"Choking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... together, and his eyes grew hot, bursting. His lips moved as in speaking, though with never a sound. It was the dumbness—the choking dumbness of that emotion which made it so terrible. Such silence could not last—he seemed to feel it could not—and so moved backward out of hearing. There he stood for a little while, leaning against the wall, his hand bound tightly over his forehead, and sighing, so bitterly sighing!—that gasp ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... my words had evidently produced no effect. I was choking with rage. I strode up and down the room, and felt inclined to send her away by force as a madwoman. However, I reflected that she had relations in a good position whom I might offend if I treated her roughly, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... superhuman effort, Guy succeeded in forcing back the monster that seemed to be choking him, but for several minutes thereafter he hung over the chair with his ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... those days is the ever-present weight at the heart which never left me till I found relief in the active duties of camp life at the close of the month. I went about my duties (and I am sure most of those I associated with did the same) with the half-choking sense of a grief I dared not think of: like one who is dragging himself to the ordinary labors of life from some terrible ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... seemed to move sidewise out of herself, and saw Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff. His head turned from St. Ignace to the reviving fires on Round Island, and slowly back again from Round Island to St. Ignace. Jenieve felt as if she were choking, but again she asked out of ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... take care of Dan, Annie and Pete, whose ages were five years, four years, and three months, respectively. In addition, he cooked the noonday meal and brought it to his parents in the field. The filth and choking odors of the shack made it almost unbearable, yet the baby was sleeping in a heap of rags piled ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... inflammable bundles were lit and tossed into the kivas, and the piles of firewood on the terraced roofs were thrown down upon the blaze, and soon each kiva became a furnace. The red pepper was then cast upon the fire to add its choking tortures, while round the hatchways the assailants stood showering their arrows into the mass of struggling wretches. The fires were maintained until the roofs fell in and buried and charred the bones of the victims. It ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... what was called bread and 1 pound of fresh meat, when any was killed; otherwise we had to be content with bully beef. As to the "staff of life," it became by degrees abominable and full of foreign substances, which were apt to bring on fits of choking. In spite of this drawback, there was never a crumb left, and it was remarkable how little the 6 ounces seemed to represent, especially to a hungry ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... I shall be very grateful—" Edith began, then stopped, choking back a sob that had almost ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... It was a breath of fresh air piercing through the choking atmosphere of a sick-room; but the fresh air made the patient uncomfortable. These honorable men, so ready to condemn all that did not approve itself to their own sense of honor, had become distressing to the baron. At all events, he would not expose himself to this Wohlfart—the very essence, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... calmly resumed his place by the Amazon's side. When the cabin door closed on his faithful servant, bringing champagne and ices to the interesting stranger, Chitterlings resumed his narrative with a choking voice— ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to the poor woman, gave rise to some disturbance; and although the boys were quieted, the Empress soon left the theater, choking with mortification. M. Rochefort, who refers to this incident in his memoirs, adds that as the imperial party came out, another insult of a still more shocking character was thrown at the Empress. This, of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the "hysteric ball,"—a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to Barrois. "Impossible, doctor; it is too late; my throat is closing up. I am choking! Oh, my heart! Ah, my head!—Oh, what agony!—Shall ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "Why, Al, in six months you'll be taking a grizzly bear by the neck and choking him to death ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... but I feel myself choking when I think of these poor people who yearn for salvation. They are crying for water—for living water—but there is no one who ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... round his neck, and pressing him to her heart, kissed him again and again, as she exclaimed, in a voice choking with emotion, "You are my long-lost Walter: I need no one to tell me that; I remember every lineament ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... me; and it was so very still; my voice, the only sound to be heard, and that was strange and muffled. But though the fluffy clouds were so silent, they were gay companions and full of fun; let them find me napping once, and, puff! Down they would send the feathery snow, choking and blinding me, then would come a wild chase; once in a mad frolic my breath parted the clouds and I saw down the mountain side! Never shall I forget the picture I saw that day, framed by the silvery clouds. I, who had known nothing but ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... bored us by your foolish childishness, and by your sweet behavior. Here, we'll pack you out of the house, like an enemy from the town; then we'll come to, and look around, and you'll be gone forever. Consider, good people, what it'll be like, living in some strange, far-away place, choking on another's bread, and wiping away your tears with your fist! Yes, good God, she's marrying beneath her; some blockhead will be butting in—a blockhead, the son of a ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... explanation,—lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a sais; and after much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... she said, in a choking voice, taking the note from her pocket. "Oh, if you knew how much I want to! Mayn't I, papa? do, dear papa, ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... moment. A sense of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent woods empty and soundless. He was relieved, however, after penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's pocket accordion. Following the sound he came at last upon a little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed in a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each hand, Concha the melancholy!—Concha ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he hurled him, clutching him round the neck, and choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... hour and went out to find breakfast. Luck took him through the side entrance to Spring Street, where eating places were fairly numerous. He discovered what he wanted, ate as fast as he could swallow without choking on his ham and eggs or scalding his throat with the coffee, and ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of William's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms and standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and discipline and unfaltering devotion, stood firm and stayed fast while all about him chaos reigned and fathers forgot their children and husbands forgot their wives, and vice versa, though probably not to the same extent; and how finally the drifting ashes and the choking dust fell thicker upon him and mounted higher about him, until he died and in time turned to ashes himself, leaving only a void in the solidified slag. I had always admired that soldier—not his judgment, which was faulty, but his heroism, which was ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... in this way to me, when I am helpless, when I can't get away, when I'm troubled and frightened half to death? Ah, fine of you to persecute a girl!" She sobbed, choking a little, but her head high. "Let me out, I'm going to Auntie Lucinda. I hate you more and more. If I were to drown, I'd not take ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... Douglas's early speeches. "His face was convulsed,"—so the merciless diary runs,—"his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped and cast away his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist. And this man comes from a judicial bench, and passes for an eloquent orator!" On another ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... and ch-cheese!" she said, choking. Further than that she did not reply at once. The reasons were obvious. But she munched reflectively, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... a struggle between life and death. The life-giving water washes the choking sand, and just where the strife is fiercest lies Timbuktu. From the north goods come on dromedaries to be transported farther in canoes or long, narrow boats with arched awnings of matting, or, where the river is not navigable, on oxen and asses or ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... experiences of correspondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, the forgotten adventure of a converted yacht—but all are instinct with the red fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke of battle. Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The Red Badge of Courage." Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensity and painted it with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when he was its familiar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages for briefer ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Then there was plainly discernible a great whirring and flapping, as if a windmill had become deranged in its economy, and was laboring "without a conscience or an aim." Whir, whir, flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them, the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer, whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his might to ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... you?" continued the Count, with a sneer. "Perhaps I inspire you with horror; but do not fear; the blood is no longer on my hands, but it is here, and is choking me." And as he spoke he pressed his fingers upon his heart. "For twenty-three years I have endured this hideous recollection and even now when I wake in the night I am bathed in cold sweat, for I fancy I can hear the last gasps of the ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... in a choking voice, and, as the boy was drawn tightly to the old man's breast and he hid his face so that his tears should not be seen, something fell pat upon the back of his head, making him look up quickly, to see that he need not feel ashamed of his own, for his tutor's tears were falling slowly, ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... journey's end. The words acted as a signal. Like a hunted beast breaking cover and dashing madly towards some other haven of momentary safety he threw aside his rug, and struggled frantically into his dishevelled garments. He was conscious of dull surburban stations racing past the window, of a choking, hammering sensation in his throat and heart, and of an icy silence in that corner towards which he dared not look. Then as he sank back in his seat, clothed and almost delirious, the train slowed down to a final crawl, and ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Pulveris.' The three kinds of Desert specified—of Reed, Sand, and Rock—should be kept in mind as exhaustively including the states of the earth neglected by man. For instance of a Reed desert, produced merely by his neglect, see Sir Samuel Baker's account of the choking up of the bed of the White Nile. Of the sand desert, Sir F. Palgrave's journey from the Djowf to Hayel, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a warning, or a danger for which he was wholly unprepared. He stared at me for a moment from his lowly position on the floor, then slowly rose and mechanically put his hand to his throat, as if he felt himself choking. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... come to hate him; but I can't help thinking it must have been in a great measure because her husband favoured the other that she took up this one with such passion. I have been told she would abuse him in language not fit to repeat, the little wretch answering her back, and choking with rage that he could ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... cried Anna, and again adieux were waved. And the marquis stepped to the guard and called out to Henry, "I'll see you in New Orleans," and the swift steamer immediately bore him out of speaking distance. And Henry watched him disappear with a choking feeling that thus the nobleman was ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... issued from the mouth of Captain Asher; he was choking to death. In the same second that she heard it Olive thrust the muzzle of the pistol against the side of the man's head and ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... beside Urda's Well when Thor came struggling out of the Cloud River, wet and choking, but with his hammer still upon his shoulder. There stood Tyr, upright and handsome, leaning on his sword that was inscribed all over with magic runes; there stood Baldur, smiling, with his head bent as he listened to the murmur of the two fair swans; and there stood Odin All-Father, ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... care about," she whispered, choking back a heart-broken sob; "but oh, Tarbaby, it's the bein' forgotten! Of co'se mothah couldn't be expected to remembah, she's been so ill. But I think grandfathah might, or Mom Beck, or somebody. If there'd ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... nearer; Yakob felt overawed by the feeling of strength and power that emanated from him. He was choking. Yes, he understood and yet did ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... some of us that will be a sorry task; we are like children crying in the midst of the broken pieces of some costly vase, shattered by our carelessness. The fragments that remain! How many remain of the lessons and warnings of the past year? How much of the good seed remains undestroyed by the choking thorn? Some of us made good resolutions last Advent, we started well with the beginning of the Church's year, we girded on our armour, we determined to make a fight for the true faith, and we took a firm stand on the promises of the Gospel. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... more in the single word of course than Aunt Judith could know. There was an unread paper and a biscuit, a tailless dog invading sanctity, a yelling boy by a woodpile, and now the memory of a twilight ride and the tears of a choking lad upon his sleeve, an irritating record of moments of weakness which it behooved a first citizen to stamp out of his life forever. Aunt Judith read in his face an inexorable death-sentence of her ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... repeated the troubled lips, through choking sobs. "I cannot escape now. It is too late. Poor Richard!—poor wronged Richard! I have deserved my fate, for being so untrue to him. What shall I do? What ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... comrade, do you recollect how you breathed soul into them when they shrank back that day? They moved, Geisner. They moved. We felt them move. They will move again, some day, dear heart. They will move again." Then, choking with sobs, she laid her head on his knees. He put his arms tenderly round her and they saw that this immovable little man was weeping like a child. One by one the others went softly out to the verandah. Only Ned remained. He had buried his face in his hands and sat, overwhelmed ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... to Mazas, and thought with consternation that soon there would be no one left for him to arrest. Suddenly he stopped his fork on its way to his mouth, and his face assumed a most doleful expression.—"What's the matter?" cried Dacosta, alarmed.—"Ah!" said Rigault, tears choking his utterance, "Papa is not in Paris."—"Well, and what does it matter if your father is not here?"—"Alas!" exclaimed Rigault, bursting out crying, "I could have ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... now, but the murky, mist-laden atmosphere was rendered like a damp, choking, heavy pall of gloom by the dense volumes of pitch and tar-smoke with which it seemed to be perfectly soaked, as a sponge is with water. It caused Agnes to cough violently and continuously until she arrived at her new destination, ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... spin through the Park, anyhow," I said. I was choking with the hot, stale air of my little apartment, and I wanted that breath of the cool to brace me for the task of proving to my friend that New York was ...
— Options • O. Henry
... brilliant. The horses glittered and pranced. The parasols fluttered like butterflies above the flower-faces beneath. Webb would stand entranced, bitterly thankful that there was such a scene for him to look upon, choking back a sob that he had ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... couldn't—see—it!" Betty's words came in choking little gasps. She paused a moment and turned her face away, swallowing hard. Then she went ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... said Mr. Grewgious, looking round his pair of office candles. 'I thought you had called and merely left your name and gone. How do you do, Mr. Edwin? Dear me, you're choking!' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of the burning wood in the fireplace, the shrill chirp of a cricket and the plaintive call of a whip-poor-will from without. Then with a look of superstitious awe and terror upon his thin face, the moonshiner gasped, in a choking voice, "Boyd City—Richard Falkner—Mister, aint yo' mistaken? Say, ar' ye ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... keep from breaking down and bursting into tears, she turned away, and recognizing Maurice, gave him a smile. Jean's presence was embarrassing to her. She felt as if she were choking somehow, and removed the foulard that she ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and Lennie, her own particular friends, consider her guilty? Had they no better belief in her honour than that? Had everybody forsaken her? Gipsy pushed her half-finished plateful aside. She was choking too much with sobs ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... don't kick that way," said Romaine Smith, choking and sneezing. "Oh dear, I shall smother. Eyebright, please open the window. Quick, ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... with paws, I! A sausage with paws, I!" repeated the coachman, choking with rage, while his innocent victim was being carried into the adjoining room, where the ladies and girls found occupation in bathing his nose. The disturbance was quickly appeased, thanks to our arrival, thanks ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... so he could ride the horse in, instead of coming in the wagon with the men. Late in the afternoon West came back and reported that he had been unable to find Faye, and then with much hesitation and choking he told me that he had ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Sylvia on the broad, old-fashioned sofa, and gave her water to drink, and tried to still her sobbing and choking. They loosed her hat, and copiously splashed her face and clustering chestnut hair, till at length she came to herself; restored, but dripping wet. She sate up and looked at them, smoothing back her tangled curls ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... breath away for a time, and I were mad with ye. Yes, Father—I was 'most quite mad in earnest; and ef I had met you last night, maybe I'd ha' done you an injury. I can't rightly say, only that I know that my brain was going round, and I was fairly choking with rage—it was as if you had put a devil ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... on your peril!" shouted Peters, choking with rage at his defeat in attempting to ride over ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... far from home. But it is Reicht Heynes I blame for humouring the old woman and letting her do it; as for the old woman herself, she dotes, she has lost her head, she is fourscore. Oh, my heart, I'm choking. For all that she ought to be locked up, or her hands tied. Say this had come to a fool; say I was idiot enough to believe this; know ye what I should do? run to the top of the highest church tower in Rome and fling myself off it, cursing Heaven. Woman! ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the cabin came a great, choking bellow, followed by all the sounds of a furious struggle. It was the leopard and the lion, and the lion made all the noise. Wolf Larsen ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... great wings, like a turkey gobbler with his head suddenly cut off. There was some screaming, hissing, and croaking, but to all these sounds Saloo quickly put an end, by taking a fresh grasp of the throat of the great bird, choking the breath out of it until the wings ceased fluttering; and then he flung its body down at the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... covered my green baize table with an infinitesimal section of H—— County real estate. Even the slumberer on the sofa was not exempt. His usually ruddy face had become ashen, and his snoring was developing into a series of choking gasps. It was fearful, this dust,—alkaline, penetrating, stifling,—and from such soil the raw-boned, hard-featured men of H—— wrung a living. And I, sharing their narrow lives, began to understand the true significance of the word 'onery' as ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... haggard, and his lashes, long and soft and thick, lay against a skin drained of every particle of color. A sudden choking sob rose to the girl's lips, but she managed to force it back, and when the man's lids slowly lifted, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... nodded the sheriff, choking down his wrath by a great effort. "Dave won't have any trouble in getting good men when I spread the word. You're a mighty good fellow, Dave. I always said it," added the sheriff. "I'm sorry I had to ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... an ever-thicker lining that interferes with the intestine's functioning. Far worse, this coating steadily putrefies, creating additional highly-potent toxins. Lining the colon with undigested food can be compared to the mineral deposits filling in the inside of an old water pipe, gradually choking off the flow. In the colon, this deposit can become rock-hard, just like ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... on his shoulder, and her sobs were choking her. Tom kissed his mother's forehead as the tears coursed down his cheeks, and motioned me to take her away. I placed her down on the floor, where she remained silent, moving her head up and down with a slow motion, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they ever reached the shore alive. It was a very near thing, and when they found their legs and looked into each other's faces, gasping, dripping, spouting water from ears, nose, and mouth, Dick gathered breath to exclaim, "You trump! I should have been drowned, to a moral!" Whereat the other, choking, coughing, and sputtering, answered faintly, "You old muff! I believe we were never out of our depth the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... hair falls loose, flaming. He draws her to him. His head bends towards her, and his lips are ready. His desire—the wish of all his strength and all his life—is to caress her. He would die that he might touch her with his lips. But she struggles, and utters a choking cry. She is trembling, and her beautiful face ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... huts, it is quite clear how he escapes infection. For the floor is covered with a layer of wood ashes that is usually deadly to bugs and fleas and ticks and other crawling beasts; and the atmosphere is so full of wood smoke that the most enterprising mosquito or tsetse-fly would flee, as we do, choking from the acrid smoke. So the native fire that burns within his hut day and night not only serves to cook his food and to keep wild beasts away, but also supplies him with an excellent form of Keating's Powder for the floor and smoke ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... streets he met with no such consideration. He was incessantly compelled to breathe tobacco smoke, and it made him ill. In a very few days he was seized with a painful choking sensation, caused by the irritation of the smoke, and in a short time he died. His ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... readily done by lowering too quickly the outside cover over the rest of the cooker. Fumes of vaporizing kerosene soon fill the tent and when matches are found, the cooker pulled to pieces, the primus relighted and the choking vapours have cleared, one is apt to think that all is well. The hoosh is quite as successful as usual, but the cocoa, made from water in the annulus, has a tincture of kerosene ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... choking on the word. "Lies, madam? Why then, how cometh my picture here—my coat of arms above the mantel yonder, the Conisby 'scutcheon on your gates? What do ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... [writes a young officer] was the other day buried by a shell. He was dug out with difficulty. As he lay, not seriously injured, but sputtering and choking, against the wall of the trench, his C.O. came by. 'Well, So-and-so, awfully sorry! Can I do anything for you?' 'Sir,' said the sergeant with dignity, still struggling out of the mud, 'I want ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not in what rodent-haunted caverns By what rough tongues the tale was first expressed, By choking fires or in the whispering taverns With wine and omelette lovingly caressed, Or what tired soul, o'erladen with a lump Of bombs and bags which someone had to hump, Flung down his load indignant at the Dump And, cursing, cried, "It's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to go anywhere; so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground. When they released the ropes it lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started; so Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... and give the scientist no chance to revive me. But after a second or two, or a minute, or it could have been an hour, the blackness went away enough to allow me to know I was hanging on the end of the rope, kicking, fighting, choking to death. My tongue swelled, my face and head and heart and body seemed ready to burst. Slowly I went into a deep mist that I knew then was the mist, then—then—I was off floating in the air over the heads of the crowd, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... when that damnable English spy was actually in his power, the man was a pusillanimous fool to allow the rich prize to slip from his grasp! Chauvelin felt as if he were choking; his slender fingers worked nervily around his cravat; beads of perspiration trickled unheeded ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... miscalculation in the matter of length of stride, even when shell-holes and other inequalities of ground do not complicate the calculations still further. And it is hard to maintain a perfectly straight line when moving forward through choking fog and over ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... him again, choking with words; the captain stood like a monument callous to his white and stammering rage, the personification and symbol of ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... condemning a necessary institution altogether for its imperfections or its abuses. Morality has been blended with superstition and tyranny, has been often blind, perverted, narrow, checking noble impulses and choking the rich and happy development of life. But it is one thing to arraign these accidents and corruptions of morality; it is quite another to discard the whole system of guidance of which they are but the excrescences ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... knowing from experience the appeal the blind make to our emotions, I knew the President was so touched that he was overcome and couldn't joke further—he was scarcely able to manage the one remark and could not trust himself to venture another, 'Twas with tears in his eyes and a choking voice that he managed the one. Both he and Mrs. Wilson wept in that ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... possible during my father's death and funeral," he thought, "and now half choking himself, forsooth, because his fortune's made, and he must leave his relations. I trust and hope, with all my heart, that Dorothea is not at the bottom of this! I supposed his nerves to be ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... people