"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The social ordeal was not so formidable. The private-car party was made up of the president and his sister-in-law, the president's family physician, Doctor Van Bruce, the doctor's wife, his sister, a maiden lady of no uncertain age, and Alicia. These, with Penfield and Ford, made the eight at table in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... cause. Uncle Christian had only desired to prove him. He knew men well, and he knew that youths of various birth take a blow in the face in various ways; now, the Emir's son had demeaned him as one of his rank, and had stood the ordeal! So my aunt Jacoba told him, for she had at once seen through Uncle Christian's purpose, and presently Jost Tetzel himself, though ill-pleased and sullen, confessed his error. Then, when they had promised the youth that he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been decreed, Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men, And the world shall be purged with a ravening fire. Happy the man in that terrible day, Who bewails with contrition the sins of his life,[221-2] And meets without flinching the fiery ordeal." ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... that morning, but had carried in his subconsciousness all day this visit to the footman's child. In one manner or another that inconvenient locality had been compassed in his circuit for the past three weeks. From it he passed to his daily ordeal, another rich patient, a nervous wreck, whose primary ailment—the lack of anything to do—had passed into the advanced stages of an inability to do anything, with its sad Nemesis of melancholia—the registered protest of the dying ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... upon the track of the "Autocrat." They had to endure the trial to which all second comers are subjected, which is a formidable ordeal for the least as well as the greatest. Paradise Regained and the Second Part of Faust are examples which are enough to warn every one who has made a jingle fair hit with his arrow of the danger of missing when he looses "his fellow of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... In the passage alluded to he is called so by implication, being compared to the 'false-minded' thief who, knowing himself to be guilty, undergoes the ordeal of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... The Sacrifices made by Converts. Difficulty in Forming a Right Estimate of a Community. The General Character of our Native Christians. The Ordeal of 1857. The Christian Constancy of our People. Their Loyalty. Their Bearing in Joy and Sorrow. "Everywhere spoken against." Most Europeans have no Sympathy with us. Unfair to judge by Individuals. The Support of Native Christians. Different Occupations. Native ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... not so very remarkable that I should do my best to safeguard the ship and such of her passengers and crew as survive last night's ordeal." ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... her story, she would contradict herself, break down, attempt to shed false tears, act as only a woman who has committed a first great crime could act. And this child stands here, submitted to this fearful ordeal, defended by none, but defending herself with the whole innocence of her nature, the glory of truth in her eyes, the self-conscious courage of a stainless life in her heart. Is this assumed? Is this put on? You have seen murderers—it is your office to see them— did you ever see one like her? ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... this knit their loves: she knew, and he felt, that he was going in the road of nobleness and honour; and the fiery ordeal which he had to struggle through, raised that hearty earthly lover more nearly to a level with his heavenly-minded mistress. Through misfortune and mistrust, and evil rumours all around, in spite of opposition from false friends, and the scorn of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Rokeby's creaseless back, at his fingers wandering over the keys, and for the first time she noticed how sensitive, how caressing the fingers were. Yet that two people in her intimate circle could contemplate that through which she herself had passed painfully, as through ordeal ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... ordeal we put up at an excellent khan, the best we had seen in Servia, being a mixture of the German Wirthshaus, and the Italian osteria, kept by a Dalmatian, who had lived twelve years at Scutari in Albania. His upper room was very neatly ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the music resumed, and a number of variegated advertisements were weakly thrown on the screen. She set herself doggedly to walk back down the slope of the aisle, not daring to look ahead for Louis. She felt that every eye was fixed on her with base curiosity.... When, after the endless ordeal of the aisle, she reached her place, Louis was not there. And though she was glad, she took offence at his delay. Gathering up the reticule with a nervous sweep of the hand, she departed from the theatre, her ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... or lies the road of all through this dark valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet again, the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... circulation a play entitled 'Love's Martyrdom,' and for which I desired to obtain the independent judgment of some of our most eminent literary men, before seeking the ordeal of the stage, I sent a copy to Mr. Dickens, and the letter ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... this manner, by those who find fault because their intellect is not sufficient to enable them to appreciate! Authors, take my resolution; which is, never to show your face until your work has passed through the ordeal of the Reviews—keep your room for the month after your literary labour. Reviews are like Jesuit father confessors—guiding the opinions of the multitude, who blindly follow the suggestions of those to whom they may have entrusted their literary consciences. If your work ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Miss Francis ended her long sojourn at Mount Whitney and returned to England. The ordeal of living surrounded by the Grass, which had destroyed her assistants, seemed to have made no other change in her than the fading of her hair, which was now completely white, and a loss of weight, giving her a deceptive ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... his whole mind to the refereeing, and soon warmed to business. He found that there was heaps more fun in it than he had bargained for, and as he was a sharp, quick, and clever youth he came out of the ordeal with flying colours. He made mistakes, naturally, but momentous issues depended on none of them, and he felt he had not done so badly when Higgins, at half-time, spoke to him as one in authority to another. But Palmer, the captain ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... for a witch. Witches usually received severer justice, but stocks were often used for keeping prisoners safe until they were tried and condemned, and possibly Shakespeare alludes in this passage only to the preliminaries of a harsher ordeal. Drunkards were the common defaulters who appeared in the stocks, and by an Act of 2 James I they were required to endure six hours' incarceration with a fine of five shillings. Vagrants always received harsh treatment unless they had a licence, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... that dark large eye lurked the profound and fiery enthusiasm of his ill-starred passion. In the thin but exquisite lip I read the courage of the paladin, who would have 'fought his way,' though single-handed, against all the magnates of his county, and by ordeal of battle have purged the honour of the Ruthyns. There in that delicate half-sarcastic tracery of the nostril I detected the intellectual defiance which had politically isolated Silas Ruthyn and opposed him to the landed oligarchy of his county, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... tenderly as they might have treated a little child. They felt that he had been through some ordeal from which they themselves would have shrunk with a terror they would have been ashamed to admit; and that despite the youth's fragile frame and ethereal face that looked little like that of a mailed warrior, a ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Hakon's rival, Jarl Skuli, thought Earl John so promising a traitor as to send him letters forged with the Norse king's seal.[6] In 1218 John was present at Bergen to witness the ordeal successfully undergone by King Hakon's mother in order to prove that king, then a boy, to be her son by the late King Hakon Sverri's son, and so rightly entitled to ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... ordeal, deported himself with a gallant and joyous dignity, that would have better become a triumph ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... remain there to recruit before advancing toward Jerusalem. The tragical fate of Peter Barthelmy must be mentioned. Many of the crusaders had begun to question the genuineness of the relic he had found. He was prevailed upon to submit to the ordeal of fire, and perished in the flames. From that moment the story ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... last this ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory of relationships, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... After the health of many others had been drunk, Audubon's was proposed by Skene, a Scottish historian. "Whilst he was engaged in a handsome panegyric, the perspiration poured from me. I thought I should faint." But he survived the ordeal and responded in a few appropriate words. He was much dined and wined, and obliged to keep late hours—often getting no more than four hours sleep, and working hard painting and writing all the next day. He ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... little more than seven years, he had risen from an ensign to be a lieut.-colonel. Owing to gross mismanagement and peculation on the part of his predecessor, who was in consequence recommended privately to sell out, if he did not wish to stand the ordeal of a court martial, the regiment was sadly disorganized; but the commander in chief, the late Duke of York, was heard to declare that Lieut.-Colonel Brock, from one of the worst, had made the 49th one of the best regiments ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Sunday, July 18th.—I have just returned from church. Such an ordeal I never went through. If a benevolent lady, sitting behind me, had not taken compassion on me, and handed me a fan, I think I should have fainted.... Everyone says that the heat here surpasses that felt anywhere else. They also affirm that ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... very life is made of them. On he goes to the end, heaping crime on crime, and lie on lie, and at last, when it seems that justice, which has been so long vainly halting after him, has him really in her iron grasp, there is a solemn appeal to heaven, a challenge, a battle ordeal, in which, by means we may not venture even to whisper, the villain prospers, and comes out glorious, victorious, amidst the applause of a gazing world; and, to crown it all, the poet tells us that under the disguise of the animal name and form the world of man ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... that he is dismissed. Sometimes their discourse is carried on through the medium of a sort of Jew's-harp, one handing it to the other, asking questions and returning answers. The lover remains until daybreak. After the consent of the girl and her parents has been obtained, one more ordeal remains; the bridal couple have to run the gauntlet of the mischievous village boys, who stand ready with sooted hands to begrime their faces and bodies; and generally they succeed so well that bride and groom present the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... whilst Gina grasped the arm of the chair against which she was standing. She was endeavoring to steel her heart to bravery; but in those days, and in that country, such a scene was a terrible ordeal. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Majesty's Foot," and he remembered attempting to recite "Clair de Lune" at luncheon; then he slept in a big, soft chair until almost five o'clock when another crowd found and woke him; there followed an alcoholic dressing of several temperaments for the ordeal of dinner. They selected theatre tickets at Tyson's for a play that had a four-drink programme—a play with two monotonous voices, with turbid, gloomy scenes, and lighting effects that were hard to follow when his eyes behaved so amazingly. He imagined afterward ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were all called 'Burney's bull-dogs') constructed a very simple instrument of torture. One big boy spun the whirligig, while another held the small boy's palm till the sharp slate-edge gashed it. The wound was severe. For many years a long white cicatrice recorded the fact in my right hand. The ordeal was, I fancy, unique - a prerogative of the naval 'bull-dogs.' The other torture was, in those days, not unknown to public schools. It was to hold a boy's back and breech as near to a hot fire as his clothes would bear without ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... full of the embarrassments of the marriage proposal. To all who are not borne along by an impetuous impulse it is a trying ordeal. Barwood was too self-conscious ever to be transported ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the soft-fronted often ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Crystal Lake trail crossed and climbed higher, and with a last scream at the station lights it slewed past the curve, clicked over a switch or two and stood panting there in the storm, waiting to see whether it might go on and get the ordeal over with at once, or whether it must wait until ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Macedon into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation" ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Germany and the Thirty-nine Articles in England, the Count could honestly become a Bishop without being guilty of founding a new sect. The Count returned to Germany. He was examined in the faith, by the King's command, by two Berlin Divines. He came through the ordeal with flying colours, and finally, on May 20th, he was ordained a Bishop of the Brethren's Church by Bishop Daniel Ernest Jablonsky, Court Preacher at Berlin, and Bishop David ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... girl of seventeen, in whose warm nature passion and imagination so largely predominated over intellect, was but too liable to have her reason shaken from its seat by the ordeal through which she was ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... calculated the strength he should need for this ordeal. There was a coldness in the very tone and manner of the man who had come for him that went like an ice-bolt to his heart, and with a deep groan he sank back ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... village was the sacrifice to be made. The friends and relatives of the Sioux who had been killed in the assault upon the Pawnees were drawn up around the unfortunate captives, who were about to be fastened to stakes and stand the terrible ordeal of death by fire, when suddenly, like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky, the terrible war-whoop of the Pawnees sounded in the ears of the now thoroughly frightened Sioux, who saw, to their dismay, a band of the dreaded ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... to put it into execution. At first he found the ceremonial exacting. To part from all his clothes and to parade through the mosque in attire of which the principal items were a towel and the key of his valuables (adorning his wrist) was ever so slightly an ordeal to one of his temperament and upbringing. To sit unsheltered in blinding steam was not amusing, though it was exciting. But the steam-chapel (as it might be called) of the mosque was a delight compared to the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... reputed witches once dwelt, but whether from greater fear or greater enlightenment here than elsewhere, they were never called to endure the ordeal either by fire or by water. They hunted in couples apparently, for the story goes that two men at Clathick, rising early on a May morning, saw them coming up the burn-side, putting a tether across the stream, and saying, "Come all to me." This incantation succeeded in providing the witches' ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... show of fairness was had, and, considering the ferocity with which the old man was attacked when down in the Engine House, the only wonder is that he was granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal how like a hero did he deport himself! Grand in his assaults on the citadel of slavery, he became grander still as he calmly met his enemies, and told them of his purposes. Never boastful, he assumes nothing, but at the end, when asked ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... that country. Throughout his subsequent career, Lafayette sustained the reputation he had won in early manhood. He was one of the few prominent figures of the French Revolution who emerged from that ordeal with untainted reputation. From then until his closing days he was the foremost champion of liberal thought and political ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... as time goes, but on this night of stress and ordeal, nine-fifteen was a terrible hour. The instant Miss Blackburne was out of the house, the two girls turned to each other, ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fashionable code of honour, when a man has seduced or carried off his friend's wife, the next thing he has to do is to fight the man whom he has injured and betrayed. By thus appealing to the ordeal of the duel, he may not only clear himself from guilt; but, if it be done with proper spirit, he may acquire celebrity and glory in the annals of gallantry, and in the eyes of the fair and innocent. In our hero's place, most men of fashion would have triumphed in the notoriety of his offence, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... interval of more than ten years, with a trembling hand, with a confused and horrible recollection of certain occurrences and situations, in the ordeal through which I was unconsciously passing; though with a vivid and very sharp remembrance of the main ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... separate maintenance of his wife and daughter. In order to effect this it became, of