"Convulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the natural convulsion that took place about 80,000 years ago, will be apparent from the fourth map. Daitya, the smaller and more southerly of the islands, has almost entirely disappeared, while of Ruta there only remains the relatively small island of Poseidonis. This map was ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the wilderness must now have shrunk, shuddering and appalled, before this unmistakable approach of some frightful convulsion of nature. The people of Cedar House, like all the rest, could do nothing but wait in agony for the unknown blow to fall. It seemed an endless time in falling; under the breathless, torturing suspense the moments became hours, with no change except a darkening of the unnatural twilight, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... with laughter pounded their plates. The rhythmic convulsion passed down the prostrate line, forty-eight little feet twinkled a grand finale, and the curtains swung, then ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... stand and returned to Caesar, he was horrified; for the emperor's head and arms were shaking and struggling to and fro, and at his feet lay the two halves of the wax tablets which he had torn apart when the convulsion came on. He foamed at the mouth, with low moans, and, before Alexander could prevent him, racked with pain and seeking for some support, he had set his teeth in the arm of the seat off which he was slipping. Greatly shocked, and full of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Johnny could move a convulsion shot through the prostrate fighter. He was again struggling wildly. At the same instant, Johnny heard shuffling footsteps approaching around the corner. He was sure he did not mistake the tread of Japanese military police who were guarding that section of the city. For a moment he studied ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... deprecate the untoward influence of these "self-created societies" and to condemn those "combinations of men, who, careless of consequences, and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil convulsion, have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of the whole Government." The Democratic societies now fell into disrepute and did not long survive their great prototype, the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... earnestly for some sound, that returned at intervals, (as the successive firing of cannon,) though I fully expected the return of the sound, when it came it always made me start a little; the ear-drum suffered a convulsion, and the whole body consented with it. The tension of the part thus increasing at every blow, by the united forces of the stroke itself, the expectation and the surprise, it is worked up to such a pitch as to be capable of the sublime; it is brought just to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the billows of contention; if the Olympian brow of Daniel Webster had been lifted from the dust to fix its awful frown on the darkening scowl of rebellion,—we might have been spared this dread season of convulsion. All this is but simple Martha's faith, without the reason she could have given: "If Thou hadst been here, my brother ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... understand it, must imagine ourselves as left with all our local loves and family memories unchanged, but the places affected by them intermingled and tumbled about by some almost inconceivable convulsion. We must imagine cities and landscapes to have turned on some unseen pivots, or been shifted about by some unseen machinery, so that our nearest was furthest and our remotest enemy our neighbour. We must imagine monuments on the wrong sites, and the antiquities of one county emptied out ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... exquisitely tender and pathetic farewell, but not the stifled cry of a man who has received a crushing blow. Not easily, but yet without any ruinous convulsion, he makes that transition from love to "mere friendship" which passionate men so ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stood in the way of its universal application the time-honored agreement called the Missouri Compromise. Down to the year 1820, Congress had legislated to keep Slavery out of the Territories; but at that disastrous era, a weak dread of civil convulsion led to the surrender of a single State (Missouri) to this evil,—under a solemn stipulation and warrant, however, that it should never again be introduced north of a certain line. Originating with the Slave-holders, and sustained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... her encyclopaedic knowledge of historical facts, and her thorough grasp of the main political, religious, and economic considerations which moved the hearts and influenced the actions of men during the revolutionary convulsion give her a claim, which none will dare to dispute, to speak with authority on this subject. Those who have heretofore looked for guidance to Taine will, therefore, rejoice to note that she is able to vindicate his reputation as an historian. "The six volumes of the Origines," ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Cyclopean Isles are composed are entirely of volcanic origin, and it is far from improbable that they may have at one time been attached to Sicily, and severed from it by some great volcanic convulsion. A careful examination of these large piles of basaltic columns led Dr. Daubeny to the conclusion, that the lavas from which they have been formed were consolidated under great pressure, and probably at the bottom of the sea, whence they have been afterwards ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... days—perceive that Shakspeare was labouring under an access of the most confirmed delirium. They listened to Hamlet, and Lear, and Othello, and did not discover that his inspiration was the effect of over-excitement; that his energy was the preternatural strength bestowed on him by convulsion; and that, in fact, instead of being a swan of Avon, he was neither more nor less than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... battle of the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic convulsion and renewal of thought thou wert, and thou wert a magnificent rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all base commercialism, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... damage. Glassy as was the surface, the rollers from the ever unquiet ocean came slowly in, causing; the vessels at anchor to dip their sides alternately in the water up to their bulwarks, and, as we stood on the deck of the Orion, making it seem now and then as if the town, by a violent convulsion of nature, had been suddenly submerged before our very eyes. This was not a place to remain in longer than could be helped, and accordingly the captain directed Mr Henley, as the only officer in whom he could confide, to go on shore and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... I do not mean that sincere and sensible people never change nor modify their faith. I wish to say, for its emphasis, if you will allow me, that they never do anything else; but generally the change is a gradual and natural one,—a growth, not a convulsion,—a reformation, not a