who fight together in the waves! Kate's visualizing habit gave a hateful precision and persistency to the image she had evoked—she could not rid herself of the vision of anguished shapes striving together in the darkness. The horror of it took her by the throat—she drew a choking breath, and felt the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... choking voice, laying a detaining hand upon his sleeve. But she was possessed by an emotion, rather than by a thought that could be expressed in words, and so she stood thus awhile in silence. His grim immobility and manly self-containment ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... I felt a choking sensation as I looked at the ruins, and thought of how many pleasant hours I had passed there with my father, and now I could only just trace out where the rooms had been, so complete was the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... her put it on one side, lest the blood and water which follows immediately, should do it any injury by running into its mouth and nose, as they would do, if it lay on its back; and so endanger the choking of it. The child being thus born, the next thing requisite is, to bring away the after-burden, but before that let the midwife be very careful to examine whether there be more children in the womb; for sometimes a woman may ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... from our former home's microcosm, my brother is persistently maligned, even by Mr. BUMSTEAD, who may yet, if I am any judge, meet the fate of ANACREON, as recorded by SINDAS; though, in his case, the choking will not be accomplished by a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... taking her in his arms. Between them they had invented a great game. The ex-engineer, his boots removed, his huge legs in the air, hoisted the little tad on the soles of his stockinged feet like a circus acrobat, dandling her there, pretending he was about to let her fall. Sidney, choking with delight, held on nervously, with little screams and chirps of excitement, while he shifted her gingerly from one foot to another, and thence, the final act, the great gallery play, to the palm of one great hand. At this point Mrs. Dyke was called in, both father and daughter, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... it appears, and I am astonished at the number that come up, and still more at the number killed by slugs, etc. Already 59 have been so killed; I expected a good many, but I had fancied that this was a less potent check than it seems to be, and I attributed almost exclusively to mere choking, the destruction of the seedlings. Grass-seedlings seem to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... home and make up the quarrel. Mrs. Eastman (48) tells of an old squaw who wanted to hang herself because she was angry with her son; but when, "after having doubled the strap four times to prevent its breaking, she found herself choking, her courage gave way—she yelled frightfully." They cut her down and in an hour or two she was quite well again. Another squaw, aged ninety, attempted to hang herself because the men would not allow her to go with a war-party. Her object in wanting to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... walls of the gash showed a medley of clay breccias, disposed in every imaginable way; and divided by horizontal veins of heat-altered quartz. A few paces further led to the head of the ravine, where a tumble of huge rocks, choking the bed, showed that the rain-torrents must at ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... listened, the torpor slowly passed away—the wild light in her eyes grew less bright, for it was quenched by the first tears she had shed since the shadow fell upon her; and when 'Lena produced the note, and she saw it was indeed true, the ice about her heart was melted, and in choking, long-drawn sobs, her pent-up feelings gave way, as she saw the gulf whose verge she had been treading. Crouching at 'Lena's feet, she kissed the very hem of her garments, blessing her as her preserver, and praying heaven to bless her, also. It was the work of a few ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... extermination, dramatic only in its vast significance; a gradual amalgamation of two forces, in which the stronger, cleaner Norse blood triumphed over worn-out and depleted Roman stock. As weeds, rank and sturdy, overrun a garden, choking out other plants, so in Britain, Saxon life overgrew Roman life, inch by inch, almost imperceptibly. The conquest was by no means bloodless. Towns were sacked and men were slain; here was an explosion, there an outbreak of ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... to be noticed is, that when, in clearing the bone behind, the muscles attached to the symphysis are divided, the tongue loses its support, and unless watched may tend to fall backwards, embarrassing respiration and even perhaps choking the patient. The tongue, being confided to a special assistant, must be drawn well forwards. Various plans have been devised for keeping it in position, as stitching it to the point of the patient's nose; putting a ligature ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... slid down the washed bank of a run into the Wabash, picked myself up, scrambled to the top of the far side, and had gotten away again when my pursuer shattered the ice behind me. A hundred yards more, two figures loomed up in front, and I was pulled up choking. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hand was removed and a moment later he felt the struggles of his adversary cease, and there was a choking sound. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... answered Cicely, choking back a sob. "If we yield certainly they will separate us, and that merciless Abbot will bring you to your death and me to ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard |
