mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep. As for me, you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shape of blood-shot eyes and swollen eyelids, while I was in the daily habit of visiting the Liverpool literati—these, on my settling at Keswick, were followed by large boils in my neck and shoulders; these, by a violent rheumatic fever; this, by a distressing and tedious hydrocele; and, since then, by irregular gout, which promises at this moment to ripen into a legitimate fit. What uninterrupted rural retirement can have had to do in the production of these outward and visible evils, I cannot guess; what share it has had in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... given her an opportunity to repent of her evil deeds, but she would not. Now he declares that he will cause his judgments to descend upon her and her followers. By casting her into a bed is doubtless meant that he would bring her down upon a bed of sickness and pain and thus make her a most distressing object. Her partners in sin were to suffer "great tribulation," and "her children," or disciples, he would kill with death, or deadly pestilence. Thus would this whole corrupt party be visited with divine judgments according to their works; while their great pretensions to wisdom ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the 18th of February, 1781, was thirty-three years old and had actively served in the United States navy for five years and five months. He never fought another battle under the United States flag; indeed, with the exception of his distressing experiences in Russia, he never fought again under any flag. But to his dying day he did not cease to plan great naval deeds and to hope for greater opportunity to harass the enemy—any enemy. In view ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... can never know how much, nor how deeply distressing this whole affair has been to me." He managed to put an affecting pathos into words sufficiently banal, for he was an excellent actor. "I find that I am all sentiment. Under the shell of the hard-headed business ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... That in this distressing position of affairs the Regent might be left entirely without an adviser and without support, she was now deserted by the only person who was at the present moment indispensable to her, and who had contributed to plunge her into this embarrassment. "Without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in number) had been murdered by the natives of New Guinea. The praus had left this village a few months before, and among the murdered men were the Rajah's son, and the relation or slaves of many of the inhabitants. The cry of lamentation that arose when the news arrived was most distressing. A score of women, who had lost husbands, brothers, sons, or more distant relatives, set up at once the most dismal shrieks and groans and wailings, which continued at intervals till late at night; and as the chief houses in the village were crowded together round that ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... velvet about it; and her white gloves and sunshade, and the white silver chain round her slender waist, were important features in the picture she presented. How could this eager student of character get rid of the distressing trivialities? All night long he had been dreaming of beautiful sentiments and conflicting emotions: now his first thought was that he had never seen any costume so delightfully cool, and clear, and summer-like. To look at her was to think of a mountain spring, icy ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... to his promise; distressing reports were circulated among the troops; and the royalists, having waited for him almost a fortnight, disbanded in spite of the fears and entreaties of their commander. At last, on the eighteenth day, the King arrived in Milford Haven ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on as an oyster clings to its rock. One shell had split their house in twain, another had flattened out the hayloft. The old woman lay on her bed crippled with rheumatism, her husband a victim of gall stones. Their situation was truly most distressing. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... taken the step before he repented of it. His letters to his brother George, who with other friends bestirred himself for Coleridge's release as soon as his whereabouts was discovered, are rather distressing in their self-abasement. The efforts of his friends were successful and in April he returned to the University, where a public admonition was the extent of his punishment, and he continued in receipt of his Christ's ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play, not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised the existence of certain neurasthenic states—but from his habit, common to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription as soon as ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... found very distressing sounds issuing from Dolores's room; sobs, not loud, but almost strangled into a perfect agony of choking down by the resolute instinct, for it was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... book, Olga, can hardly be called the heroine; she appears too briefly for that. But she is admitted to be a fine portrait of the Russian woman as she was about to become, not as she then existed. Gontcharoff's "An Every-day Story" is also celebrated; equally so is his "The Ravine," a very distressing picture of the unprincipled character of an anarchist. As the author changed his mind about the hero in part while writing the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... child as I ever saw! And then, every other moment, she is restless about that boy—always asking where he is, or what he is doing. I don't see how she is ever to get well, while it goes on in this way! Mr. Kendal told me that Gilbert had been worrying and distressing her; and as to those girls, the eldest of them is intolerable with her airs, and the youngest—I asked her if she liked babies, and she growled, "No." Lucy said Gilbert was waiting in the passage for news of mamma, and she grunted, "All sham!" and that's the whole I have heard ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far younger than the sacristan's, but bearing something of the same distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another. Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan's daughter; and, but for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... bigger fool than I was, and he pressed me quite earnestly to repeat some foolishness after him, about 'being a gold key,' when he said 'he was a gold lock,' I was very glad to get away from him, it was so distressing." ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... name brazenly announced as author. Suppose it were Passion's Perils! She would surely have to leave town after that! She would be too ashamed to stay. Still she would be proud, also, for by that time they would be calling her to Hollywood itself. Of course nothing so distressing—or so grand—had happened yet, for none of her dramas had been accepted; but she was coming on. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... of mind after the harrowing events of the night was indeed distressing. I did not—could not—return home. I have an indistinct recollection of walking swiftly up and down the deserted streets and far out into the country. Daylight found me several miles from the town; hatless, wild-eyed, a sorry spectacle, at whom one ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... the middle of May!" Meg voiced this distressing thought when she and Bobby were at the Oak Hill school door. "Oh, Bobby, wouldn't it be awful if every one went to Apple ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... is established there is no cure for it. Proper attention paid to the diet will relieve the distressing symptoms to a certain extent, but they will undoubtedly reappear in their intensity the first time the animal overloads the stomach or is allowed food of bad quality. Clover hay or bulky feed which contains but little nutriment have much to do with the cause of the disease, and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... then do anything or be of any importance at all; and why should I tr-rouble?" she said, with that rattle of the r's which was about the only sign that English was not her native speech. This was very distressing to Lucy, who wished the girl well, and altogether Lady Randolph was anxious to interfere on Bice's behalf, and put her on ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... when the Arrow was finally clear of the bar, she veered around and made down the coast, passing the little bay where the canoe had landed. So occupied with the distressing problem of Hugh's disappearance had her crew been,—-for not one of the party could believe him drowned,—-and so busy in trying to keep the sloop from being pounded to pieces by the waves while stranded, that no one aboard had noticed the canoe on its return ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... Saturday succeeding his birth, we heard of my dear mother's serious illness, and, when he was about three weeks old, of her death. We were not surprised that his health suffered from the shock it thus received. He began at once to be affected with distressing colic, which gave him no rest day or night. His father used to call him a "little martyr," and such indeed he was for many long, tedious months. On the 16th of February, the doctor came and spent two hours ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... vigorously, were two sturdy, mottled legs that she instantly recognised as belonging to her son, while from the interior came strange muffled sounds that showed the poor little fellow was screaming in dire affright, as well he might in so distressing a situation. Too young to be of any help, Bert's playmates were gathered about him crying lustily, only one of them having had the sense to run off to the carpenter's shop ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... sense of well-being that follows a substantial meal, between the lines of that triumphant apology he evoked, by way of contrast, the panorama of his own life, his wretched childhood, his haphazard youth, no less distressing to recall, the days without food, the nights without a place to lay his head. And suddenly, when the reading was at an end, in the midst of a veritable overflow of joy, of one of those outbursts of Southern effusiveness which compel one to think ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure his embarrassment better than she herself any ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... with a visage which had become elongated to a really distressing degree, Sir Asinus was sighing, and casting a last ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... So distressing was this outlook, that her mind refused to be diverted, and after a brief hesitation she returned to the house, intent on a more satisfactory financial arrangement. Now Tootsie was as fond of mystery stories as Skippy himself, and so with due regard to etiquette she dodged down the hedge, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... currency problems so long confronting the Nation and to furnish the facts and data necessary to enable the Congress to take action. The commission was appointed when an impressive and urgent popular demand for legislative relief suddenly arose out of the distressing situation of the people caused by the deplorable panic of 1907. The Congress decided that while it could not give immediately the relief required, it would provide a commission to furnish the means for prompt action at a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... over a counter in exchange for money, he would have held the prophet ripe for Bedlam. Yet here he was, a full-blown tradesman, and as greedy of gain as any tallow-chandler. Extraordinary, aye, and distressing, too, the ease with which the human organism adapted itself; it was just a case of the green caterpillar on the green leaf. Well, he could console himself with the knowledge that his apparent submission was only an affair of the surface. He had struck no ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the Whig writers furnished much more than was enjoyed by Democrats. An effort was made to stay the tide in favor of Harrison by poetry as well as by argument. The effort was fruitless. The contest of 1840 had its origin in the most distressing financial difficulties that ever rested upon the country, and it was conducted on the part of the Whigs by large expenditure of money, for those days, and with a degree of hilarity and good nature that it is difficult now to realize. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... delay and labour. I returned to the fleet and assisted in the tedious work of dragging the vessels over the shallows. In the evening I returned to the diahbeeah, and having dragged the dingy across the sudd, I explored the channel ahead for an hour, for about three miles; passed over distressing shallows for a space of a quarter of a mile ahead of the diahbeeah, after which I entered a deep, narrow ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... along the road near Colnbrook, had his attention attracted to the screams of a child in the care of a tramping woman, who had with her, two other children totally blind. The cries of the child were so distressing, that he insisted on knowing the cause; but; not getting a satisfactory answer, he forcibly removed a bandage from its eyes, when, horrid to relate, he found these encased with two small perforated shells, in which were two live black beetles, for the purpose of destroying the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... unconsciously offended you in any way," Theron went on, "I beg you to tell me how. I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to be drifting apart has given me much pain. But now it is still more distressing to find you actually disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother Gorringe, between a pastor and ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and Lady Monk's parties in London were known to be very great affairs. She usually gave two or three in the season, and spent a large portion of her time and energy in so arranging matters that her parties should be successful. As this was her special line in life, a failure would have been very distressing to her;—and we may also say very disgraceful, taking