"Premonitory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Dr. Wycherley, waxing impatient at their abominable obtuseness, "it is the premonitory stage of the precursory condition of an organic ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun, an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing at his gate, was overcome by it. In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and he began to feel what were called "premonitory symptoms." He carried a brandy flask in his pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy, and he drank freely, but imagined himself worse. He was about to rush indoors and tell Mrs. Cobb to send for the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... involuntarily thought of the interview they had had on that very day. "But why did he not tell me when I spoke to him of her?" he said, with something approaching to bitterness in his voice and a slight struggle in his throat that was almost premonitory of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the slightest alteration: the count announced to his good relations and to all his household that the countess had indicated positive symptoms of pregnancy; that hardly had she arrived in Paris when she suffered from fainting fits, nausea, retching, that she bore with joy these premonitory indications, which were no longer a matter of doubt to the physicians, nor to anyone; that for his part he was overwhelmed with joy at this event, which was the crowning stroke to all his wishes; that he desired the chateau to share ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of by the judicious feeder; and that even green fruit, the bitter end of cucumber, and the berries of deadly nightshade are unsatisfactory articles of diet when continuously persisted in. If, at the very outset of our digestive apparatus, we hadn't a sort of automatic premonitory adviser upon the kinds of food we ought or ought not to indulge in, we should naturally commit considerable imprudences in the way of eating and drinking—even more than we do at present. Natural selection ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Vague, premonitory fear that fluttered by in momentary clear intervals, seemed to tell him that his changed behavior toward his wife must hasten this change. At such times he suddenly became doubly pleasant and jovial with her; but even this joviality bore something of the nature of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... pause. Suppose that Lord John Russell, aware of some evil, some calamity or disease, impending over the established Church of England—sure of this evil, but absolutely unable to describe it by rational remarks or premonitory symptom, had cast about for a channel by which he might draw attention to the evil, and, by exposing, make an end of it. But who could have dreamed that he would have chosen the means he has chosen? What propriety ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... establish their second line near Fairview. The Confederates' progress is arrested for the nonce. It is somewhat after eight A.M. A lull, premonitory only of a ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... In the premonitory symptoms, constituting the characters of the fever precursory to the eruption, there was considerable uniformity: the complaint of nearly all those attacked being at first chills and rigors; pains in the loins, head and limbs, with thirst and want of appetite; with which ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... while he was still tarrying in the unwholesome (p. 305) heats of Washington, he had some symptoms which he thought premonitory, and he speaks of the next session of Congress as probably the last which he should ever attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful sketch of himself. Physical disability, he says, must soon put a stop to ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... immediately there followed a knocking upon the hall-door. The sound was violent, and it came with so opposite a rapidity upon the heels of Fosbrook's words that it thrilled and startled him. There was something very timely in the circumstances of night and storm and that premonitory clapping at the door. Sir Charles looked towards the door in a glow of anticipation. He had time to notice, however, how deeply Resilda herself was stirred; her left hand which had lain loose upon the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... of the prospectus, before referred to, seems to have had a premonitory fear—growing out of his bad treatment of Judy—that Punch in his new vocation might fail of uniform gentlemanliness towards the ladies; and time has shown that there were some little grounds for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... subject himself to an extra amount of friction. Presently the brain would work bravely on again, as of yore, just the same—exactly the same. Hiram could perceive no difference—none. Then would come another premonitory symptom, which would be followed by other extra rides and various new courses of treatment, till all worked well again. During these periods, Doctor Frank, under whose charge Hiram had at length placed himself, would urge on his brother the necessity of some relief from his ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... bustle and hurry, the "thunder of the captain and the shouting;" but when it comes "butt-eend foremost," he suffers a thousand times more from his fears than the oldest sailors. After one has become acquainted with the disorder, he can distinguish its premonitory symptoms, and crush it in the bud, or let it run on to a matrimonial crisis. For my own part, I can always ascertain, at its first accession, whether it is about to assume a chronic form, or pass off with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... gaunt, bearded, dirty, and unkempt. They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a premonitory hiding. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... also heard, studied over the unwelcome possibilities shrouded in the gathering gloom of the distance, and regretted that he had not, before crossing the Ohio, called the Surgeon's attention to some premonitory symptoms of rheumatism, which he felt he might desire to develop into an acute attack in the event of danger assuming an ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... since the first day she had come to Needley—this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she really was—but what all those around her held her to be—what Mrs. Thornton had said ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... among the neighbors as to the probable outcome of a hostile meeting. Those were the times when a lively dog-fight would draw the merchant from his counter, and the blacksmith from his anvil; and it is even on record that an honorable judge once hurriedly adjourned his court at the premonitory sounds of snarling in the court-house square. Well, the knowledge that two dogs, pining for a fight, were being forcibly restrained, was too much to be borne by the people of the village; and a plot was concocted for bringing about a fight. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... uncharitable, and contradicts probability. It was rather a trial of her sincerity in religion, and an evidence of her determination to use no compulsory measures, not even maternal influence, to coerce her conscience. Her language was, besides, premonitory and warning, similar to the permission given to Balaam, who though apparently admonished to go and curse ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... is often the first warning of chickenpox, but in some cases there may be a preliminary period of discomfort, lasting for a few hours, before the appearance of the rash; particularly in adults, in whom the premonitory symptoms may be quite severe. Thus, there may be chilliness, nausea, and even vomiting, rarely convulsions in infants, pain in the head and limbs, and slight fever (99 deg. to 102 deg. F.) at this time. The eruption shows first on the body, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... gentlemen took the thing coolly, and Mr. Randolph and the two Sandfords looked as usual. But now the delayed storm drew near. The thunder notified with every burst the fact that it was coming speedily; the lightning became vivid and constant. A premonitory sweep of the wind and the clouds gave out their treasures of rain and hail with tremendous fury. The lightning was terrible now, and the darkness of the intervals between so great that the company could scarcely see each other's faces. This was more than some ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... skirmishing far away on the right where Hooker had forded the creek and taken position on the opposite hills; and the air was dark and thick with fog and exhalations, with the smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There was little sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful over the Blue Ridge and dipped down into the Valley, the firing on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move along ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was full of vigour and eagerness for the attack, and never in his most youthful hours did he display a greater readiness to meet all assaults half-way. Those who are accustomed to the Old Man are in the habit of noting a few premonitory signs which will always pretty well forecast the kind of speech he will make. If he starts up flurried and excited, it is ten chances to one that the speech will not remain vigorous to the end; that there will be a break ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... I was not going to marry my man and woman, did I not? Nor have I. To be sure, you may have detected premonitory symptoms, but I said nothing about that. I only promised not to marry them, and I have not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and then of real contemplation: contemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat you were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing into shape; contemplation also of the other arrow-head or mat or pot existing only in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a premonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would produce when once made visible to your eye! For the man cutting the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual arrow-heads or mats of the same ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... face working, as if premonitory to bursting out into a fit of sobbing; James Ellis felt something rising in his throat, and looked on with a grim kind of jealous pleasure at the lovers' embrace; and Barnett broke the silence by making a strange grinding ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... whence our usual heavy rain comes; and besides, in New Zealand clouds are more frequently a sign of high wind than of rain. However, about midnight F—— felt so ill that he went in to bed, and we had scarcely got under shelter when, after a very few premonitory drops, the rain came down literally in sheets. Almost from the first F—— spoke of the peculiar and different sound on the roof, but as he had a great deal of fever that night, I was too anxious to notice anything but ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory warning. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... advancing years when less exercise is, as a rule, taken, a restriction in the amount of food consumed is highly desirable. The increasing corpulence, which often begins to show itself from 30 to 40, is far from being a healthy sign; indeed, is often the premonitory symptom of serious disease. It should be remembered that a lessening quantity of food is required from middle life on. This applies to all the elements of food. It is noticeable that a fat person seldom lives to old age, most octogenarians being thin and wiry, and almost all attribute ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... in a voice that was resonant and slow. 'Twas not like the outburst of a moment's impulse—the sudden jangling of a harpstring rudely touched; it was rather with the fateful emphasis of a clock striking the hour, heralded by a premonitory quiver—a gathering together of inward forces that had waited through long moments for this ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... animation; now she became lugubrious, and took a morbid view of things. She talked of all the men of middle age who had died lately, and of what they had died of, showing that most of them were taken off suddenly when in perfect health apparently, and usually without any premonitory symptoms of disease. It was all the result of some change of habits, she said, which was always dangerous in the case of men of middle age; and Mr. Kilroy began to feel uneasy in spite of himself, for he had been obliged to alter his own habits considerably when he married, and he was ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... sakes, that you had a premonitory warning," said Shelby, in all sincerity. "Such things are indeed beyond our ken. Did you get ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... to walk alone for the rest of the way, and commune with his own exquisite soul. The expectantly waiting Nina, at this, followed Amy upstairs in the direction of the white organdie, and Harriet felt a little premonitory chill. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Dale did open the door, giving some little premonitory notice with the handle, so that the couple inside might be warned of approaching footsteps. Crofts had not escaped, either through the window or up the chimney, but was seated in the middle of the room on an empty box, just opposite to Bell, who was seated upon ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... other that power? She thought of the girl at the Cove, with her deep eyes and wonderful face. A chill of premonitory fear ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her to New York, the experience of the past two years had taught her not to expect too much from any outward conditions. She entered, therefore, upon this new period of her life in a very sober mood. Nor had many months elapsed before she began to hear premonitory murmurs of an incoming sea of trouble. Most of the summer of 1851 she remained in town with the children. An extract from a letter to her youngest brother, dated August 1, will show how she whiled ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... a greenish mist steamed up, and seemed to poison the sunlight streaming through it. It is possible that this semblance of an unwholesome mist was not so much the fault of the marshes as a condition of the atmosphere, premonitory of the fierce electric storms and the earthquake which visited the city that same night. The greenish light beat full on the sunken doorway, so that only the lowermost steps remained in shadow. However unattractive the temporary complexion of the sun, I was glad ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... other?" There was a tremble in Mabel's voice—a premonitory shiver of the limbs. Oh, how she dreaded the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... time to obey, or is doing something that his country most urgently needs, has no weight in that court. When Nature touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... convention of unhappy young asses broke up, went down the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with the streets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into the daylight in diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to sound premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his own way with bowed head and ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foot slipped and got entangled between the two wheels just as he had dreamed. It was crushed so badly that he had to be carried to the Bradford Infirmary, where the leg was amputated above the knee. The premonitory dream was ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... of a petit-bleu, while he was dressing for dinner, to cure Lanyard of an attack of premonitory shivers brought on by recollection of the awful truth that one is never really safe in trifling with an Englishman's sense of humour. "Dear monsieur Martin:—It is too sweet of you to remember your promise to ask me to dine the first ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... in possession of most of my moral and mental diagnoses, I had better communicate to you a new and disturbing element. You remember what I said to you about Miss B——, that I did not care for her. A fancied immunity is often a premonitory symptom of disease: the system is excited into an instantaneous glow by the first contact of ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... drew his bow across the strings with a full, quivering, premonitory touch, and, straightway, the