revolution. When it is otherwise, it is a serious matter, not to be lightly done or flippantly discussed. If you really had a religious belief, it threw out roots and rootlets through ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... looked upon me for a moment, fixedly, then, bending his head towards his breast, he appeared to be undergoing a kind of convulsion, which was accompanied by a sound something resembling laughter; presently he looked at me, and there was a broad grin on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... on a gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge ruins of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... quite ready to swear that at the moment the stake was used there was a visible convulsion of all the limbs, and that the countenance, before so placid and so calm, became immediately distorted, as if ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... money with comparative ease because they were legitimate. That of William was felt to be precarious. It was feared by the money-lender that a similar convulsion to the one which had borne him so easily to the throne of a great nation might waft him back to the shores of that Holland he so dearly loved. Thus the very circumstances which made supplies necessary also ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the afternoon, Katharine Howard came upon her mistress with her jaws moving voraciously. Half of the cinnamon cates were eaten from the box on the writing-pulpit. A convulsion of rage passed over the girl's dark figure; her eyes dilated and appeared to blaze with ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... this French revolution? Have not they made good use of their time, that in so few years from their last bloody national convulsion men's minds should so have advanced and expanded in France as to enable the people to overturn the government and change the whole course of public affairs with such comparative moderation and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the other, and folds them both upon her own heart. Then Beltran bends and gathers from the lips the life that kindled his. With a despairing cry, Ray flings himself forward, and dead and living lie in Beltran's arms, while the strong convulsion of his heart rends up a hollow groan from its emptiness. And Vivia draws aside the curtain, and the gentle wind brings in the sweet earthy scent of fresh furrows lately wet with showers, and the ever-shifting procession of the silent stars unveil themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... necessary to understand the French Revolution. The proximate cause of that terrible convulsion was, as is well known, an utter disorder in all the functions of the state, and more particularly in the finances, equivalent to national bankruptcy. That matters might have been substantially patched up by judicious statesmanship, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... is evident from the immortal work of Grotius, upon the rights of war and peace, which undoubtedly originated from them. Grotius himself had been a most distinguished actor and sufferer in those important scenes of internal convulsion, and his work was first published very shortly after the departure of our forefathers from Leyden. It is well known that in the course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once appeared, with credit to himself, as a public disputant against Episcopius; and from the manner ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... no doubt to Heaven; for his dying eyes were lifted up—a strong convulsion prevented him for a few moments saying more—but recovering, he again, with great fervour, (lifting up his eyes, and his spread hands,) pronounced the word blessed: Then, in a seeming ejaculation, he spoke inwardly, so as not to be understood: at last, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... an' Texas picks Monte up an' packs him across to Peets, who, after fussin' over him for mebby an hour, brings him round s'fficient so he goes from one convulsion into another, in what you-all might deescribe as an endless chain of fits. Thar's nothin' to it; Peets is indoobitable the best equipped drug sharp that ever breaks loose in Arizona. At that, while Monte lives, he don't but jest. He's shore close enough at ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... immediately after, in a second voyage. In fact, though thankful and impressed by the loss of the others, she had gone through the crisis of the life of her heart and affections, and she had likewise been once in imminent peril through a convulsion of nature. Thus she was inclined to look on the wreck and the Irish cliffs as an experience in the way of business, so she was resolved to see the Giant's Causeway, and to make notes upon it ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... laws, corvees; yet I think there cannot be a doubt, that, aided by capital, and by the more liberal ideas of superior farmers benefiting by the many new and interesting discoveries in modern agriculture, France might, without that terrible convulsion, have shewn as smiling an aspect, and the science of agriculture ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... driven a respectable yeoman like Robin Hood, along with so many others, apparently not much below him in rank, to the fastnesses of the forest? It is evident that only a great civil convulsion could have made, in one district, so large a number of outlaws of this peculiar character. Now, the rising of the discontented barons under the Earl of Lancaster, provoked by the king's favouritism and misgovernment, took place in the early part of the year ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Europe was in a state of dammed convulsion. The wars, though always successful for France, had brought about no definite settlement of international affairs. Peace was transitory, and the dread of Napoleon's power and genius was the only check on rapacious designs ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... officers of the ship. This he suddenly dropped. It was the preconcerted signal, and as the fatal gun boomed out in response to it he thrust his hands into his pockets with great rapidity and jumped into mid-air, meeting his death without a tremor and with scarce a convulsion. Thanks to the clearness of the atmosphere and the facility with which the semaphores did their work that morning, the Admiralty learnt the news within seven minutes. [Footnote: Trial and Life of Richard Parker, Manchester, 1797.] Now comes the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... 3d, concussion, or some other alteration in the brain;" none of which phenomena have any known property capable of accounting for the suppression, or almost suppression, of the cadaveric rigidity. But the cause of death may also be that the lightning produces "a violent convulsion of every muscle in the body," of which, if of sufficient intensity, the known effect would be that "muscular irritability ceases almost at once." If Dr. Brown-Sequard's generalization is a true law, these will be the very cases in which rigidity is so much abridged as ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... This new kind of stimulus had a most favorable effect on the slaves, and gave promise of complete success. But the judicious agent died in consequence of the climate, and the French Revolution threw every thing into a state of convulsion at home and abroad. The new republic of France bestowed unconditional emancipation upon the slaves in her colonies; and had she persevered in her promises with good faith and discretion, the horrors of St. Domingo might have been spared. The emancipated ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... restraint, she yields. The little convulsive act we call crying brings uncontrollable, or what seems to her to be uncontrollable, twitching of the face. The jaw and hands get rigid, and she has a hysterical convulsion, and is on the way to worse perils. The intelligent despotism of self-control is at an end, and every new attack upon its normal prerogatives leaves her less and less able ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... sigh, recovered from his swoon. "Ah, beloved one! bride of my heart!" he murmured, "was it for this that thou didst commend to me the only pledge of our youthful love? Forgive me! I restore her to the earth, untainted by the Gentile." He closed his eyes again, and a strong convulsion shook his frame. It passed; and he rose as a man from a fearful dream, composed, and almost as it were refreshed, by the terrors he had undergone. The last glimmer of the ghastly light was dying away upon that ancient altar, ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... some hesitation, rushed into the glade, leaped toward the fire, leaped back again, pawed and trampled the earth in a terrible convulsion of rage, and then sprang away, crashing through the forest. They heard the beat of his hoofs a long time, and when the sound ceased they returned and resumed their seats ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... confusion scattered round, Huge, shapeless, naked, massy piles of stone Rise, proudly towering o'er this barren ground, Scowling in mutual hate—apart, alone, Stern, desolate they stand—and seeming thrown By some dire, dread convulsion of the earth From her deep, silent caves, and hoary grown With age and storms that Boreas issues forth Replete with ire from his wild regions in ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... Thoburn, standing and holding his glass to the light, "how we are at the mercy of this little spring! A convulsion in the bowels of the earth, and its health-giving properties may be changed to the direst poison. How do we know, you and I, some such change has not occurred overnight? Unlikely as it is, it's a possibility that, sitting here calmly, we may be ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there for scores of acres were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of convulsion, of mortal conflict, death, and the fear of death—revenge, and the lunacy of revenge—hatred, and the frenzy of hatred—until the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, now descending the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... natural question produced a small convulsion once more on Elinor's side. She loosed the hands that had been supporting her head and flung them out in front of her. "Oh, mamma, how can you be so exasperating! What did he say? What was he likely to say? If the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... separated by an abyss of immense depth, presented that abrupt appearance which so often astonishes and appalls the traveler amid the Grampian mountains, and indicates that these stupendous chasms were not the silent work of time, but the sudden effect of some violent convulsion of the earth. Down one of these rugged and almost perpendicular descents the dog began, without hesitation, to make his way, and at last disappeared in a cave, the mouth of which was almost on a level with the torrent. The shepherd ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... elegance, and wrapped majestically in a large fur cloak. Seated close to the fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior of the wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible desire to imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his impressions. So taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm, then raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... shameless warfare against them. The sequences of that warfare are now upon us. The sin is now being atoned for in blood. It has not yet been ordained that the principles of injustice should have permanent duration. If not restrained by humane rationality, they will culminate in convulsion. The light is now breaking upon the heretofore obscured vision of the American people. We can now begin to see with clearness that the colored man's disenthrallment is to become the white man's future security. This would almost seem to be the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... movement seemed to disappear, but yet Reason might still be thought to find a closer realization here than among scenes more serene and fair; and, lastly, Reason set in blood and tyranny and there was no more hope from France. But those who, like Wordsworth, had been taught by that great convulsion to disdain the fetters of sentiment and tradition and to look on Reason as supreme were not willing to relinquish their belief because violence had conquered her in one more battle. Rather they clung with the greater tenacity,— ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... in Canada during these exciting months in the Maritime Provinces were those defined by a great historian, in dealing with a different convulsion, as 'masterly inactivity.' In that memorable speech of years afterwards when Macdonald, about to be overwhelmed by the Pacific Railway charges, appealed to his countrymen in words that came straight from the heart, he declared: 'I have fought the battle of union.' The events of 1866 ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... object. I think"—slowly—"a disinterested observer would have put the question you ask into my mouth." He stared his tall visitor up and down critically, menacingly. Of a sudden, irresistibly, a very convulsion shot over his face. "God, man, you're brazen!" ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... earnest contemplation thereof." It is possible that God may will to call thee higher still; then let go all forms and images, and suffer Him to work with thee as His instrument. To some the very door of heaven has been opened—"this happens to some with a convulsion of the mind, to others calmly and gradually." "It is not the work of a day nor of a year." "Before it can come to pass, nature must endure many a death, outward ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... attack or partially when consciousness is merely clouded. Sleep probably represents an analogous condition. We go to sleep to repair the body while psychologically we are seeking that flight from reality which we all long for. The convulsion may be a secondary affair, and a physiological sequel to the loss of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... just begun to repose from the convulsion occasioned by a change of dynasty, and, through the prudent tolerance of King William, had narrowly escaped the horrors of a protracted civil war. Agriculture began to revive, and men, whose minds had been disturbed by the violent political concussions, and the general change of government in Church ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a convulsion of the white furs; Madame Bonanni suddenly emerged, erect, massive and seething with motherly emotion; throwing her arms round her son she pressed him to her with a strength and vehemence that might have suffocated a weaker man. As it was, Lushington was speechless in her embrace ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... opinion Talleyrand, by nodding assent, seemed to adhere; but he added: "Earthquakes are generally dreaded as destructive; but such a convulsion of nature as would swallow up the British Islands, with all their inhabitants, would be the greatest blessing Providence ever conferred ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... an end This orbit so smoothly begun, Unless some convulsion attend?" I often said. "What will be done When it ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... some convulsion of nature had ripped the earth apart, and they crept back to the main ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... will demanded of Jesus, while it may not {174} necessarily involve a catastrophe of life or convulsion of nature, must be none the less a deliberate and decisive turning from evil to good. By what road a man must travel before he enters the kingdom, through what convulsion of spirit be must pass, so frequently dwelt upon by St. Paul and illustrated by his own life, Christ does not say. In the Fourth ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... prepared," said he, "by other measures hitherto adopted and others hitherto introduced into this House, I should not have been less startled at the introduction of this than if I had received the sudden intelligence that the ten States enumerated in this bill had been sunk by some great convulsion of nature and submerged under ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... contents boiled, seething as if possessed. Then, with a fearful convulsion, the waves parted and the water gave up its prey. Two choking, gasping, spluttering heads appeared simultaneously: with one accord four striving paws clawed desperately at the rim of the butt. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... late, for the captain's piece was already at his shoulder, and as he drew trigger the charge struck the serpent about a third of its length from the head, making it heave up out of the water, while a convulsion ran through it, and then it lay motionless upon ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... his whole story in the stern self-command of brow, and the slight convulsion of feature, which all the self-command could not prevent. He returned warmly the grasp of the hand, answering merely, "I will see ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a pungent, overpowering sweetness filled the air, and the very surfeit of its fragrance threw my husband into a convulsion of delight which ended in a stupor so replete that we were able only to restore the poor man to consciousness by hypodermics of—what was to him a ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... even to danger; and that on Sunday last they were both so ill, as that the poor Duchesse was in doubt which would die: the Duke of Cambridge, of some general disease, the other little Duke, whose title I know not, of the convulsion fits, of which he had four this morning. Fear that either of them might be dead, did make us think that it was the occasion that the Duke of York and others were not come to the meeting of the Commission which was designed, and my ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... east side of the village, happily remains what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the two connivant rocks, though considerably ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... was white except where he was red, and that red was not now his glossy, flaming skin. A terrible muscular convulsion as of internal collapse grew slower and slower. Yet choked, blinded, dying, killed on his feet, Wildfire ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... alone," replied Josephson, slowly endeavoring to tell it exactly as he had seen it, "but that's the strange part of it. He seemed to be suffering from a convulsion. I think he complained at first of a feeling of tightness of his throat and a twitching of the muscles of his hands and feet. Anyhow, he called for help. I was up here and we rushed in. Dr. Gunther had just brought him and ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... stones rough and wet. Had there been any gleaming stalactites or stalagmites in sight, the cause of the legend attaching to the place would have been understood, but there was nothing of that nature. The cavern was simply a rent in the side of the canyon wall, created by some convulsion of nature, and all that ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... started up out of her arms, and then she gave a great shriek that made the air ring, and cried out, "Dead! am I dead?" with a shudder and convulsion, throwing herself again wildly with outstretched ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Ireland, which rendered immediate measures necessary, Sir Robert would have prepared them gradually for the change." Then, besides, the Corn Law Agitation was such that if Peel had not wisely made this change (for which the whole Country blesses him), a convulsion would shortly have taken place, and we should have been forced to yield what has been granted as a boon. No doubt the breaking up of the Party (which will come together again, whether under Peel or some one ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... dignity and office seem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a wood than in a place of security. It was an universal juncture of particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure. This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself, but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself. Also, as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... strained every nerve to grasp the meaning of my invisible mentor. While I did so, the wheels drew rapidly nearer, and, just as I was expecting them to go whirling by, stopped,—in front of the house. My heart leapt in my bosom. In a convulsion of frantic terror, again, during the passage of one frenzied moment, I all but burst the bonds that held me, and fled, haphazard, from the imminent peril. But the bonds were stronger than I,—it was as if I had been ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the awful mountain were indeed there. But a farmhouse stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Paestum had not indeed been hidden from the eye of man by any great convulsion of nature; but, strange to say, their existence was a secret even to artists and antiquaries. Though situated within a few hours' journey of a great capital, where Salvator had not long before painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those noble remains were as ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is full of strangeness and mystery. The throes of some great convulsion of Nature are written on the face of the four thousand square miles of territory, of which Cumberland Gap is the central point. Miles of granite mountains are thrust up like giant walls, hundreds of feet high, and as smooth and regular as ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... shadow, gazing at the murky house, heedless of the bitter wind and pelting rain, and felt his life and spirit pass out of his control into an unknown dominion. The storm that raged around him was nothing to the convulsion of his inner self in that hour of madness, which was yet happiness. Yet as it had arisen thus suddenly, so with equal swiftness it died away, and left him standing there with a chill sense of folly ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... upon his feet, however, Little L rolled up the whites of his eyes, fell his full length to the earth, and writhed on the ground in a convulsion. ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... brainless Robert Redmayne, brought his niece to spend her school holiday with him and I discovered in the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl a magnificent and pagan simplicity of mind, combined with a Greek loveliness of body that created in me a convulsion. From the day that we met, from the hour that I heard her laugh at her uncle's objection to mixed bathing, I was as one possessed; and my triumphant joy may be judged, though never measured, when I perceived that Jenny recognized in me the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Crees had disappeared since my former visit; the place was now tenanted only by a few Indians and half-breeds. It seemed to be my fate to encounter cases of sickness at every post on my return journey. Here a woman was lying in a state of complete unconsciousness with intervals of convulsion and spitting of blood. It was in vain that I represented my total inability to deal with such a case. The friends of the lady all declared that it was necessary that I should see her, and accordingly I was introduced into the miserable hut in which she lay. She ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... appeared to me more probable. Yet I dared not tell the brother of the deceased, that, perhaps, a less rash blow would have aroused, without having killed her; therefore I began to sever the head entirely—but once again the dying one groaned, stretched herself out in a convulsion of pain, and breathed her last. Then terror overpowered me, and I rushed ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... from the late wars or from those menacing symptoms which now appear in Europe, it is manifest that if a convulsion should take place in any of those countries it will proceed from causes which have no existence and are utterly unknown in these States, in which there is but one order, that of the people, to whom the sovereignty exclusively belongs. Should ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... with its inevitable stratagems, ambuscades, and lies must continue to be the arbiter in international disputes, it is certainly desirable that such magnanimity in war as the conventions of the last century made possible should not be lost because of Germany's behavior in the present European convulsion. It is also desirable to reaffirm with all possible emphasis that fidelity to international agreements is the taproot ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... blow, striking the whole world at once; a cosmic convulsion, quite indescribable. The air became suddenly a living thing, which leaped against your face; the windows of the little eating-place flew inward in a shower of glass, and the walls and tables shook as if with palsy. The sound of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... well-wishers who are troubled by the fear of a military despotism in the Free States. He has the sagacity to perceive that the genius and development of the graduates of Northern school-houses are totally opposed to a military rule. Mr. Dicey cordially recognizes the democratic idea which sanctifies our convulsion, and displays a careful observation in noting "the self-restraint, the moderation, and the patience of the American people in the conduct of the people's war." He is not over-disturbed because this same people loved law and order more than freedom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... brought word that they had seen, not only jets of steam, but of smoke and fire, while certain rocks, which they had remarked rising above the water, had disappeared, and others, in different places, had come to the surface. Although Adair did not believe that any violent convulsion would take place, he naturally became more anxious than before to escape from the rock. Any spot in the neighbourhood of an active volcano is no pleasant place to live in. Still more disagreeable did the officers and ship's company of the hapless Empress ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... was just a phase of world convulsion. It made the first rent in the universal structure. For years the trend of civilization was toward a super-Nationalism. It is easy to trace the stages. The Holy Roman Empire was a phase of Nationalism. That was Catholic. Then ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism; often he is not. But let a great convulsion touching moral questions occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his idealism. And the fact that so frequently he puts over it a thick veneer of materialism does not affect its quality. The truest approach, the only approach in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... as they were about to turn away his body stirred with a slight convulsion, the eyes opened wide, and he strove to speak. A red froth came on his lips. He made another desperate effort, and twisting himself onto one elbow pointed a rigid arm at Pierre. He gasped: "McGurk—God!" and ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... life was so affected as at his having fallen a victim to this complaint. It carried a conviction to my mind that he never could have recovered. I knew that it was the most interesting and fatal malady in the world; and I wrung the gentleman's hand in a convulsion of respectful admiration, for I felt that this explanation did equal honor to his ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... to a quiet speechless ideot; and dragged out the remainder of his life in that helpless situation. He died towards the latter end of October 1745. The manner of his death was easy, without the least pang, or convulsion; even the rattling of his throat was scarce sufficient to give an alarm to his attendants, 'till within some very little time before he expired. A man in possession of his reason would have wished for such a kind dissolution; but Swift was totally insensible of happiness, or pain. He had not ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, that seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the circumstance that one's life may depend on keeping still, just as yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin, and just as ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of character had not Ali got up a little convulsion on his own account. One day, in the Targhee's absence, he took his gun to "play at powder," and using English material, succeeded in splitting