into consideration, as we should do in forming our judgement on the subject, the very large sums of Sir Cosmo's money which she spent in this way. But she seldom did fail. She knew how to select ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... phase, he felt with gratitude, could not last for ever; whatever impended (even the gallows, he bitterly and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to be a relief. To calculate cubes occurred to him as an ingenious and even profitable refuge from distressing thoughts, and he threw his manhood into that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... singing and dancing, but she had that incalculable advantage for an actress—an appealing life-story. It was known that she had lately lost a dearly loved and loving husband whom she had tenderly nursed through a distressing illness. It was also known that the husband had been a descendant of a proud old family and that the same high spirit which had led his grandfather, General Poe, passionately denouncing British tyranny, to join the Revolutionary Army, had, taking a different turn with the grandson, made ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... appeared, fellow-inmates with him of this highly desirable residence. He wished that old Mr. Pett could have been present. He had conceived a great affection for Mr. Pett, and registered a mental resolve to lose no time in weaning him from his distressing habit of allowing the office to interfere with his pleasures. He was planning a little trip to the Polo Grounds, in which Mr. Pett, his father, and a number of pop bottles were to be his companions, when his reverie was interrupted by a sudden cessation of the buzz of talk. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 9, 1914, I went to bed at 11.40 o'clock and was soon asleep. About 3.40 in the morning, the young man, F. K. S., roused me and I awoke weak, scared, and with a fluttering heart; he said I had been making a distressing sort of noise, but he could not distinguish any words. Immediately, I judged that the dream was caused by my lying on my back, and in an uncomfortable position. As a rule I do not sleep on my back, but for some reason ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... mortification of witnessing the distressing consequences of the Pope's new edicts. The Jews in Rome were obliged to quit the houses which, under the French Government, they had been permitted to own in all parts of the city, and return to the Ghetto. They had to give up counting-houses ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... ambitions,—he knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak enough to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An octogenarian with a good record, and free from annoying or distressing infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him with deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the generations that have grown up since he was in the vigor of maturity. Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... strain of a distressing situation, losses from the interruption of business, regard for public opinion and the opinion of friends, combined with their own desire to do the right thing, induced the employers, probably against their best judgment, ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... always large classes of minds to whom anything in the shape of a vigorously compact system is irresistibly fascinating, and to whom the qualification of a proposition, or the limitation of a theoretic principle is distressing or intolerable. Such persons always come to the front for a season in times of distraction, when the party that knows its own aims most definitely is sure to have the best chance of obtaining power. And Rousseau's method charmed their temperament. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... singular chase, which is probably unparalleled in the history of the universe. A prey to anxiety and the most distressing emotions, we did not properly observe the marvellous, the Titanic, I had almost said the diabolical aspect of the country beneath us, and still we could not altogether blind ourselves to it. Colossal jungles, resembling brakes of moss and canes five hundred or a thousand feet in height—creeks ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... new distressing question had been raised, how much she inconvenienced him, Amy sat plump down and leaned ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... endeavours to leave each successive tarrying station, it is not to be denied that my imagination dwelt regretfully upon the true civilisation of our own enlightened country, where, by the considerate intervention of an all-wise government, the possibilities of so distressing an experience are sympathetically removed from one's path. Thus the greater part of the day had faded, and I was conjecturing that by this time we must inevitably be approaching the barren and inhospitable country which forms the northern limit of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... was a rather disappointing affair since Beatrice had to remodel her wedding gown in order to wear it. That fact alone was distressing. And at the eleventh hour Steve was called out of town, which left Beatrice in the hands of her angel-duck brigade, who all felt it their duty to paint ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... point E was half an inch to the left of the point F. For so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced to do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our awareness by the very facts—for instance the proportions and relations ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... gathered, so the girls felt it would be proper for them to remain, particularly as the accident was not of a distressing nature. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was the better emblem of the perpetual motion. My paleness was peculiarly distressing to her; "it hurt her feelings;" it also hurt her honour; for she had been famous for her nursing, and as she told me, with her plump hands upon her still plumper hips, and her head thrown back with an air of conscious merit, "she had saved more than the doctors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... other; but both were skillful—each inflicted and received so near the same number of wounds, that the wisest men in camp were unable to decide which whipped. Now, to average Californians in the mines this is a most distressing state of affairs; the spectators and friends of the combatants waste a great deal of time, liquor, and blood on the subject, while the combatants themselves feel unspeakably uneasy on the neutral ground between victory and defeat. At Sonora, where Billy and the Judge had their first encounter, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... down and looked the lad straight in the face. Upon Alban's part there was an intense desire to confess everything and to tell his old friend of all those distressing doubts and perplexities which had so harassed him since he went to Hampstead. If he could have done so, much would have been spared him in the time to come. But he found it impossible to open his heart to an alien,—nor did he believe Paul Boriskoff capable of appreciating the