course, necessary to recall his daughter, Rhoda, and fix her residence once more at Gray Forest. No more dreadful penalty could have been inflicted upon the poor girl—no more agonizing ordeal than that she was thus doomed to undergo. She had idolized her mother, and now adored her memory. She knew that Mademoiselle de Barras had betrayed and indirectly murdered the parent she had so devotedly loved; she knew that that woman had been the curse, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... refinement are accessible, they are not below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity, and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining "the last infirmity of noble minds," would not sink if exposed to the ordeal of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For ourselves we will only say, "Amicus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... impertinence of the scrutiny far more on Philip's account than his own. Ashe's pale face had on it the faintest possible flush, and his always grave manner had become really solemn; but otherwise he made no sign. Wynne had a certain sense of humor which helped him through the ordeal, and there was a faint gleam of a smile in his eye as he confronted the brilliant woman before him; but he was ill-pleased that his friend ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... an institution of grave importance to the community, as the practice of obligatory inoculation prevailed, and all the young people of the colony had to go up in classes to the hospital and pass the ordeal. Her mother's death left her the matron of the hospital and caretaker of her sister and brothers, and the stories of her life at that time, which she told me now and then, showed that, with the position, she ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort was as futile as the rest. The lost ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... foundation stone of moral eminence, passed through a crucial ordeal, and it is to be greatly wondered at that the Negro woman emerged with even the crudest ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Gora. It can therefore be said that the Serbs know how to treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought like lions, and they suffered as none others suffered in Europe's terrible ordeal. A Serbian spark at Sarajevo fired the arsenal of European militarism, and a common ungenerous thought sometimes blames the spark instead of blaming the recklessness of those who allowed Europe to be enkindled. And there used to be some who could not forget Serbia's dynastic ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... immense crowd had gathered. The church and churchyard were filled to overflowing. It was the largest collection of queer looking people, horses, and "fixes" I have ever seen. The services were brief, but most impressive, and it must have been a trying ordeal for the aged clergyman, an old friend of the deceased. Several times his voice faltered, and he seemed about to break down. The coffin was borne to the grave by six stalwart negroes, laborers on the estate. A lad followed, leading poor Thurlow's favorite horse. Then the widow and her son, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... possible. None of that exposure to the gaze and exultation of a victorious foe, such as we had seen pictured in our school-books, or as practised by conquering nations in all times. We had felt it as not improbable that, after an ordeal of mortifying exposure for the gratification of the military, we would be paraded through Northern cities for the benefit of jeering crowds. So, when we learned that we should be paroled, and go to our homes unmolested, the ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... SHADWELL, in the January Nineteenth Century, in his article on "Ordeal by Fire," after denouncing idlers and loafers and shirkers, falls foul "above all" of the young girls called flappers, "with high heels, skirts up to their knees and blouses open to the diaphragm, painted, powdered, self-conscious, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... "Severus" and "Hesychius" representing one and the same individual. Only by a Critic seeking to mislead his reader will any one of these five Fathers be in future cited as witnessing against the genuineness of S. Mark xvi. 9-20. Eusebius is the solitary witness who survives the ordeal ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... compelled me to be with her at the open door to meet "our darling boy," but that I could not bear. It would be as trying for him as for me, and I had to spare him the ordeal at any price. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... miles around, which had served to deck every bride in the district ever since any one could remember, was left seated on the geta, or raised sleeping platform, in the dimly lighted inner apartments, there to await the ordeal known to Malay cruelty as sanding. The ceremony that bears this name, is the one at which the bride and bridegroom are brought together for the first time. They are officially supposed never to have seen one another ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the duties of identification and burial of the dead Terry led the girl into one of the huts and quietly comforted her. She told him of the ordeal of her forced journey through the greater part of a day and a night, of the captors who leered at her but remained aloof because of fear of Malabanan, of being waked from sleep at Malabanan's arrival just before Matak appeared. Malabanan ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... killed him," said Venning, pulling himself together with a great effort; for he had been through a very severe ordeal. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... what had been anticipated; and now the two prisoners stood, trembling with exhaustion from their superhuman efforts, cruelly bruised, bleeding, and altogether too dazed and helpless to make that sudden, wild dash for freedom which each had planned in his heart when entering upon the terrible ordeal through which they had just passed. What was to be the next move in this grim game of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... his Satanic majesty. The last case of burning in Scotland was in Sutherland, A.D. 1722: the judge was Captain David Ross, of Little Dean. At Glarus, in Ireland, a servant girl was burnt so late as 1786. The last authenticated instance of the swimming ordeal occurred in 1785, and is quoted by Mr. Sternberg from a Northampton Mercury of that year:—"A poor woman named Sarah Bradshaw, of Mears Ashby, who was accused of being a witch, in order to prove her innocence, submitted to the ignominy of being dipped, when she immediately ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... the ordeal came to an end. The sentry glanced at the east, and appeared to note with satisfaction that his period of duty was coming to an end — as indeed it was, once and for all — for he rubbed his hands and began to walk again briskly ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... of the afternoon passed away all too soon for those who were to sail on the tide, and those who were to return to Bonnydale. The commander took leave of his parents, his sister, and Bertha in his cabin, where Paul passed through the same ordeal with Miss Florry. The navy-yard tender was alongside; and the ladies were assisted on board of her by the officers, while the seamen under the direction of Mr. Makepeace ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... us, in one of his short poems, "learn to labor and to wait." I have labored through about twenty-five courses at this table, and then I have waited until this hour, in the hope that I might be spared the inevitable ordeal. But when the last plate had been removed, and your president, who is a stern man of duty, rapped upon the table, I saw there was no escape, and the time had come when he was going to present to you one of the most popular of all dishes at a New England banquet, tongue garnished with brains. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... feet, denounced her as a thief. She denied it; but the medicine-man answered, "The spirit has declared her guilty; the spirit never lies."' The woman, however, was acquitted, after a proxy trial by ordeal: a cock, used as her proxy, threw ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... looked tired but irrepressibly happy. Now that it was all over, and success assured, she realised how intensely she had dreaded the ordeal ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... defence, and support; whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies to self-advantage according to circumstances—in such immense waste of primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from THE STRICT ORDEAL BY WHICH NATURE TESTS THEIR ADAPTATION TO HER STANDARD OF PERFECTION and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction." {86a} A little lower down Mr. Matthew speaks of animals under domestication ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... vulgar, naturally prejudiced against the Jewish people, excited such a ferment throughout the nation, as ought to have deterred the ministry from the prosecution of such an unpopular measure; which, however, they had courage enough to maintain against all opposition. The bill passed the ordeal of both houses, and his majesty vouchsafed the royal sanction to this law in favour of the Hebrew nation. The truth is, it might have increased the wealth, and extended the commerce of Great Britain, had it been agreeable to the people; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... last gave Barbara courage to speak. It seemed to nerve her for the ordeal, and, at the same time, to point a ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... nations which knew nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the relationships between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... themselves, you and I, you know, alone. The fact is that they are all eager to tell you what they feel about your exploit of this morning, and they will not be happy until they have done so. Do you feel equal to the ordeal; or shall I go back and say that they must excuse you for a little while longer? I think you can stand it, you know. What ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... many a fray That happened in the early day, When shiners with an iron hand Reigned here the terror of the land! Few were the victims of the strife— If any—and the loss of life, Was fanciful much more than real In that blood-letting old ordeal. Among the medico's of old, Doctor Stratford I behold, Who foolishly I thought deemed best To emigrate towards the West, And leave behind a work which few Could with a single lancet do When venesection—old idea, Combined ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... employed. Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. William Smith undertook this laborious department; and as they performed it with great ability, so they did it with great liberality towards those, who were obliged to come under their notice in the course of this fiery ordeal. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... gone: white-flower buds gleamed like pearls on the lichen-covered, twisted limbs of the old "dragon-plum" by Ume's chamber ledge, when Tatsu and his adopted father entered once more together the little Kano home. If the young husband had realized, all along, what this coming ordeal might mean, he had given no sign of it. Kano and the physicians feared for him. The last test, it was to be, of sanity and of endurance. The actual hour of departure from the hospital fell late in January. More than once before a day had been ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... tedious to dwell so much on this subject, but it appears to be a risk which is not generally much thought of, though it is of the most vital importance to the safety of London. It is very desirable that the metropolis should take warning by the experience of Liverpool, without going through the fiery ordeal which ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... were producing the most fearful and painful results. A large part of the laboring population was starving. Never before had there been greater distress. On the 2d of March, 1846, the ministerial plan had to go through the ordeal of a free-trade attack. Mr. Villiers proposed an amendment that would result in the immediate and total repeal of the corn laws. Nevertheless, the original bill passed the Commons by a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... Aug. 24 in an automobile. He was accompanied by a photographer and a Belgian newspaper correspondent, and his intention had been to make sketches on the battlefield. His arrest at Laneffe thwarted this plan. He underwent a terrifying ordeal at the hands of his demented captor, although he was not ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... we be fired upon. Volley after volley of arrows struck about us. The distance was so great by this time that most of the arrows fell short, while those that reached us were sufficiently spent to allow us to ward them off with our paddles. However, it was a most exciting ordeal. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on to them, and although they bore it most unflinchingly, old experience told me that their nervous fighting energy was being used up all the time. If only these men could have been brought within charging distance, fresh and unbroken by any ordeal! But here was just one of the drawbacks of the battlefield and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... must be rent for me? Do I not know the Grand Mystery is likely to burst prematurely on me? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I confide, whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands! Sustain me through the ordeal I dread and must undergo! Give me strength! Give me patience! Give me—oh, give ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... they rushed over the swamp with an eagerness that could not be restrained, struggling as in a race to see who could first reach the log that led into the fiery mouth of the fort. A Salem villager, John Raymond, was the winner. He passed through, survived the ordeal, and came unharmed out of the terrible fight. He was twenty-seven years of age. He signed his name to a petition to the General Court, in 1685, as having gone in the expedition from Salem Village, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... slender figure in the dust of the circus alone was a creature without artifice. And, as she looked up, she recognized the man in the box, the man who had once been a barbarian, too, and she turned her eyes to the iron gates of the cages whence came the roar of the beasts, and waited the ordeal. And the face was ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... well as great. He took delight in elections, served on committees, opposed tooth and nail all projects of university reform, and talked jovially over his glass of port of the ruin to be committed by the Whigs. The ordeal through which he had gone, in resisting the blandishments of the lady of Rome, had certainly done much towards the strengthening of his character. Although in small and outward matters he was self-confident enough, nevertheless in things affecting the inner man he aimed at a humility of spirit ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... The entrance ordeal is not quite over, but for a little while you rest on the wooden bench in your E compartment, waiting until the group is assembled, all save those sent away for detention. Suddenly you are told to come on, and in single file E group marches along ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... conclude that it is purified of its unavowable imperfections or defects, of its alloy of wretched and petty passions, its grossness, its chimerical notions, that it has become strong and healthy and vigorous. It is the ordeal of it, for to show itself natural, to be always true, without shrinking, it must have all the lovable qualities, and have them without seeking, as a second nature. What we call 'natural,' is indeed really acquired; it is the gift of a physical and moral evolution which it is precisely the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to maintain silence, lest they betray their position. During the night the German aviators were more active than during the day and many times their bombs found a mark among the British soldiers crouching on the ground. It was a terrible ordeal through which these brave fellows had to pass, the forced inaction was maddening, and they were all the more eager to fight when at last the welcome signal came in the early dawn to go forward ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... matter," returned Lyndsay. "I have pondered over it long and anxiously, and I feel that my decision is right. The grief poor Flora feels at parting with her friends, is the greatest drawback. I thought that she possessed more strength of endurance. As for me, I have passed through the ordeal before, when I left Scotland for the Cape of Good Hope; and I now look upon myself as a citizen of the world. I know that Flora will submit cheerfully to the change, when once we lose sight of ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... started, looked at the girl, longed to question her, and had not the courage. She followed mechanically, and in silence. Could she, must she face it? Yes—for her son's sake. She prayed inwardly that she might meet the ordeal before her with Christian ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Ah, it's an ordeal one has with girls," said Juffrouw Pieterse. "Take another piece, don't wait to be insisted upon; it's a cake ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... got out of the building that I began to walk on air. And the human animal being averse from change and timid before the unknown, I said to myself that I really would not mind being examined by the same man on a future occasion. But when the time of ordeal came round again the doorkeeper let me into another room, with the now familiar paraphernalia of models of ships and tackle, a board for signals on the wall, a big, long table covered with official forms and having an unrigged mast fixed to ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... back to the Indian lad with a rush the memory of the recent ordeal he had been through. He gave one glance at the unconscious form on the other couch and his hand darted to the hunting-knife at his hip as he staggered, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... ordeal was, for the moment, over. She perceived that her companions had finished breakfast, and so she arose from the table, leaving her example ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... himself by accusing another man of the theft. This other man was a Mr. John Temple, who had once had an opportunity of examining the papers of the late Mr. Whately. Temple immediately challenged his accuser; a duel was fought, and as far as ordeal of battle went, Temple made good his innocence, for he wounded William Whately. At {156} this moment Franklin came forward. He admitted that the letters had come into his hands, and that he had despatched them to America. He declined to say how they did come into his hands, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and, faint from suffering, he lay languidly back among the pillows, Dr. Swift's stern face relaxed, and it was then Theo realized for the first time that his father, too, had been bracing himself to meet the ordeal and had also ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... feet. Decision and deliberation marked his movements. He did not glance at the man and woman. His eyes were fixed up the trail. He had made up his mind. They knew it. And they knew, so far as they were concerned, that the ordeal had just begun. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... like? He did not know that every word he said in joke about his aunt's temper, her peevish ways, the awful consequences of offending her, and so forth, were like so many needles stuck into the girl's heart, until she was ready to cry out to be released from this fearful ordeal. Moreover, as the day came near what he could not see in her she saw in him. Was she likely to be reassured when she perceived that her husband, in spite of all his fun, was really anxious, and when she knew ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... a deep impression on me. Here was a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... subtile analysts, the jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought, reach the golden Imprimatur which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Spirit. In summer he shivers with cold, in winter he suffers from heat; he cries when he laughs and he laughs when he cries, &c. He is the reverse of nature in all things. Heyka is universally feared and reverenced by the Dakotas, but so severe is the ordeal that the Heyka Wacpee (the dance to Heyka) is now rarely celebrated. It is said that the "Medicine-men" use a secret preparation which enables them to handle fire and dip their hands in boiling water without injury, and thereby gain great eclat ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... subtle instinct, for no man who had experienced it ever spoke willingly about it afterwards. Only the man would be changed; some began to be more reckless, as if a dumb blasphemy rankled hidden in their breasts. Others, coming with greater strength perhaps to the ordeal, became quieter, looking squarely at any danger as they face it, but continuing ahead as though quietly confident that nothing happened save ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... husband's offence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of hypocrisy and therefore immorality and shame. I would die rather than endure it. Yes, I would die that very day rather than return to my husband's house and go through the same ordeal again. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... than unflagging good-humor during a disagreeable journey with cross children. At last the ordeal came to an end, and in the late afternoon shadows they alighted at the wide piazza of the Under-Cliff House, and were shown to airy rooms, which proved that the guests were not kept in pigeon-holes for the sole benefit of the proprietor. Our heroine employed the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... that had dropped from his lips, about the ordeal through which the Indians pass before they are allowed to join war-parties, had awakened Austin's curiosity. Nor was it long before, seated with his brothers in the cottage, he was listening to the whole account. "Please ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... corpse is in the town, and he may not mourn for the dead. If he dies while in office, he must be buried at dead of night; few may hear of his burial, and none may mourn for him when his death is made public. Should he have fallen a victim to the poison ordeal by drinking a decoction of sassywood, as it is called, he must be buried under ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... telling of the ordeal, his big eyes rolling and his deep rich voice trembling with the memories stamped forever in his brain; and picture too the men who, at one time or another, listened to him, fascinated, their mouths agape and a tickling down the length of their spines. It was probably ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... had started for Rome, and soon the boy was rioting in the inexpressible glories of his first impressions of the great city. Even the ordeal of going to a strange school had its compensations in the two slaves who went behind him to carry his books. The centurions' sons at home had carried their own, and Horace felt a harmless, boyish pleasure (without in the least understanding the years of economy on his father's ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... considered how much worse it would be if the divorced man married her own sister. That course seemed to her impossible. She imagined the horrible details, the surmises, the newspaper articles, and she said to herself that even if she herself were willing to face the ordeal it would be still more of an ordeal for Wollaston and Evelyn. She said to herself that it was impossible; then she also said to herself, with no bitterness, but with an acquiescence in the logic of it, that ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... many of my friends may find themselves some day, at some hour of their lives, face to face with such an ordeal? Who knows how many an act of patriotism will make their names illustrious, how dear to the people some of these names may become? What if some day I were to see the youth who sat next to me in the class-room or at table, or slept beside me in the dormitory, riding through ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various |