fiddle began to talk to him as though they two were friends alone together in the room. How it played for him,—the fiddle—as though it were morning. How it shouted, laughed, ran with him in a world of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... The premonitory symptoms of variolae are a high fever, redness of the eyes, pain in the throat and chest, cough, itching of the nose, sneezing and pricking sensations over ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... few minutes the firing ceased, and in the midst of the intense silence there arose from the bushes just above the listener's head a quick twittering of premonitory notes, followed by the sharp, clear, ringing song of a bird, which thrilled the lad with a feeling of hope in the midst of what the moment before had been a silence ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... subject for a time to extra heavy mental strain, he was completely prostrated, and compelled to retire from the pursuit of his profession. By the advice of his physician he went to the country. There, without any premonitory symptom whatsoever, he suffered an attack of (left) hemiplegia. I quote from his recital as follows: "While standing in the office of the hotel registering my name in the book, I suddenly dropped down, retaining full consciousness. I lost the power of speech for some hours. After twenty-four ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak; but rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours that her fears had always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had presented itself under a homelier ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... rather young for tools?" Mrs. Lessing was turning over a small saw in her hands, feeling its sharp teeth with a premonitory finger. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... dear. All acids disagree with me, and your acidulated observations are giving me unpleasant premonitory symptoms." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... himself, and then the names could be blazoned forth. And there existed some chance,—some small chance,—that the robber-lion, John Ball, might be induced to drop his lamb from his mouth when he heard this premonitory blast, and then the lion's prey might be picked up by—"the bold hunter," Mr Maguire would probably have said, had he been called upon to finish the sentence himself; anyone else might, perhaps, say, by the jackal. The little story was told, therefore, without the mention of any names. Mr Maguire ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... siphon (a bent lead tube) into the receiver. I then introduced the lighted taper into the receiver of respired air, by which it was immediately extinguished. Several persons present then received a quantity of respired air into their lungs, whereupon the premonitory symptoms of apoplexy, as already given, ensued. The experiment was conducted with great care, and several times repeated in the presence of respectable members of the medical profession, a professor of chemistry, and several literary ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... kept in full heat soon got out of order. Our advice to all overworked good people is, "Slow up!" Slacken your speed as you come to the crossings. All your faculties for work at this rate will be consumed. You are on fire now—see the premonitory ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Dr. Saugrain and myself. I thought he wished to pay me some of the respect he had been showing my captain, and I felt flattered accordingly. But I was mistaken; he had something to say to Dr. Saugrain. With many premonitory grunts he said it finally, and it had a startling effect upon the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... never have to execute its threats. Love warns that we may be wise in time. Love prophesies that its sad forebodings may not be fulfilled. And love smites with lighter strokes of premonitory chastisements, that we may never need to feel the whips ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thawing the edge of ice that incased her. A thin blur of tears rose to her eyes like a premonitory ripple before the coming of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... actually arrived— in whatever condition— what would happen? Gordon lost himself in the multitude of his speculations. His own object, he declared, was, 'of course, to make tracks'. Then in one of his strange premonitory rhapsodies, he threw out, half in jest and half in earnest, that the best solution of all the difficulties of the future would be the appointment of Major Kitchener as Governor- General of the Sudan. The Journal ended upon a note of menace and disdain: 'Now MARK ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... always preceded by a premonitory diarrhoea, which lasts from one or two to three or four or more days before urgent and characteristic symptoms show themselves. Of 6,213 cases, no less than 5,786 had preceding diarrhoea. The sufferers from this sow the germs of the disease in numerous, often ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... health, with occasional troubles of the nervous system; but he had grown careful about the premonitory symptoms, and used to grant himself a holiday whenever they occurred. Having been told whilst in London that novel-writing paid better than any other literary production, he now turned his thoughts towards the possibility of using his past experience for the composition of a story. It would ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... when man, by the aid of science, will, through these premonitory symptoms, foresee the coming events, even as the wise physician can discern the time when his patient's soul ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... his own hands threw the rope-ladder out the window and started up the hollow toward home. The air was sultry and oppressive, the moon had been engulfed, and the first thunder-cloud of the spring was pushing itself up toward the zenith, while the boughs of the trees were quivering with a premonitory shudder. But August did not hasten. The real storm was within. Andrew's story had raised doubts. When he went down the ravine the love of Julia Anderson shone upon his heart as benignly as the moon upon the waters. Now the light was gone, and the black cloud of a doubt had shut out his ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Shaw, were kept steadily at work upon water-proof tents of hemp canvas, for I perceived, by the premonitory showers of rain that marked the approach of the Masika that an ordinary tent of light cloth would subject myself to damp and my goods to mildew, and while there was time to rectify all errors that had crept into my ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow often makes a raging torrent, level from bank to bank, where only a few hours before a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... added words, however, betray the origin of the Cardinal's idea. "The earth also," he says, "would appear as a shining star to any one outside the fiery element." It was, in fact, an extension to the sun of the ancient elemental doctrine; but an extension remarkable at that period, as premonitory of the tendency, so powerfully developed by subsequent discoveries, to assimilate the orbs of heaven to the model of our insignificant planet, and to extend the brotherhood of our system and our species to the farthest limit of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... with a faint premonitory fear. Her fingers began nervously buttoning and unbuttoning her dress bodice; while half-dressed and shivering she ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... in a sharp, fine drizzle of rain, through which his voice sang in shifting cadences, now large and full, now drooping to a premonitory whisper with an undeniably dramatic quality. In spite of myself the words stirred within me. As he read and spoke he laid aside the turns of speech that had become his through years of association with country folk. Almost he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... could not comprehend. He was not easily intimidated; and though in a somewhat sorry plight, he now felt little apprehension on the score of supernatural visitations: but his seizure did not hold out an immunity as regards corporeal disturbers. He had not long to indulge these premonitory reflections ere a door was opened. A figure, completely enveloped in a black cloak, on which a red cross was conspicuously emblazoned, stood before him. He carried a torch, and Gervase saw a short naked sword glittering in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... premonitory noises had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... clock-work had ceased, and it was succeeded by a pause infinitesimally brief and withal infinitely extended. Grenelli half rose from his chair, his hands beating backward at the air. Then came a curious premonitory whir of the hidden mechanism. The metallic rattle of the gong was magnified in my ears to the dimensions of a roll of thunder; then I saw that Indiman had torn the wrappings from the box and had opened it. There was no mistaking the object that lay within—a ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... of the ispravnik's revelation upon Dodd was very singular. He declared that he felt the premonitory symptoms of the "Anadyrski bol" coming on, and was sure that he was destined to be a victim to the insidious disease. He therefore requested the Major not to be surprised if he should come home some day and find him in strong convulsions, singing "Yankee Doodle" in ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... understanding the bride would contribute to the partnership. Never, for a marriage in literary circles—so the newspapers described the alliance—had a bride been so handsomely dowered. I began with due promptness to look for the fruit of their union—that fruit, I mean, of which the premonitory symptoms would be peculiarly visible in the husband. Taking for granted the splendour of the lady's nuptial gift, I expected to see him make a show commensurate with his increase of means. I knew what his ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... luxury, such as I had never—at least so freely—possessed before. My name and standing, known to some families, were agreeably exaggerated to the others, and I enjoyed that supreme satisfaction which a man always feels when he discovers or imagines that he is popular in society. There is a kind of premonitory apology implied in my saying this, I am aware. You must remember that I am culprit and culprit's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... light in his eyes, no careful little signal that his heart was yearning for her. He seemed remote, as indifferent to her as were any of the others dulled by accustomedness to her constant presence among them. A premonitory chill, as from some great sorrow yet before her in the future, shook ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... It would be a very notable addition to Dekker's claims on our remembrance if he had indeed written the admirable narrative, worthy of Defoe at his very best, which describes with such impressive simplicity of tragic effect the presageful or premonitory anguish of a man on his unconscious way to a sudden and a secret death of unimaginable horror. Had Deloney done more such work as this, and abjured the ineffectual service of an inauspicious Muse, his name would now be famous among ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... consequence. Here, however, is the Fact come to hand in a most urgent and undeniable manner! Serene Highness gets on horseback; but what can that help? One cannon (has nothing but light cannon) he does plant on the Bridge; but see, here come premonitory bomb-shells one and another, terrifying to the mind;—and a single Hessian dragoon, plunging forward on the one unready cannon, and in the air making horrid circles,—the gunners leave said cannon to him, take to their heels; and the Bridge is open. The rest of the affair can be imagined. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... rather the weird; it is a recognition and a vague presentation of the many strong influences that are not explainable by our philosophy of life. It is the intrusion into our matter-of-fact lives of the uncanny element, which the novice so grossly misuses in his tales of premonitory dreams and visions, and of most unghostly ghosts. "It is not enough to catch a ghost white-handed and to hale him into the full glare of the electric light. A brutal misuse of the supernatural is perhaps the very lowest degradation of the art of fiction. But 'to mingle the marvellous rather ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... water, catting it into bright wavelets with her sword-like keel and churning a path behind her of opalescent foam. We were off on our voyage of pleasure at last,—a voyage which the Fates had determined should, for one adventurer at least, lead to strange regions as yet unexplored. But no premonitory sign was given to me, or suggestion that I might be the one chosen to sail 'the perilous seas of fairy lands forlorn'—for in spiritual things of high import, the soul that is most concerned is always the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... tried to move his feet, gave a pull at one arm and then at the other, and when he found he was bound hard and fast, his face turned as red as fire and he opened his mouth, whether to swear or yell I know not. I had already closed the door, and before the man had uttered more than a premonitory sound, David had clapped the end of his bludgeon ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... a distance. Long V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky very high up, but their honking carried faintly to the ear. Time seemed to have run down. And yet when the sun, swollen to the great dimensions of the rising moon, dipped blood-red through the haze, the first faint premonitory tingle of cold warned one that the tepid, grateful warmth of the day had been but an illusion of a season that had gone. This was not summer; but, in the quaint old phrase, Indian summer. And its end would be as though the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... time he maintained a flow of conversation relating to other things than the one they had met to discuss. At last, however, he appeared to summon his determination; he cleared his throat and settled himself in his chair—premonitory signs unusual in a man ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... was not enough to take a nip at every stage: to keep up his vital warmth he was compelled to drink between the stages as well. They were approaching Swindon. The coach was travelling at a dizzy speed—six miles in the last half-hour—when, without having manifested the slightest premonitory symptom of unsteadiness, Sir Ferdinando suddenly toppled sideways off his seat and fell, head foremost, into the road. An unpleasant jolt awakened the slumbering passengers. The coach was brought to a standstill; the guard ran back with a light. He found Sir Ferdinando still alive, but unconscious; ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... alarm. From overhead had come a premonitory clang! Somewhere a tackle whined and, with a sense of suffocation, both men realised that now the bars of their prison were beginning to creep up into a long ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the notes seem to come from far off and to be full of memory rather than of promise; and at early morning, or when the shadows lengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the trees has a salt smell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the fading foliage. But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all this note of melancholy! Life is to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... premonitory symptom was the look of apprehensive suspicion with which the female senate regarded the genial sunbeams that had always glorified ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... earthquakes in divers places, and famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights,' then 'great signs shall there be from heaven.' Says Josephus, commenting on the obstinacy of the Jews in such matters, 'when they were at any time premonished from the lips of truth itself, by prodigies and other premonitory signs of their approaching ruin, they had neither eyes nor ears nor understanding to make a right use of them, but passed them over without heeding or so much as thinking of them; as, for example, what shall we say ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... that she never forgot. It was about noon, all the warmth that was in the December sun filled the garden (which the leafless trees no longer shaded). There was no snow on the ground, for the few stray flakes premonitory of winter which had fallen from time to time in the month had melted almost as soon as they had touched the ground. The air was like an Indian summer's day; it seemed impossible that winter could be round the corner waiting only for a change ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... amazed beyond measure at the things which his presence there seemed to indicate, he descended carefully from his chair, and crossing the smooth oak-laid floor, he made his way to the foot of the great staircase, and after a premonitory yawn, he indulged in one sharp penetrating bark. Almost immediately, the French maid came gliding down the stairs, still gowned in the sombrest black, still as pale as a woman could be. The dog looked at her and looked at me. Then, apparently conceiving ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is, however, with dysentery that the practitioner is most loth to cope,—a disease that betrays thousands of cattle. This, also, may be either acute or chronic. Its causes are too often buried in obscurity, and its premonitory symptoms are disregarded or unknown. There appears to be a strong predisposition in cattle to take on this disease. It seems to be the winding-up of many serious complaints, and the foundation of it is sometimes laid by those that appear to be of the most ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... Romanes, whose failing eyesight was a premonitory symptom of the disease which proved fatal the next year, reads, so to say, as a solemn prelude to the death of three old friends this autumn—of Andrew Clark, his old comrade at Haslar, and cheery physician for many ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... by the time he had finished his chores and started for supper. He was picking his way carefully through the mud, when the tall form of a man loomed up before him with a premonitory cough. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... As if with a premonitory notion of what he meant, she answered coldly: "What's the good o' me thinkin'? I've got nothin' to do ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... and returned to the office, noticing already the premonitory symptoms of the mild indigestion that habitually followed the greasy cooking of the hotel chef. He found his insurance man waiting for him and spent two tedious hours over an inventory and proofs of loss before he could rid himself of the fellow—and sped his going with ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... what the home letter had to say. It was from Margaret's father, and as he seldom wrote to her, leaving, as many men do, the bulk of correspondence with absent members of the family to be the care of his wife and children, she felt a premonitory thrill. ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... of God is nigh at hand." Of the fig tree in particular the Lord remarked: "When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh." This sign of events near at hand was equally applicable to the premonitory conditions which were to herald the fall of Jerusalem and the termination of the Jewish autonomy, and to the developments by which the Lord's second advent shall ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in figure, slender. At any time during our acquaintance his height must have been disproportionate to his weight. Like his brother Cyrus, who died a few years before him; Charles F. Browne, our "Artemus Ward," had the premonitory signs of a short life strongly evident in his early manhood. There were the lank form, the long pale fingers, the very white pearly teeth, the thin, fine, soft hair, the undue brightness of the eyes, the excitable and even irritable disposition, the capricious ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and where they have a good fire- range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands before touching their food. An experienced medical attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead-poisoning are carefully treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room; and it had a homely look. It is found that they bear ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Northland, and fulfilment ever clutters the heels of prophecy. A premonitory tremor sighed down the air, and the rainbow wall swayed above them. The three paddles gripped the water with common accord. La Bijou leaped out from under. Broadside after broadside flared and crashed, and a thousand frigid tons thundered down behind them. The displaced ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... had grown hot again—sultry; the heat seemed to cling to him. An ominous calm had succeeded the aerial disturbance. From a great distance came a slight sound—a gentle sighing—gradually diminishing until it died away entirely. Then again came the ominous, premonitory silence—an absolute absence of life and movement. Hollis urged the pony forward, hoping the calm would last until he had covered a goodly part of the distance to the Circle Bar. For a quarter of an hour he went on at a good pace. But he had scarcely reached the edge of a stretch ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a silence fell—a strained, premonitory silence that had in it a hint of imminent tragedy. The sitting man stiffened, divining the promise of violence; the standing man shrank back a little and looked downward at the pistol in ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... oppression, did he seek to translate it into terms of reason, he found nothing upon which his wits could fasten—and he came ever to conclude that it was his very happiness by its excessiveness that was oppressing him, giving him at times that sense of premonitory weight about the heart as if to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Onas who was afflicted thus from time to time. The actual outburst in this case was sudden, although it is difficult to tell how long it might have been coming on in the form of brooding, which seems to be a premonitory phase ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... blessed be thou, indicates the premonitory symptoms of one's future prosperity and future fall. In this connection is cited the old story of the discourse between Sree and Sakra. Listen to it, O Yudhishthira! The great ascetic Narada, of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of 1862 there was great excitement in Massachusetts. President Lincoln had issued his premonitory proclamation of emancipation, and Harvard College was stirred to its academic depths. Professor Joel Parker, of the Law School, pronounced Lincoln's action unconstitutional, subversive of the rights of property, and a most dangerous precedent. With Charles Eliot Norton and other ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... morning of the 27th of November, 1844, she died. The evening previous to her death was spent in prayer with her husband and children. Early on the night of the 26th, the long-expected and dreaded event announced itself by the premonitory symptoms. The physician was summoned, and the dear friends anxiously awaited the result. But nature was unable to sustain the fearful burden imposed upon it, and gradually gave way until the hour mentioned, when the spirit was released and all ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... past experience] extrapolate, project. Adj. predicting &c v.; predictive, prophetic; fatidic^, fatidical^; vaticinal, oracular, fatiloquent^, haruspical, Sibylline; weatherwise^. ominous, portentous, augurous^, augurial, augural; auspicial^, auspicious; prescious^, monitory, extispicious^, premonitory, significant of, pregnant with, bit with the fate of. Phr. coming events cast their shadows before [Campbell]; dicamus bona verba [Lat.]; there buds the promise of celestial worth [Young]. [Divination: list] by oracles, Theomancy^; by the Bible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... living through some hideous nightmare, she began to scoop up the gems from her lap and allow them to trickle back through her fingers. They flashed and scintillated brilliantly, even in the meager light. They seemed alive with some premonitory, baleful fire. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... certain now that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cut which had adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, even while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom—pride in the contemplation of his own ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... how could she tell that the girls in the Schoharie school might not prove even more so? The fact was, she argued, she had unconsciously allowed herself to be prejudiced against Mrs. Sherman and the boy, by Martha's whimsical accounts of them, good-natured as they were. And this strange, premonitory instinct was no premonitory instinct at all, it was just the natural reluctance of a shy nature to face a new and uncongenial situation. And yet—and yet—and yet, try as she would, she could not shake off the impression that, beyond it all, there loomed something a hidden inner sense ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... cholera showed premonitory symptoms; such as giddiness, sickness, diarrhoea, or sunken eyes and distressed look; but sometimes the substance followed its forecoming shadow so quickly, and the crisis was so rapid, that there was no time to apply any remedies. An American carpenter complained of giddiness and sickness—warning ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... drift without thinking of the future, when one night after the performance—I was lying on the sofa and A. was sitting at my side, as usual—I suddenly thought, with the brutality that characterized me in these matters—"I will ask her to let me sleep with her." I still fought against any premonitory thought of self-abuse, but here, I thought to myself, is a chance of something better that will do me no harm and perhaps good. When she understood me she turned very red and walked away, shaking her head. But I let her understand ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ground-floor of their houses, and had heaped up mattresses against their windows. The inhabitants occasionally ran from one house to another, like rabbits in a warren from hole to hole. All the doors were open, and whenever one heard the premonitory whistle which announced the arrival of one of the messengers of our psychological friends outside, one had to dodge into some door. I did not see any one hit. The houses were a good deal knocked about; the cathedral, it was said, had been hit, but as shells were falling in the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... questions connected with international morality and the law of conquest arise, is affected by his Prussianism; it betokens the transition of the German mind from the speculative and visionary to the practical and even more than practical state; it is premonitory not only of the wars with Austria and France, but of a coming age in which the forces of natural selection are again to operate without the restraints imposed by religion, and the heaviest fist is once more to make the law. In the work of Ihne we see a certain ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith |
