"Alarming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jones had been relieved from the first watch, and had retired to his berth about an hour before without any misgivings. He was suddenly awakened by the alarming cry that the ship was sinking, and the call of 'all hands,' He sprang up, and in a few moments joined the group of officers, naval and military, assembled on the quarter-deck. Anxiety was depicted on every countenance; ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... conversation, to listen to all that was said to him. It was the habit of the judgment-seat, acquired through many years of listening, with every faculty awake, to the arguments addressed to him. But when you began to make some statement to him, it was positively alarming to see him look you full in the face, and listen with inconceivable fixedness of attention to all you said. You could not help feeling that really the small remark you had to make was not worth that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... clearly. For my part, nothing will ever convince me that that child was deceiving me; my knowledge of girls is too perfect. It was a most pronounced case of somnambulism, the outcome of last night's injudicious eating, and, in my opinion, a very alarming condition, as one can never tell to what it may lead. Her digestion may be seriously impaired. It is quite unsafe to leave her alone to-night, for she may be seized with another attack at any moment. I shall spend the remainder of the night upon the ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... sentimental. When we have picked ourselves up we begin to suppose that such a state of mind must have been caused by something of which the significance was inherent and the value absolute. "This," we say, "is absolute beauty." Perhaps it is. Only, let us hesitate to give that rather alarming style to anything that has moved us less rapturously ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... of furniture paid a quick return in the matter of looks, she did. She could never be a very fat Mis' Cow—she was not of that build. But a few days of good food and plenty of it certainly worked wonders. She filled out several of the most alarming hollows around her hips and along her ridge-pole, she seemingly took on height and length. She grew smooth, even glossy; her tail no longer hung on her like a bell-cord, but became a lithe weapon of defense that could swat a fly with fatal precision on any given spot of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... have deserted in a body, and rallied round his standard. It has been, so I hear, a triumphal march for him from the Littoral to Digne, and altogether the news which the courier brought me this morning was of such alarming nature, that I thought it my duty, M. le Comte, to apprise ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... similar to those above quoted have been made by non-Catholic writers, and the defenders of the Church have spoken with clearness and energy throughout. Nevertheless, the evil has continued to grow more universal and more alarming, until, to-day, no principle on which the social fabric can securely stand is acknowledged by those who rule the exterior world. And of what Heeren calls the violation of "the sanctity of legitimate ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... unfavourable to the object of the expedition, occasioned a general consternation. Pericles, observing the pilot of his own galley to be frightened and confused, took his cloak and placed it before his eyes, asking him at the same time if he found any thing alarming, or of evil presage, in what he then did? and upon his answering in the negative: "Where then is the difference," said Pericles, "between this covering and the other, except that something of greater extent than my cloak deprives us of the light of the sun?" Nor can it ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Mr. Burge, with alarming humility; "but it's an uncertain world, and far be it from me to boast. ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... impressible and illogical sex. I say HOPELESSLY, for he slipped equally from the proudest silken lap and the humblest one of calico, and carried his eyelashes and small aches elsewhere. I think that a secret fear of his alarming frankness, and his steady rejection of the various tempting cates they offered him, had much to do with their passion. "It won't hurt you, dear," said Miss Circe, "and it's so awfully nice. See!" she continued, putting one of the delicacies in her own ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and taken heart again; and have been sick, and got well again; and thought they would try a different diet, and then thought better of it; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. And others you will see, who have begun life as wicked crystals; and then have been impressed by alarming circumstances, and have become converted crystals, and behaved amazingly for a little while, and fallen away again, and ended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; so that one doesn't know what will become of them. And sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that look as soft ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... place to a Neapolitan of coarse physique—a man personally virtuous, but, as history shows us, extraordinarily harsh and violent in disposition. "It seems," the Prior of the Island of Gorgona wrote with alarming candour to Catherine, "that our new Christ on ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... the town, and tried to elude the pursuers by turning abrupt corners, but there was little chance of success in these tactics, for the "blackies" knew more about the place than he was ever likely to, and kept cutting him off in an alarming manner. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the 'Poem on my own Life', and you will be glad to hear that I have added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. Two books more will conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,—not hundred but thousand lines long,—an alarming length! and a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I was ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Jimmy Rabbit could answer, an alarming sound rang through the clear air and startled them both. It was old dog Spot, baying as if he had found ...