the machine near the lock. When the Targhee returned, and found what damage had been done, he began first to whimper, and then working himself up into a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... quietly and without ostentation. All the relief has been administered—not as charity—but as God-sent succor to our brothers and sisters who have been overwhelmed by some mighty convulsion ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... [a faint convulsion passing like a wave over her] I know more than either of you. One of you has not yet exhausted his first love: the other has not yet reached it. But I—I—[she reels ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... measure disappeared, leaving a shapeless and unsightly hole much larger than the former crater, in which large tree-tops were swaying to and fro in the gurgling mass, forty feet below—the whole appearance bearing testimony to the terrible nature of the convulsion which wrought such destruction. Lieutenant Doane, in his official report to the War Department, thus describes the volcano as ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... lips. Thrice he endeavored to regain his feet, and thrice he failed in his attempts. He strove to speak, but he could only utter a few unintelligible words, for his life blood was suffocating him. A violent convulsion shook every limb, then arose a long, deep-drawn sigh, and then ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... uniformity of the currency and of the domestic exchanges. For this great measure is no temporary expedient. Its success is bound up with the stability of the Government; and if this endures, the good effects of the new system will be felt and appreciated in future years, long after the unhappy convulsion which gave it birth shall have passed away. It will serve to smooth the path from horrid war to peace, and to hasten the return of national prosperity; and when experience shall have fully perfected its organization, it may well be expected, by the generality of its operation and its great momentum, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... be expected, from a view of such huge piles. The aspect of these cliffs is so wild and horrid, that it is impossible to behold them without terror. The spectator is apt to imagine that nature has formerly suffered some violent convulsion, and that these are the dismembered remains of the dreadful shock; the ruins, not of Persepolis or Palmyra, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... should be made king during the war. There was at first no decisive action on this proposal. It was dangerous to express any opinion. People were thoughtful, serious, and silent, as on the eve of some great convulsion. No one knew what others were meditating, and thus did not dare to express his own wishes or designs. There soon, however, was a prevailing understanding that Caesar's friends were determined on executing the design of crowning him, and that the fifteenth of March, called, in their phraseology, ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... few paces away, since its outer edge projected over the inner wall of rock. Moreover, this opening was not above four feet in width, a mere split in the huge mountain mass caused by some titanic convulsion in past ages. For it was a definite split since, once entered, far, far above could be traced a faint line of light coming from the sky, although the gloom of the passage was such that torches, which were stored at hand, must be used by ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... for it has evidently no connection with the following one, and is not found in the Upsal MS. of the Prose Edda, which is supposed to be the oldest extant. Gefjon's ploughing is obviously a mythic way of accounting for some convulsions of nature, perhaps the convulsion that produced the Sound, and thus effected a junction between the Baltic ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... another great convulsion of the stock market. Stewart, the young Lochinvar out of the West, made an attempt to corner copper. One heard wild rumours in relation to the crash which followed. Some said that a traitor had sold out the pool; others, that there had ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... wills than his own into a part which no child could be more incapable of playing. I forgave him the trick by which he had caught me and the selfish fears to which he had been willing to sacrifice me. He had flung himself down upon the ground, and floundered about in a convulsion of terror, whilst his terrible little companion, with his cynical smile, stood over him with his pistol in his hand. He played with the helpless panting coward as a cat might with a mouse; but I read in his inexorable eyes that it was no jest, and his finger seemed to be already ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was next discussed, in the course of doing which Mark communicated to Bob, somewhat in detail, the circumstance of the recent convulsion, and the changes which it had produced. After talking the matter over, both agreed it would be every way desirable to bring the whole party, and as much of the property as could be easily moved, up to windward at once. Now, that the natives knew ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,—a horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,—a devastation voiceless, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffocation, as in drowning; and, in the original Opium Confessions, I mentioned a case of that nature communicated to me by a lady from her own childish experience. The lady is still living, though now of unusually great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... races to the northward which we consider as Caffre races. You may have observed, in the history of the world, that the migrations of the human race are generally from the north to the south: so it appears to have been in Africa. Some convulsion among the northern tribes, probably a pressure from excessive population, had driven the Zoolus to the southward, and they came down like an inundation, sweeping before them all the tribes that fell in their path. Chaka's force consisted of nearly 100,000 warriors, of whom 15,000 ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... island had sustained a shock which might have been that of an earthquake, which certainly equalled that of the most violent Central American earthquakes in severity, but which had none of the special peculiarities of that kind of natural convulsion. Presently I came upon fragments of a shining pale yellow metal, generally small, but in one or two cases of remarkable size and shape, apparently torn from some sheet of great thickness. In one case I ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... this 'Royal Society of British Artists' as shown by its very name, tended perforce to this final convulsion, resulting in the separation of the elements of which it was composed. They could not remain together, and so you see the 'Artists' have come out, and the 'British' remain—and peace and sweet obscurity are restored to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... kingdom of heaven among foreign nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its "bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially when ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... seemed to rest with that strange sense of stability and continuance, which such a moment of happiness, though it carries every element of change in it, almost invariably brings. It felt as if it might go on for ever, and yet the very sentiment that inspired it made separation and convulsion inevitable—one of those strange ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... who wound up the procession, taking little Jane by the hand. Little Jane was walking demurely, with a placid face. Annette glanced at Tinman. Her excited feelings nearly rose to a scream of laughter. For hours after, Mary had only to say to her: "Little Jane," to produce the same convulsion. It rolled her heart and senses in a headlong surge, shook her to burning tears, and seemed to her ideas the most wonderful running together of opposite things ever known on this earth. The young lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she was deeply indebted to it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was half frightened, half amused at the sudden convulsion caused by her favourite's bad conduct, "don't be vexed; see, here is a little bit of my biscuit; I don't ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... collation, and happily the presence of the food had prevented the poison from attacking the coats of the stomach so violently as would otherwise have been the case. Scarcely had she vomited when a tame boar swallowed what she had rejected, and falling into a convulsion, died immediately. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... face of Argetti are indescribable. He glared and writhed, and his face worked as though in a convulsion, but when he managed to calm himself sufficiently to again speak ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... was evidently resolving something in his mind of great importance, for he propped the chair far back on its one leg, and appeared to be taking the altitude of the mountains in the moon, an unfailing sign of a convulsion of some ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... course is checked by the bodies of the slain, swells up to revenge them and destroy him, the natural and the supernatural are so strangely blended, that when Poseidon lights the forest, and god meets god and element meets element, the convulsion is too tremendous to enhance the fierceness of Achilles; it concentrates the interest on itself, and Achilles and Hector, flying Trojan and pursuing Greek, for the time melt out ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... knocked at Ishmael's heart. "Something must come to all of us...." Everyone had to die of something, from some outrage on nature. There had to be some convulsion out of the ordinary course to bring it about; cases where the human machine simply ran down, as with the Parson, were rare. This horror was lying in wait for all—the manner of their leaving. It was astonishing, looked at in cold blood, that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... to respect each other's rights, and perhaps to lend each other aid in important conjunctures, and animated, it would seem, by a real spirit of mutual friendliness and attachment. After more than five centuries of almost constant war and ravage, after fifty years of fearful strife and convulsion, during which the old monarchy of Assyria had gone down and a new Empire—the Median—had risen up in its place, this part of Asia entered upon a period of repose which stands out in strong contrast with the long term of struggle. From the date of the peace between ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in the Indigo trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on the part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace in the world; and sitting bolt upright ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two or three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be called an outburst ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... developed at the expense of moral ones; and the sweet emotions of compassion, evidently dangerous when traitors are to be punished, are too often altogether smothered. But is this a sufficient reason to reprobate a convulsion from which is to spring a fairer order of things? It is the province of education to rectify the erroneous notions which a habit of oppression, and even of resistance, may have created, and to soften this ferocity of character, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... began to examine the coast more in detail, inquiring the names of remarkable objects as we proceeded, we found ourselves in a country where each succeeding spot that the traveller visited, was memorable for some mighty convulsion of Nature, or tragically associated with some gloomy story of shipwreck and death. Turning from the Lizard Head towards a cliff at some little distance, we passed through a field on our way, overgrown ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... A convulsion seized the girl's countenance. She looked as if she would willingly have killed him, had she a weapon in her hand. But she could not speak ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... we could only see a blank wall of mountain before us, up which it would have been both impossible and useless to climb. Wondering where the deuce Lizzie was leading us, we blundered along until we arrived at the base of the perpendicular cliff, and saw that by some convulsion of nature the ravine now branched off at a right angle to the left, and gradually widened out into a beautiful and gently declining stretch of country, perfectly shut in by hills, and into which a pretty little bay extended, with several canoes ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... the wall, his face working in a sudden convulsion. It was as though the servant had struck him a heavy blow ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... and his bow and spear lying idle at his feet. Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine, and my story will not brook the delay. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mast-head, and the many fancy fixin's she had donned fluttered in the air in gayest mockery. Eventually she was thrown however, but without the least injury to herself, but somewhat disordered in raiment. When I saw Bennett he was standing half bent over laughing in almost hysterical convulsion at the entirely impromptu circus which had so suddenly performed an act not on the program. Arcane was much pleased and laughed heartily when he saw no one was hurt. We did not think the cattle had so much life and so little sense as to waste their energies so uselessly. The ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... reflection, they shall have retraced the origin and progress of the insurrection, let them determine whether it has not been fomented by combinations of men, who—careless of consequences and disregarding the unerring truth that those who rouse cannot always appease a civil convulsion—have disseminated, from an ignorance or perversion of facts, suspicions, jealousies, and accusations of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... bitter hearts staring at this unexpected obstacle. It was not the