emotions ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... had never been able to win many friends in the land of his mother's kin. The other proved to be at once a rudder to guide him over the uncharted future of his life, and an outlet for the pent-up passion within him. His voice was totally untrained, and as yet it broke into all manner of distressing falsetto fragments. Nevertheless, it gave him a cause for living, and it enabled him, the descendant of a taciturn race, to give utterance to the doubts and questionings which accompanied his growth to manhood. Bereft of his ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... conception that her immediate absence would be a blessing, and remained chatting with them till luncheon-time. Mr Arabin could talk about nothing but the Signora Neroni's beauty, would discuss no people but the Stanhopes. This was very distressing to Eleanor, and not very satisfactory to Miss Thorne. But yet there was evidence of innocence in his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... relief took place Brigadier-General Rees had to leave us much to every one's regret. He was taken ill with a distressing internal complaint, which necessitated his return for a while to England. He was succeeded by Brigadier-General E.P.A. ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... resection of the cancerous segment of the gullet, in suitable cases, even if it does not yield a permanent cure, not only prolongs life but relieves the patient of her most distressing symptoms. It is rarely possible to secure an end-to-end anastomosis, but the feeding by means of a tube introduced into the open end of the gullet is more satisfactory and the laryngeal symptoms are more efficiently relieved, than by either of the purely palliative operations. In ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... had been forced to come to my quarters to make known their wants and suffering —should think a winter's campaign and the covering of these States from the invasion of an enemy so easy and practical a business. I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to keep a cold, bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... keeping near to help her, and continually singing at his daily toil of providing for his family as charmingly as if he were still a gay bachelor; for Meadowlarks are very affectionate both toward each other and their young. It is really distressing to hear the sadness of the song of one who has lost his mate. He seems to be crying, 'Where are you, dear?' ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... for her to speak. She seemed to be asking herself; Is it after all, worth while to talk to that man? You understand how provoking this was. I looked in my mind for something appallingly stupid to say, with the object of distressing and teasing Mrs. Fyne. It is humiliating to confess a failure. One would think that a man of average intelligence could command stupidity at will. But it isn't so. I suppose it's a special gift or else the difficulty ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to herself, at least for a time; and now here he was again, and his coming had evidently startled her friend. She wanted, above all things, to have a frank talk with Mrs. Truscott. This keeping a secret from her was distressing, and she could not bear the thought of a possible cloud or misunderstanding between them, but poor Grace had totally forgotten the existence of such a person as Wolf by the time they got home. She was having a little trouble of her own. They were strolling across ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... impossible to resume the conversation interrupted by a scene so distressing to some, so disagreeable to all. One by one our guests retired, and I was left ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... lays little emphasis on important points which he considers are sufficiently familiar, in order to give prominent place and emphasis to some more novel point. Herein lies, it would now appear, the explanation of the seeming disharmony between Intuition and Intellect which was gravely distressing to many in his earlier writing on the subject. Later works, however, make a point of restoring this harmony, but, as William James has remarked: "We are so subject to the philosophical tradition which treats logos, or discursive thought generally, as the sole avenue to truth, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... on the 26th of November, and entered the glacial regions which she had already traversed; but the circumstances attending her second voyage were distressing. The crew, though in good health, were overcome by fatigue, and less capable of resisting illness, the more so that they had ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... her softness of speech, the delicately-inflexed and expressive tones, while her face lights up in harmony with her speech. Now—to say nothing of the women of the south, whose hard faces and harsh voices are often so distressing—in Dijon, whence I came to Normandy this time, the women are often sweet, even angelic of aspect, looking proper material for nuns and saints, but, to me at all events, not personally so sympathetic as the Norman women, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... James went on after a moment, "this is a distressing story altogether, and the best thing we can do is to hold our tongues about it. My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who had led ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... capitulate but to run away. The chief point at issue was, however, not the fate of the monarchy, which was a dead thing, but simply what was going to happen to Chang Hsun's head—a matter which was profoundly distressing Chang Hsun. The Republican army had placed a price of L10,000 on it, and the firebrands were advocating that the man must be captured, dead or alive, and suffer decapitation in front of the Great Dynastic Gate of the Palace as a revenge for his perfidy. Round ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Thus, the Christians had every now and then a breathing-time during which their hopes were revived and their numbers recruited. It was observed, too, that the princes, of whose cruelty they had reason to complain, generally ended their career under very distressing circumstances. An ecclesiastical writer who is supposed to have flourished towards the commencement of the fourth century has discussed this subject in a special treatise, in which he has left behind him a very striking account ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... written, beautifully worded, admirably folded, and most neatly sealed letter from Miss Eyre. Her eldest nephew had fallen ill of scarlet fever, and there was every probability that the younger children would be attacked by the same complaint. It was distressing enough for poor Miss Eyre—this additional expense, this anxiety—the long detention from home which the illness involved. But she said not a word of any inconvenience to herself; she only apologized with humble sincerity for her inability to return at the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... with all the unconcealed distressing grief of a disappointed child. She put her pretty be-ringed little hands in front of her face and recited ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Eleanor ran to her mother, and hid her face in her lap; Charles sat staring, with great round frightened eyes. Very distressing it was to be obliged to leave the poor children in such grief and alarm, when it was plain all the time that Diggory was an arrant coward, who had fancied more deaths and dangers than were real, and was describing ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and cursed himself, and soon passed into delirium. Straightway his visions, animate with shame and confusion of soul, were more distressing than even his ready tongue could have told. Dead babies and ghastly women pursued him everywhere. His fever increased. The cries of terror and dismay that he uttered reached the ears of his wife, and were the first thing that roused her ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... of Martiniques, a sort of wild, untamed creature, who spoke a distressing imitation of French which even he did not for a moment claim to be such, but frankly dubbed patois. Restless-eyed black men who answered to their names only at the question "Cummun t'appelle?" and give their age only to those who open wide their ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... appear to be broken, all our energies destroyed, all our muscles relaxed, our bones to have become as soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. I am experiencing that in my moral being in a strange and distressing manner. I have no longer any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor even any power to set my own will in motion. I have no power left to will anything, but some one does it ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... The distressing accidents had suddenly ceased since he began to board his own men at the mine and, while his lawyer stalled and haggled to fight off an injunction, he rushed his ore to the railroad. It was too precious to ship loose, for at eighty-four dollars a unit it ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... knew. Another matron whom I recognized at once, retained something inescapably girlish in both face and voice. It hurt me to detect in her withered lips the quaint twist which had once been so charming to me—but then she undoubtedly discovered in me equally distressing reminders of decay. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... lingering note, and comes in triplets, on the one unchanging key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At first it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two hours the listener is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her hands are hands; while as for the Gretchens and the Mary Annes, "paws" is the only word one can honestly apply to them. Then, on top of it all comes this trouble about Harold. So distressing, isn't it? You see, at the point which the matter has reached, it's simply impossible to save Harold's reputation without wrecking Southminster's. Pretty position that for a respectable family! The Ashursts hitherto have been quite respectable: a co-respondent or two, perhaps, but ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... limitation of time, (a thing unprecedented,) was fastened upon the bosom of her commerce, until life was extinguished. The ostensible object of this measure, was to force Great Britain to terms, by distressing the West Indies for food. But while England commanded the seas, her colonies were not likely to starve; and for the sake of this doubtful experiment, a certain and incalculable injury was inflicted upon the Northern States. Seamen, and the numerous classes of mechanics connected with navigation, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... the orderly processes of representative government. Those who would propose any other method of reform are enemies of this country. America will not be daunted by threats nor lose her composure or calmness in these distressing times. We can afford, in the midst of this day of passion and unrest, to be self-contained and sure. The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot. The road to economic and social reform in America is the straight ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... objects, and yet not see anything distinctly. And a man born blind may have the film removed from his eyes, and be placed, at noontide, in the midst of a world of interesting objects, and yet, instead of seeing things, as we see them, have nothing but a confounding and distressing sensation. Seeing, as we see, is the result of habit, acquired by long-continued use. The new-born babe must have time to exercise its eyes, and exercise its little mind as well, before it can distinguish face from face, and form from form. The man who has just received ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... impossible to give an adequate description of that night of horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally distressing. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... called on Pritchett. Mr. Pritchett told him that his brother was better—considerably better. Sir Lionel was in raptures. He had hurried up from Littlebath in an agony. He had heard most distressing accounts. He would however go down to Hadley and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... directed Captain Ommanney and the officers to the late winter-station of his tribe, the spot having been abandoned in consequence of some epidemic, probably influenza, which had carried off several persons. On entering the huts, a most distressing sight presented itself. A heap of dead bodies, about seven, in a state of decomposition, lay, one over the other, clad in their skin-clothing, as if suddenly cut off by the hand of death. The survivors, from fear ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... alive, then you must settle what to do with them. But a living dog is better than a dead lion; I would rather have the living child, and let it take its chance, than let it return to God—wasted. O! it is a distressing thing to see children die. God gives the most beautiful and precious thing that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it away; we toss our pearls upon the dunghill and leave them. A dying child is to me one of the most dreadful ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... ebon-faced porter in snowy linen, the clink of ice in long, misted glasses, the cool fragrance of crushed mint. Even the fat man in shirt-sleeves reading the Denver Times, alternately drawing upon his fat cigar and sipping the glass of beer at his elbow, was not distressing to look upon. The four men busy over their daily game of solo might have been at ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... was a man capable of putting a very great restraint upon his feelings, and he so behaved during the long and weary meal as to rouse no suspicions, either in Charlotte's breast or in the far sharper one of the Australian uncle. But, nevertheless, so distressing was the growing sense of coming calamity, that he felt the gay laugh of his betrothed almost distressing, and was truly relieved when he had to change it for the gravity of her father. As he went from the dining-room to Mr. Harman's ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... this point, and, knowing that every moment we remained would be distressing to his sister, I announced that we would start up the trail. I hadn't the heart to offer to help her mount, and after Frederic had put her up we fell into single file behind Hance, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... condition of these victims, perishing unknown and unpitied in the fangs of an ecclesiastical tyranny, is not the most distressing spectacle which Tuscany at this hour presents. Theirs is an enviable state, compared with that of the great body of the people. These occupy but a larger prison, and groan in yet stronger fetters; while their captivity is uncheered by any such hope as that which sustains the Tuscan confessors ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... details that cannot be more than referred to here. But the crowning achievement of the period in this direction was the discovery made by the German, J. L. Schoenlein, in 1839, that a very common and most distressing disease of the scalp, known as favus, is really due to the presence and growth on the scalp of a vegetable organism of microscopic size. Thus it was made clear that not merely animal but also vegetable organisms of obscure, microscopic species have causal relations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... himself in this most distressing position—when he sat with his mother in shame and retirement in obscure lodgings, which had been taken for them by one of their former servants, and with no immediate means of livelihood—then first the folly of his past career ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the editorship of a British periodical only because he could not endure the ordeal of rejecting the thousands of submitted manuscripts. This is a distressing phase of an Art Director's duties and to my mind his most sacred obligation. No matter how hardened by experience, a conscientious editor cannot fail to suffer for and with the unhappy authors and artists whose work goes back with the proverbial ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... silence which had been imposed on him by a desire to avoid unnecessarily distressing his mother, had been years of thought, perhaps the richer and riper from the fact that he had refrained from active participation in political life. Like all his class at the South, he was, if not a politician by instinct, at least familiar from early boyhood with the subtle ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... tenets, if they were not coupled with their corresponding practice in regard to moral and domestic obligations. There is generally a due proportion kept in 'the music of men's lives.' ... Of many of the facts of this distressing case we are not ignorant; but God knows they are not for a newspaper. Fortunately they fall within very general knowledge, in London at least; if they had not they would never have found their way to us. But there is a respect due to certain wrongs and sufferings that would be outraged by ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... excitement is very distressing, but the sufferer is set all right again by some trifling stimulant, such as a glass ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the Viceroy at length found himself necessitated to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners had scarcely time to part from their effects; while they were selecting from them the articles which they most needed, and loading horses with them, a multitude of soldiers hastened up; they fell ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... "Loyal friends indeed! And may I ask what loyal friend allows you to go about in your present distressing condition? You are hardly fit to ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... grant them such and such indulgences, they would tell their bed-ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronte. He was so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went home for his holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct,—at one time in the highest spirits, at another in deepest depression,—accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... keenly the distressing circumstances surrounding you, I should deeply regret my misplaced confidence in your character; and certainly you must acquit me of the selfishness that could desire to engross ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... invitation to something in the nature of a State dinner, which, to tell you the truth, I had forgotten until my secretary pointed it out to me this afternoon. I have grave fears of being bored or of misbehaving myself. I have, as Ledsam here knows, a distressing habit of truthfulness, especially to new acquaintances. However, we must hope for the best. By-the-bye, Ledsam, in case you should have forgotten, I have spoken to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so much for me! I am your man, lady, for life or death!" And, before she knew what he was about, the gigantic Schneiderlein had slid down on his knees, seized her hand, and kissed it—the first act of homage to her rank, but most startling and distressing to her. "Nay," she faltered, "prithee do not; thou must rest. Only if—if thou canst only tell me if he, my own dear lord, sent me any greeting, I would wait to hear the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... footing. Whole chapters in his volume were constructed in the conditional mood and packed with hypothetical detail; and in talk, by the very law of the process, hypothesis became affirmation, and he was ready to tell you confidentially the exact circumstances of Pellerin's death, and of the "distressing incident" leading up to it. Bernald himself not only questioned the form under which this incident was shaping itself before posterity, but the mere radical fact of its occurrence: he had never been able to discover any break in the dense cloud enveloping Pellerin's later ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the feelings which were tormenting him, and took care that she should not see his state of unhappiness, and he did not worry her with trying questions, that only end in some violent and distressing scene. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes, that the lightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far, that we should never again see their religious ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... determined to do the best I can for myself here, and shall then be heartily glad to return to you. What a delightful life we shall lead! I will work, and work in such a manner that I may never again be placed by unforeseen events in so distressing a position. Were you with me, I should possibly take more pleasure in the kindness of those I meet here, but all seems to me so empty. Adieu, my love! I am ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and unaffected dignity which have at all times characterized the natives of Biscay. Before he was appointed governor of Portobello and Cumana, Don Vincente Emparan had distinguished himself as captain of a vessel in the navy. His name recalls to mind one of the most extraordinary and distressing events recorded in the history of maritime warfare. At the time of the last rupture between Spain and England, two brothers of Senor Emperan, both of whom commanded ships in the Spanish navy, engaged with each other ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... spite, the one for interfering, the other for having been the innocent cause; and he no sooner saw her in the post-office, than he promised himself revenge, such revenge as only the meanest and most cowardly spirit could have taken pleasure in. His best way of distressing Ellen, he found, was through her horse; he had almost satisfied himself; but very naturally his feeling of spite had grown stronger and blunter with indulgence, and he meant to wind up with such a treatment of her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... lived, for the most part, in wretched cabins, which swarmed with men, women, and children, while every nook and corner not thus occupied was filled with pigs, fowls, sheep, or dogs; and the thick smoke, or, as the people emphatically call it, 'cruel steam,' is most distressing to the eyesight, ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... in upon him, "that's too curious, because, do you know, I thought you never had rain at all, and I do detest rain so. It's too distressing when one has a new frock or must go to some stupid place to see some one. But I'm too awfully glad that you've come here, Mr. Trojan. We do want waking up a little, you know, and I'm sure you're the very person ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... an iron case or collar that was fitted round his neck and drawn closer by means of a screw till it occasioned strangulation. I did not follow the general example and attend the execution, as I did not feel sufficient curiosity about this new instrument of death to tempt me to witness so distressing a sight. ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Douglas Bruce were confused, while Leslie was frightened, but she tried turning the distressing ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... idea that is well calculated to appeal to almost anybody. It has just occurred to me quite involuntarily while you were speaking. Many of our clients want to know if they cannot send the judge, who is trying the case, a present of some sort, or maybe loan him a little money; and it is always distressing to be obliged to tell them—usually— that it is quite out of the question; that it would only get them into trouble. Of course, occasionally we let them send the judge a box of cigars, but always with the compliments of our adversary —never ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the Spanish army that night was distressing in the highest degree. They were hungry, exhausted, dejected, and seventeen hundred dangerous wounds demanded immediate attention. There was but one surgeon of the expedition who survived, and he was a man ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... insisting on asking you questions in Hungarian and refusing to understand any other tongue. As you have to spend hours with the police in the Magyar capital before you obtain permission to stay there and again before you obtain permission to go away, this is peculiarly distressing. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the past too fondly wandering, On the hopeless future pondering; Chilly grief my life-blood freezes, Fell despair my fancy seizes. Life, thou soul of every blessing, Load to misery most distressing, Gladly how would I resign thee, And to dark oblivion ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... procuring cause of this distressing disease is involved in considerable mystery. It seems, however, to be largely dependent on the secretion and discharge into the duodenum of an improper quantity of bile, and an irregularity in the peristaltic action of the upper part of the bowels, particularly of the duodenum, in which that action ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... while on the table in the anteroom lay as usual the Prince's walking stick, hat, and gloves, as though he were at home and just going out. But one detail had not been mentioned, and that was the devoted affection and truly maternal care which Madame Astier showed for the 'poor little woman' in these distressing circumstances. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Claire and her father experienced that most distressing of motor experiences—waiting, while the afternoon that would have been so good for driving went by them. Every fifteen minutes they came in from sitting on a dry-goods box in front of the garage, and never did the repair appear to be any farther along. The ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sad and disillusioned have, to things it supposes a stranger would not understand if he were told. He has reason, therefore, to say we are dull. And Dockland, with its life so uniform that it could be an amorphous mass overflowing a reef of brick cells, I think would be distressing to a sensitive stranger, and even a little terrifying, as all that is alive but inexplicable must be. No more conscious purpose shows in our existence than is seen in the coral polyp. We just go on increasing and forming more ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... esteem myself most fortunate to have met you! Your arrival has already been notified to us by the avant-courier of the fashionable intelligence, so that we are well aware," here laughing lightly, "of the distinctive right you have to a hearty welcome in Naples. I am only sorry that any distressing news should have darkened the occasion of your return here after so long an absence. Permit me to express the hope that it may at least be the only cloud for you ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and through, the chapter on Healing and Teaching,(8) and was so deeply interested that I began reading that blessed chapter over again,—when I found I was cured of my dyspepsia, that I could use my strength in lifting without feeling the old distressing pain in my side, and also that the pain in the kidneys only came on at night, waking me out of sleep. Then I began my first conscious treatments: of course I followed no formula, and I needed none. A cry for help, knowing ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... and constant repetition of what it knows is safe; but such heavy things as theories, opinions, and arguments must be kept carefully concealed from it, for fear of causing congestion or paralysis, or, worse still, that parlous condition which betrays itself in distressing symptoms such as one sees daily in society, or sits and shudders at in one's own friends, when the victim, swelling with importance, makes confident mis-statements, draws erroneous conclusions, sums up and gives advice so fatuous that you blush to be a biped ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "Gorky" again, which, as I have explained, means, "Are such distressing situations within the province of ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... in Wales still continue, though the apprehension of some of the rioters who destroyed the Pontardulais gate has had some effect. The following distressing scene is reported ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... from bad to worse, and though the tropical weather was not conducive to heartiness of appetite the dishes on our tables were distressing. To attempt to compute the countless creature comforts missing at this stage of our sorrows would be ridiculous; nor do I propose inflicting on the reader a reiteration of what remained to keep body and soul together. Discussion on the Column ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... with several others, went out and followed the dog, who led them through the darkness of the night, which was very great, to the top of a precipice, nearly fifty feet deep; and standing on the bank, held his head over, and howled in a most distressing manner. They were convinced that the poor man had fallen over; and having gone round to the bottom of the pit, they found him, lying under the spot indicated by the dog, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... sake of my bibi!" said Mrs. Creighton. "It is the prettiest little hat I have had these three years; it would be distressing to have it spoilt before it has ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... as well that Chris had more than enough to think of. Otherwise the wrench at leaving home might have been even more distressing than it was. His last day passed like a flash, though from his attitude no one, certainly not Becky, would have guessed that the next morning he would not be there to eat his breakfast in the sunny kitchen window. Amos, quick to sense all Chris's moods, knew something ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer, and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... articles there of considerable value; but I will let them all go—it will be taken as a proof that I am dead. My friend Black Bill will hear of this, and fall in with that opinion. I may also arrange a 'distressing casualty' paragraph to insert in the papers for ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was very gracious, but the little fat Italian with the long hair and the drooping eyelids was atrociously embarrassed to respond to her compliments in English. He struggled so violently that Mrs. Morrow began to smile with a compassionate patronage which turned him a distressing terra-cotta. Elfrida looked on for a few minutes, and then, as one of the group, she said quietly in French, "And Italian opera in England, how do ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... to trouble you, sir," said she; "but a lady has called to see you about a very distressing law case—very distressing indeed, and a very strange case it is too. Only, if you could be so ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... without any effort of their own, until I had gone through the German exegesis. It took me six years of meditation and hard study to discover that my teachers were not infallible. What caused me more grief than anything else when I entered upon this new path was the thought of distressing my revered masters; but I am absolutely certain that I was right, and that the sorrow which they felt was the consequence of their narrow views as to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... afternoon in yawning over a novel, and the evening in the excitement of the tea table and the party, and the ball room, to retire, perhaps at midnight, with the mind and body and soul in a feverish state, to toss away the night in vapid or distressing dreams. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... this distressing dilemma was already becoming plain to the marauder herself. Her mewings grew louder and more frequent. A few more contortions brought the climber nearer his victim. A little judicious urging with the rake and she was within reach. The rake ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... was not very distressing. John and Erasmus Henry were abroad; and each had an office at Rome, in which he was able to support himself. Charles had for some time been entirely dependent on his father, and administered to his effects, as he died ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... right, but wrong too. Hoodie was proud, but also intensely loving. She did grieve in her own wild, unreasonable way, at distressing her mother, but most of all she grieved that she should be the cause of it. It would have made her sorry for mother to be grieved by Maudie or the boys, but still that would have been different. It was the misery of believing herself to be ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... me to silence, I think I can answer, particularly when I give him a gentle hint of the station of Beckendorff, for his preserving the confidence with which it will now be our policy partially to entrust him. It is, to say the least, awkward and distressing to leave you alone; but what is to be done? It does not appear that I can now be of any material service to you. I have assisted you as much as, and more than, we could reasonably have supposed it would have been in my power to have done, by throwing some ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... why architecture, which is pre-eminently the art of space, is of all the arts the most static. Light and color are essentially of space, and therefore an art of mobile colour should never lack a certain serenity and repose. A "tune" played on a color organ is only distressing. If there is a workable correspondence between the musical art and an art of mobile color, it will be found in the domain of harmony which involves the idea of simultaneity, rather than in melody, which is pure succession. This fundamental difference between time ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... ... The affairs of the Peninsula are indeed very distressing,[5] and what you tell me in your letter of the 20th, as also in the former one, is highly interesting and, alas! but too true. I trust, not withstanding what you say, I may yet live to see Spain and Portugal settled. But I greatly fear that the time ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... day: the symptoms were violent headache, and a disordered state of the stomach, caused, the surgeon says, by the oppressive and overpowering heat which we have experienced for the last few days, and the general effects of which seem more distressing to the ship's company than is often experienced under a higher range of the thermometer; the deprivation of all power, or energy, is one of its most unpleasant consequences. I am inclined to think that one reason for its great ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Rackliff. He lighted a cigarette, but the first whiff threw him into a most distressing fit of coughing and he flung it out through the open door. "Can't seem to get anything out of a smoke," he complained. "Cigarettes don't taste good, and they raise the merry dickens with this old cough of mine. I've got a beastly headache, and I suppose I ought to be in bed, but I've got to ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... such times would sink into moods of the blackest gloom, like those of an old, gouty subject. Hypochondria, baby as he was, seemed already to have fixed his fangs upon him. He had days of profound melancholy, when nothing provoked a smile, and others of bitter, silent fretting, inconceivably distressing; again there were periods of the wildest joy, only restrained by that reticence which had ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