— The Tale of Peter Mink - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... we got on famously until we reached Winter Quarters, where we found everybody well and everything in order, but received one piece of alarming intelligence—that the attempt to get into wireless communication with our ship had failed, with the result that we should have to wait for her until the time ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... honest, Mr. Masters, I know Aunt Ann will never enter that alarming, fascinating Ferris Wheel without an escort whom she can trust should we lose our heads and want to jump out one hundred feet above terra firma; and I am quite sure I shall want to jump. I always am tempted ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... scarcely a comment. Blue Hill Farm was on rising ground, and there had always been this danger in view. But till this season it had never materialized to any alarming extent. His position had often enough been precarious, but his losses had never been overwhelming. The failure of the dam at Ritter Spruit had been a catastrophe more far reaching than at the time he had realized. It had crippled the resources of the farm, and flung him upon ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... impossible to know what, were the testamentary dispositions; Father Antonio, who had learned many things in the confessional, could tell us nothing, but, when the matter was mentioned, only rolled his eyes up to heaven in an alarming manner. It was startling to think of all the unholy forces awakened by the temptation of Seraphina's helplessness and her immense fortune. Incorruptible himself, that man knew how to corrupt others. There might have been combined in one dark intrigue the covetousness ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... serpents, untwining their green and glittering folds, and slowly bending their crested heads around, seem proudly conscious of a voluptuous existence; troops of monkeys leap from tree to tree; panthers start forward, and alarmed, not alarming, instantly vanish; a herd of milk-white elephants tramples over the back-ground of the scene; and instead of gloomy owls and noxious beetles, to hail the long-enduring twilight, from the bell of every opening flower beautiful birds, radiant with every ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... served by a pretty young girl. The china was coarse and the thick slices, cut with a big knife from huge loaves of bread, were by no means daintily served, but it could not have tasted better, and John ate a truly alarming amount ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... hair, and her exquisite neck and arms were covered with costly gems. She had just completed her toilet for a dinner given by the Princess Karl Liechtenstein, when Podstadsky had met her with the alarming intelligence which had obliged her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... eight or ten, Falstaff exclaims, "Zounds! will they not rob us!" If he had said more seriously, "I doubt they will be too hard for us,"—he would then have only used the Prince's own words upon a less alarming occasion. This cannot need defence. But the Prince, in his usual stile of mirth, replies, "What a Coward, Sir John Paunch!" To this one would naturally expect from Falstaff some light answer; but we are surprized with a very serious one;—"I am not ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... however, that prevented the journey, but the alarming weakness of the Colonel. In spite of his activity and his exercise the old man had been growing perceptibly weaker, and his digestive trouble had developed until the doctors hinted at cancer. To leave the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... is not so alarming. For a long time some of our university departments of physics have aimed rather to teach the scientific method in laboratory investigations than to impart a knowledge of the facts in physics; and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... as her cavalier adjusted her shawl. "These fainting fits are decidedly alarming. I hope it is nothing more ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... alarming feature of the affair, however, was the manner of Franz von Blenheim, which was not so much melodramatic as businesslike and hard. At Miss Falconer's defiance he looked her up and down quite coolly. Then, turning in his seat, he began ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... 337 and three other places. It is strange that the author of the "Iliad" should find a little horse-hair so alarming. Possibly enough she was merely borrowing a common form line from some earlier poet—or poetess—for this is a woman's line rather ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... doctor sat down to weigh the news "Happy Tom" had brought, but the more squarely he considered the matter the more alarming it appeared. Thus far the S. R. & N. had been remarkably free from labor troubles. To permit them to creep in at this stage would be extremely perilous: the briefest cessation of work might, and probably would, have a serious bearing upon O'Neil's efforts to raise money. Gray ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... learning from their warden that when the Pelicans returned that season to occupy the island as before, they took one look at this declaration of the President and immediately departed, one and all, to a neighbouring island entirely outside of the reservation! Signs less alarming in size were substituted, and the Pelicans, their feelings appeased, condescended to return, and have since dwelt peacefully under the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... effectiveness. Valentia often said that Romer should never do more than walk through a room or look in for a few minutes where there were other people—even at a club—and then go away immediately, when he would leave a striking impression. If he stayed longer he became alarming. His personality was so extraordinarily nil that it was quite oppressive. Obviously kind and not in the least pompous, yet his silence made him formidable, especially to most of his wife's friends who, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... along the whole line. Shields, in his exposed position, was hard pressed and in danger of being crushed by overwhelming forces. In this alarming situation Captain Lee made his way to General Scott to report the impending disaster, and led back two troops of the Second Dragoons and the Rifles to the support of the left wing. The affair ended in the repulse of the enemy and victory for the Americans. Soon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... been diverted to more serious and alarming considerations than what he characterized ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Goldstraw, till I know why you regret an act of kindness to my mother, which she always spoke of gratefully to the end of her life. You are not doing me a service by your silence. You are agitating me, you are alarming me, you are bringing on the singing in ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... defended by the claim that as the property and franchises have increased in value since the formation of the corporation the increase of the stock is necessary in order to fairly represent the existing capital. It is said that some railway stock has been "watered" in this way to an alarming extent, so that a great deal of it is fictitious, yet though it exists only on paper it ranks as the equal of the genuine stock when the dividends are paid. Whether or not such an action really is justifiable, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... the taking in of infants to nurse for payment, but usually with an implication of improper treatment. Previous to the year 1871 the abuse of the practice of baby-farming in England had grown to an alarming extent, while the trials of Margaret Waters and Mary Hall called attention to the infamous relations between the lying-in houses and the baby-farming houses of London. The evil was, no doubt, largely connected with the question of illegitimacy, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the meantime formed many conjectures on the origin of this strange sound, which were as contradictory as they were extravagant. It is unnecessary to relate every particular: in short, whenever Antonelli supped at home, the alarming noise was heard at the same hour, sometimes stronger, at others weaker. This occurrence was spoken of all over Naples. Every inmate of the house, every friend and acquaintance, took the most lively interest; even the police was summoned to attend. Spies were placed at proper distances around the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... more interesting than alarming. Fear is seated in the imagination, I think, and vanishes once the mind can assert itself. One feels very funky in the cold nights when nothing is happening: but if one has to handle men under fire, one is braced up and one's attention is occupied. I expect rifle ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... of this alarming word, a change of the most marked character took place in young Travis' manner. "What does that mean?" he asked. "I am not sure that I understand your use of ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... on the steps in the fading sunlight and the small music box flung herself into the outstretched arms with a force that was alarming. It was easy to see that Susan was most temperamental and would be a handful of anxieties in the years to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Reserve and silence. So W. and Ky. But R. and Dr.: private interviews (to be summoned to which by some commanders was alarming), and neglect of the usual salutations in public (which was also often a token of displeasure on the part of a superior officer). The former is the more simple and obvious, though it must be confessed that the latter ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... would have elected to be shown something much more alarming than a bedroom in order to escape from my presence. She accepted Victoria's offer with obvious thankfulness. The two went off with the baby. William Adolphus, still rather embarrassed, took out a cigar. We sat down side by side and both began to smoke. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... arrival at the yacht-club pier the boys were overwhelmed with questions, and a doctor was summoned for Sam, who, as soon as he found himself safe, began to groan and show most alarming symptoms of being seriously affected by ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... with stately grace, Everything in proper place; Gliding slowly forward, then Slowly courtesying back again, Long ago. Modern ways are quite alarming, Grandma says; but boys were charming— Girls and boys, I mean, of ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... she had hardly observed the mention of that feature in the Elder's household, and she laughed outright. Her ideas of the ancestral savage were too vague to be very alarming. "If she has lived all these years with this good old minister, she must be civilized and kind," said Draxy. "I'm not ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... would be all the better if it remained in the country to the last day of its existence. You must accustom it little by little to the sight of disagreeable objects, such as toads and snakes; also in the same gradual manner to the sound of alarming noises, beginning with snapping a cap in a pistol. If the infant cries from pain which you cannot remove, make no attempt to soothe it; your caresses will not lessen the anguish of its colic, while the child will remember what it has to do in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... as the ebb was not yet altogether entered.[7] The enemy came on with loud shouts and the sound of many instruments, as if to an assured victory, and immediately began a furious cannonade. Their fire rafts advanced burning in a most alarming manner, but were stopped by the canizos, or rafts of defence, formerly mentioned. By these likewise, the paraws and other vessels of the enemy were prevented from closing with our caravels and boats, which they seem to have intended. In this part of the battle many of the paraws and other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... latter term I should expect to earn the undying hostility of all true Aucklanders. It is a point they are excessively touchy upon, and as the city and its suburbs contains a population of more than twenty thousand—increasing annually at an almost alarming rate—it were as well for me to be particular. We take a stroll or two about the city in company with a colonial friend, who obligingly ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... secure a seat and then walk down the platform. We have some minutes to spare; the clock points to 11.38; we must start at 11.45 by the Great Western express, the "Dutchman," as it is familiarly called, after that mysterious sailor who came and went with such alarming celerity. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... soon had an opportunity to tell the artist who it was that desired to speak to him and where he had taken Ledscha. He also made him aware that he feared some evil from her, and that, in an alarming vision, she had appeared to him as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his buck-teeth like a mad bull, kicking right and spurring left with fire and fury; and, taking his Kilmarnock off his head, thrust it, like a battering-ram, into Cursecowl's mouth, to hinder him from alarming the neighbourhood, and bringing the whole world about our ears. Such a stramash of tumbling, roaring, tearing, swearing, kicking, pushing, cuffing, rugging and riving about the floor!! I thought they would not have left ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... turned, and the bravest of the prudent party, who had been turning in his mind the notion of risking his life for a pardon, to be won by rushing forward at the right moment and alarming the guard, checked the cry that was in his throat as he saw the men round the door draw back a little for their rush, and caught a glimpse of the giant's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and townships and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided, the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... employ, subjected the highlands north of the Indus, and gave that distant river as a new boundary to the Persian realm. More important, had the fortunes of his son been equal to his designs, was the alarming settlement which the monarch of Asia effected on the European continent, by establishing his sovereignty in Thrace and Macedonia—by exacting homage from the isles and many of the cities of Greece—by breaking ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fully recognize the opportunity men have to serve God in any honorable vocation. The Christian lawyer or physician is called of God as truly as a minister. Such men are putting the emphasis on service and not on getting. The condition confronting us is alarming and this warrants the earnest plea in this paper for a ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... won't hear anything about the M—— doings, yet I assure you they are a most serious matter. Unless I am much mistaken there is an effort on foot to connect you with my father, which is surely sufficiently alarming. M—— is returning to Rome, and I hear rumours of an intention to bring pressure on some one here in the hope of leading to identification. Think of it, I ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and returned to the garden without alarming a living creature except the owls and the bats. There still remained the cistern, the mortuary vault, and the pavilion, or rather, the chapel in the forest, to be searched. Roland crossed the open space ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... not write. According to her account, Henrietta had become reconciled to her father's marriage. The poor child's melancholy had entirely disappeared. Miss Henrietta was very friendly with Sir Thorn. The coquettish ways of the young girl became quite alarming; and her indiscretion provoked the gossip of visitors. Daniel might as well accustom himself to the idea, that, on his return, he might find Henrietta ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... government and in the period of general prostration it was not unnatural that the spirit of Bolshevism grew with alarming rapidity. It even permeated the officers of the Army. In March, 1783, an anonymous communication was sent to Washington's officers to meet in secret conference to take some action, possibly to overthrow the government. A copy fell into Washington's hands and, while he forbade the assemblage ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... attend the races at Brighton. This was the longest and most tedious six weeks of my life. I thought of nothing but my intended visit to Brighton races; and such was the anxiety of my mind, that it brought on a serious, and, indeed, alarming fever. In the fits of delirium I raved for the lady who was the object of my solicitude, and at one period the paroxysms were so violent, that Mrs. Hunt actually thought that I should have been bereaved of my senses; and to calm me, she seriously proposed to send an express ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... one of the counsel at the trial of Burke, in writing of these events, remarks: "All our anatomists incurred a most unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium; Dr. Knox in particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But, tried in reference ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... night. Suleym[a]n offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked the big guns of the castle with terrible precision. Two galleys were quickly sunk, four men were killed in the trenches by a single shot—a new and alarming experience in those early days of gunnery—four times the Fort of St. Angelo was attacked in vain; winter was approaching, and the Sultan determined to raise the siege. In vain Barbarossa remonstrated: "A thousand such castles were not worth the life of one of his ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... kind of colonial dependence on the parsonage at Camenz, the bonds gradually slackening, sometimes shaken a little rudely, and always giving alarming hints of approaching and inevitable autonomy. From the few home letters of Lessing which remain, (covering the period before 1753, there are only eight in all,) we are able to surmise that a pretty constant ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the extravagance and inefficiency of our city governments, people's attention was first drawn to the rapid and alarming increase of city indebtedness in various parts of the country. A heavy debt may ruin a city as surely as an individual, for it raises the rate of taxation, and thus, as was above pointed out, it tends to frighten people and capital away from the city. At first it was sought to curb the recklessness ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... whole transportation system, entirely inadequate even for peace needs, had, under the strain of the war, fallen into chaos. After the March Revolution, as a natural consequence of the intoxication of the new freedom, such disciplines as had existed were broken down. Production fell off in a most alarming manner. During the Kerensky regime Skobelev, as Minister of Labor, repeatedly begged the workers to prove their loyalty to the Revolution by increased exertion and faithfulness in the workshops and factories. The Bolsheviki, on their part, as a means of fighting the Provisional Government, preached ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Low as it was, my voice was alarming; it cooled and cautioned me. I sought little stones. I crept back to throw them. Ah God! her form eclipsed that lighted slit in the gray stone tower. I heard her weeping high ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... certainly seized upon this family to an alarming extent," said Bessie Sandford, when she heard the story, "but I wish that I had been there to see pet Daisy at ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... cost many a poor fellow his life. One morning a man who had just come received some money from a friendly comrade; going in to the sutler's, he bought a quart of dried apples. After eating them he became quite thirsty, and drank an alarming quantity of cold water. It is needless to say that he died the next day. At another time a boy received a box from home; his fond mother, with more kindness than good judgment, sent, with other things, a mince-pie, which delighted him, and he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Home Rule. If the Home Rule Bill had not been placed on the Statute Book there must have been in Ireland and the United States a great and dangerous explosion of rage and disappointment, which when the war broke out would have assumed the most alarming proportions in Ireland. All (outside parts of Ulster) would have joined hands, whilst our reports from Washington tell us what the effect in America would have been. Still, even with Home Rule on the Statute Book, the chance ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... to a suspense so cruel, and when, on the evening of the same day, a friend of mine who had just returned from New York spoke of meeting Mary Leavenworth at some gathering, surrounded by manifest admirers, I began to realize the alarming features of the affair, and, sitting down, I wrote her a letter. Not in the strain in which I had been accustomed to talk to her,—I had not her pleading eyes and trembling, caressing hands ever before me to beguile my ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... and alarming in the little cabin, like the floundering of a great whale driven into a shallow cove in a coast. He stood up; he flung himself down headlong; he tried to tear the cushion with his teeth; and again hugging it fiercely to his face he let himself fall on the couch. The whole ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... either. But it was certainly very strange. It was almost ALARMING, Robert. And she didn't know how at all. I wanted to go ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the ground clear after them; which last means gathering all chips and sticks into the pile likewise. An acre to each team is considered a fair day's work. Robert was so busy as quite to forget the captain and his alarming method of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... I think it will be very hard if, with our two guns and Smoker to back us, we do not manage to be masters of the field. However, we must survey well before we make our approach; and if we can get within shot without alarming or irritating them, we, of course, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... and manner alike were alarming to his daughters. Seldom had they seen him so moved, especially over such a seemingly simple matter as the announcement of a new moving picture drama. He and the girls, in common with the other members of the Comet Film Company, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... congenial life. It was to be one of darkness, perplexity, discouragement.' The Howitts had scarcely entered into possession of a new house that they had taken at Clapton, when news came from Heidelberg, where the elder children had been left at school, that their second son, Claude, had developed alarming symptoms of disease in the knee-joint. It was known that he had been slightly injured in play a few weeks before, but no danger had been anticipated. Mr. Howitt at once set out for Heidelberg, and returned ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... at the first stroke of the hurricane, although not one of us had observed it, and already vast quantities of water were pouring into the little vessel's interior, principally through the fore-scuttle. We had scarcely made this alarming discovery when Saunders, the surgeon, who had remained below through all the hubbub, busily engaged in attending to the wounded, came up on deck and confirmed our worst fears by informing us that the schooner was rapidly filling, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... prompt remittance of the balance when the Inspection Certificate and Outturn were in the hands of the Company. With the grain piling up on their company day by day, it was not long before the overdraft at the bank began to assume alarming proportions. ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... and came to me with a horrible noise, and in such numbers that the plain was covered and shook under them. They surrounded the tree in which I was concealed, with their trunks uplifted, and all fixed their eyes upon me. At this alarming spectacle I continued immovable, and was so much terrified that my bow and arrows ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... the honest truth about it, Step Hen was trying to figure out in his benighted brain just what the cardinal points of the compass might be. It was not that he possessed any alarming interest in proving certain facts Thad and Allan had explained, concerning the fascinating game of learning where the north lay by marks on the trees; the general direction in which they slanted; signs of moss on the north or northwest side of the tree, and various other well proven ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the time the Alaskan installation reported something strange in space, the state of things generally was neither alarming nor consoling. But at 8:02 A.M. Pacific time, the situation changed. At that time Alaska reported an unscheduled celestial object of considerable size, high out of atmosphere and moving with surprising slowness for a body in space. Its course was ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... disfigurement their most hopeful prognostications. I lived, too, in a nervous agony of remorse. For whatever happened I held myself responsible. At first they thought her life was in danger. I passed nightmare days. Then the alarming symptoms subsided, and it was a question of the saving of the eye and the decent healing of the cheek torn deep by the claws of the accursed brute. When Quast informed me of its summary execution I felt the primitive savage arise in me, and I upbraided Quast for not having invited me to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to work at the part of the door that looked most likely to yield, while his companion did what he could with the secretary's instrument—they pushed, rent, tore the wood; the noise that they made was alarming, but they were compelled to risk it. In half an hour they had made a hole large enough to get through. The monk went first, being the thinner; he pulled Casanova after him—dusty, torn, and bleeding, for he had worked harder than Father Balbi, who ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... cavalry operations, and though we pushed forward with all our will, it was with difficulty we could keep up with Jackson's 'Foot-cavalry,' as this famous infantry was often called. Meanwhile, a large part of the Federal army, roused by the firing and the alarming reports from the rear, hastened to the field of action, and exerted themselves in vain to arrest the disgraceful rout of their comrades of the Eleventh Corps. Numerous batteries having now joined the conflict, a terrific cannonade roared along the lines, and the fury of the battle was soon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... swamps. The rate of mortality among the natives from tropical diseases is also high, one of the most fatal being that known as sleeping sickness. (The ravages of this disease, which also attacks Europeans, reached alarming proportions between 1893 and 1907, and in the last-named year an international conference was held in London to consider measures to combat it.) When removed to colder regions natives of the equatorial districts suffer greatly from chest complaints. Smallpox also makes great ravages ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The truth I believe to be that the disease is confined to the vineyards of Old Mission grapes. Whether these had attained the limit of their active life, and sickened, I do not know. The trouble for a time was alarming; but new plantings of other varieties of grapes have been successful, the vineyards look healthful, and the growers expect no further difficulty. The planting, which was for a time suspended, ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... them, crossed my mind. But I was afraid of the dark, of the wild uninhabited savage look of the landscape; though when I thought of it, there seemed no reason why a narrow stretch of country between two great towns should be alarming. But the impression was strong and above reason. I turned back to the street in which I had first alighted, and which seemed to end in a great square full of people. In the middle there was a stage erected, from which some one was delivering an oration or address of some sort. He stood beside ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... their black help and put on whites. But complaints are coming in to me that you can't do their work; that it often takes two white men to perform one Negro's task. Good and reliable colored help are leaving the city in alarming numbers, and we must call a halt. Mr. Skidmore tells me that he tried a few whites at his mill a few days ago and the result was most unsatisfactory. They couldn't count and pile the lumber and run the saws, and the scheme is a dead loss. What ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... is easy enough to fish out a sentence or a short passage here and there which, if taken by itself, may wear a very sinister look, and carry the most alarming impressions. Not many days ago a writer addressed a letter to the Times which furnishes a specimen of this kind of controversy. He gave himself the ambiguous designation of "Catholicus"; but his style bore traces of the equivocally Catholic climate of Munich. His aim was the lofty ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Napoleon, and to no crisis in our history was this dictum more applicable than that at Delhi in September, 1857. Mutiny and rebellion spread their hydra heads over the land, disaffection was rife in the Punjab, our only source of supply for operations in the field; and nought could stay the alarming symptoms save the complete capture and retention of the great stronghold of rebellion. It had also been a well-known maxim laid down and carried out by Clive, Wellesley, Lake, and all the great commanders who had made our name famous in ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... the soul of the young dreamer. The portrait, sketched by Tomsky, coincided with the picture she had formed within her own mind, and, thanks to the latest romances, the ordinary countenance of her admirer became invested with attributes capable of alarming her and fascinating her imagination at the same time. She was now sitting with her bare arms crossed, and with her head, still adorned with flowers, sunk upon her uncovered bosom. Suddenly the door opened and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to state in detail the alarming condition of the Territory of Kansas at the time of my inauguration. The opposing parties then stood in hostile array against each other, and any accident might have relighted the flames of civil war. Besides, at this critical moment Kansas was left ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... months' war with Serbia, in spite of the notable executions of native citizens for assisting the enemy at the time of his incursion into Syrmia and Bosnia, there has latterly been an alarming increase in the number of cases of grossest insult to the person of H.M. the Emperor and King; outbreaks of deeply felt, only forcibly controlled hatred against everything friendly to the dynasty and the Monarchy, curses upon the exalted wearer of the Crown, glorification of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... restore the mob to peace, but in vain. The leaders of the rebellion demanded the immediate appearance in Paris, which was the seat of the revolution, of King Louis and his family, where they could be closely watched by their enemies, describing in alarming terms, the danger to his majesty if he did not comply with the request. Accordingly, after hours of indescribable horrors and humiliation and anguish, the king was obliged to give his consent to the plan, and the royal family made ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... also be medicated in the same way. A putrid DIARRH[OE]A frequently occurs in the latter stage of such disorder, and it is a most alarming and dangerous symptom. If the discharge be stopped by astringents, a putrid fomes is retained in the body, which aggravates the delirium and increases the fever. On the contrary, if it be suffered to take its course, the strength of the patient must soon be exhausted, ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... suddenly deserted village rather puzzled us. But in the hope of bringing the population back to life, and with a certain spice too of mischief, we laid down our guns, and seizing on the big drum, and the abandoned trombones and clarionets, we raised a most alarming noise. It was mere waste of time, nobody came. The evening was falling, it was time to get back on board our steamer, and we quietly retook our way towards her. Night—a moonlight night it was—had completely closed in, when we got to the mangrove ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... fire-watchman who perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood together in token of his vigilance, were intolerable. It was a life of which I knew nothing, and the mystery was more alarming than attractive; my money was lying about, and nothing seemed easier than to slide a hand through the fusuma and appropriate it. Ito told me that the well was badly contaminated, the odours were fearful; ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... is alarming to find that we have not yet got through twenty-five pages out of some hundred or two, and that the Irish Melodies are not yet nearly exhausted. Not a few of the best known of Moore's songs, including "Oft in the stilly Night," are to be ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... till after this pest has been on an estate for two or three years that it shows itself to an alarming extent. During the first year a few only of the ripe scales are seen scattered over the bushes, generally on the younger shoots; but that year's crop does not suffer much, and the appearance of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... are infinite, and what I have neither time, nor, for many reasons, the imprudence to send by the post: your good sense will but too well lead you to develop them. The crisis is most melancholy and alarming. I remember two or three years ago I wished for more active times, and for events to furnish our correspondence. I think I could write you a letter almost as big as my Lord Clarendon's History. What a bold man is he who shall undertake the administration! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and meet the valiant Charming Who finds you not at all alarming; Although he is not very tall, He's big enough to make ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the alarming scarcity of game, in view of the impending extermination of species by legal hunting, can any high-minded sportsman, can any good citizen either sell a machine shot-gun or use ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... sufficing livelihood for themselves and their families—and that in the teeth of physical danger, pestilence, and death—there would be enough indirect exoneration of the Black Man from that indictment in the wail of Mr. Froude and his friends regarding the alarming absorption of the lands of Grenada [206] and Trinidad by sable proprietors. Land cannot be bought without money, nor can money be possessed except through labour, and the fact that so many tens of thousand Blacks are now the happy owners of the soil whereon, in the days so bitterly regretted ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... daughter struck me as having one of the most intelligent and impressive countenances I ever looked upon, and I spoke of her as such to Mrs. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, and to others. The indications which I saw in her of a somewhat alarming state of health, I could not but mention to you, when you accompanied me a little way from your own door. You spoke something encouraging; but they continued to haunt me; so that your kind letter was something less of a shock ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... rose to a storm, the swell had now increased so much that its effects on the ice were extraordinary, and really alarming. The sledges, instead of gliding smoothly along as on an even surface, sometimes ran with violence after the dogs, and sometimes seemed with difficulty to ascend a rising hill. Noises, too, like the report of cannon, were now distinctly heard in many directions, from the bursting of the ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... The alarming spirit of nepotism which Giovanna developed at a later day was, I fear, a growth from the encouragement we gave her charitable disposition. But for several months it was merely from the fact of a boy who came and whistled ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... (Greek tombs) that were unearthed here, and latterly for a certain more valuable antiquarian discovery. Not long ago it was a considerable undertaking to reach this little place, but nowadays a public motor-car whirls you up and down the ravines at an alarming pace and will deposit you, within a few hours, at remote Cosenza, once an enormous drive. It is the same all over modern Calabria. The diligence service, for instance, that used to take fourteen hours from San Giovanni to Cosenza has been replaced by motors that cover the distance in four or ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the consequences of the Pope's political folly. Elizabeth saw her extreme danger, turned her back upon Rome forever, and threw herself into the arms of the Protestant party as her only chance of safety. At the same time heresy assumed alarming proportions throughout Europe, and the Pope called upon the Inquisition to put it down in Rome. Measures of grim severity were employed, and the Roman people, overburdened with the taxes laid upon them by the Pope's nephews, were exasperated beyond ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... were several aspects of his life she disapproved of. These visits to Paris—his antipathy to matrimony—his boredom with girls—such nice girls she knew, too, and had often thrown him with!—his delight in big-game shooting in alarming and impossible countries—and, above all, his absolute indifference to Morella Winmarleigh, the only woman who really and truly in her heart of hearts Lady Bracondale thought worthy of him, although she would have accepted several other girls as choosing the lesser evil to ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of stepping on a ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... at Allan's alarming suggestion, and managed to hug them both at once; an ordeal which Philip stood with every evidence of pleasure, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... pretty clear perception of the thing to be done, and a desire to do it, a first lesson in empirical perspective may be given by means of the apparatus occasionally used in explaining perspective as a science. This sounds alarming; but the experiment is both comprehensible and interesting to any boy or girl of ordinary intelligence. A plate of glass so framed as to stand vertically on the table, being placed before the pupil, and ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr. Shorter jerked himself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... admired his face; to me, the short space between his eyes and his hair, his aquiline nose, and thin straight lips, suggested the bird of prey a little too much: but to fair doves, born to be clutched, this similitude perhaps was not very alarming, even if ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... "Oh, nothing very alarming," he laughed. "Nothing to worry over. I've been playing cards, and lost a bit, that's all. Bring your cheque-book; I want to pay up before I leave. You understand. I know you'll help me, like the good pal you ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... national militia, which had been an intolerable burden upon the peasantry; yet the more pressing agrarian difficulties were not thereby surmounted, as had been hoped. The price of corn continued to fall; the migration of the peasantry assumed alarming proportions; and at last, "to preserve the land" as well as to increase the defensive capacity of the country, the national militia was re-established by the decree of the 4th of February 1733, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various |