result of any convulsion, as in the case of the ascending tunnel. The end wall was exactly like the side ones. It was, and had always been, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not run on so quickly! We seem to get faster every year. In a very little time, what we wear one day will be quite out of date the next! When we arrive at this climax, there will be a sudden convulsion of nature, I should think, and we shall return once more to the more simple garb of the aborigines. What an amount of trouble it would save us! No worrying because the dressmaker has not sent our gowns home in time! No sending them back to be altered! No dressmaker's ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... convulsion corresponds to a chill in an adult, and is the most common brain affection ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... violent than any which the world now witnesses. The geologist deals in such sublime conceptions as a world of molten matter, tossed into waves by violent efforts of escaping vapors, cooling, cracking, and rending, in dire convulsion. He then ceases to discuss the changes and formation of worlds, and condescends to inform us how to fertilize our soil, where to look for coal and iron, copper, tin, cobalt, lead, and where we need not look for either. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... almost objects of their scorn, yet, rather embodied malignities, and essential mischiefs, than men. France in that fearful time reminded the spectator of Michael Angelo's great picture of the "Last Judgment"—general convulsion above, universal torment below; the mighty of the earth falling, kings, nobles, hierarchs, warriors, plunging down, and met by fiends, at once their tempters, their taunters, and their torturers; a scene of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table, while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved tragedy and suffering—Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... continual exposure to the sun; nose flat; countenance contorted, heavy, earthy; hair and beard unshorn, profuse, and of fiery red. He struck strangers much as if he were a volcanic creature thrown up by the same convulsion which exploded into sight the isle. All bepatched and coiled asleep in his lonely lava den among the mountains, he looked, they say, as a heaped drift of withered leaves, torn from autumn trees, and so left in some hidden ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... in heaven, are converted into a set of unmitigated fiends, out sataning Satan, finding their chief delight in forever comparing their own enjoyments with the pangs of the damned, extracting morsels of surpassing relish from every convulsion or shriek of anguish they see or hear. It is all an exquisite piece of gratuitous horror arbitrarily devised to meet a logical exigency of the theory its contrivers held. When charged that the knowledge of the infinite woe of their friends in hell must greatly affect the saints, the stern ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Coit Gilman a chance to show that creative scholarship can flourish in a democracy. But the essential soundness of the Republic was as much obscured in 1868 as its wealth had been in 1861, and for the present the objects on the surface, brought there by violent convulsion, represented ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... Republican party to disturb the existing internal policy of the Southern States possible presupposes a manifest absurdity. Before anything of the kind could take place, the country must be in a state of forcible revolution. But there is no premonitory symptom of any such convulsion, unless we except Mr. Yancey, and that gentleman's throwing a solitary somerset will hardly turn the continent head over heels. The administration of Mr. Lincoln will be conservative, because no government is ever intentionally otherwise, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sword had cut into the jaw with a swift downward stroke. The corners of the mouth were drawn, as if by a convulsion. Clots of blood besprinkled the beard. The closed eyelids had a shell-like transparency, and the candelabra on every side lighted up the gruesome object ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... of any thing moral, because shadowy and illimitable, so potent to magnify and unvulgarize any interest, that more books have been written upon Cabool, and through a more enduring tract of time, than upon Moscow. Great was the convulsion in either case; but that caused by Cabool has proved the less transitory. The vast anabasis to Moscow had emanated from a people not conspicuously careful of public morality. But that later anabasis, which ascended to the shining pinnacles of Candahar, and which stained with blood ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... recently occurred in our parish. A contest of paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the country—or at least the parish—it is all the same—will long remember. We have had an election; an election for beadle. The supporters of the old beadle system have ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... "I shall have to go and leave her, and who will take care of her? She is to have a thing like yours upon her head." He was ready to sob, but kept himself in with a great effort, swallowing the little convulsion of nature. His mother's widow's cap was more to Geoff than his father's death; at least it was a visible sign of something tremendous which had happened, more telling than the mere absence of one who had been so often absent. "Come, Mrs. Warrender," ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... still, bending a little forward, as though he were bowing to the reptile. Next instant, like a flash it struck, for I saw its white fangs bury themselves in the back of Savage, who with a kind of sigh fell forward on to his face. Then there was a convulsion of those shining folds, followed by a sound as of bones being ground up ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... seas."[14236] A blight fell upon her. For many years, Sidon, rather than Tyre, became once more the leading city of Phoenicia, was regarded as pre-eminent in naval skill,[14237] and is placed before Tyre when the two are mentioned together.[14238] Internal convulsion, moreover, followed upon external decline. Within ten years of the death of Ithobal, the monarchy came to an end by a revolution,[14239] which substituted for Kings Suffetes or Shophetim, "judges," officers of an inferior status, whose tenure of office was not very assured. Ecnibal, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... respectable, energetic, and intelligent people. Daniel Andrew was one of the strong men of the village; had been a deputy to the General Court, and acted a prominent part before and after the witchcraft convulsion. But the great family of the village—greater in numbers and in aggregate wealth than any other, and eminently conspicuous on both sides in the witchcraft proceedings—remains ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... from his bed, and by the assistance of his attendants walked across the chamber. Soon after he was seized with a violent convulsion, in ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley |
