"Stench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warning—nothing! Just that javelin from the ghost, and—-the cat on his hindlegs, screaming like a stricken devil, clawing at the ghost, now revealed as a very big, long-legged bird which flapped. It flapped huge wings and danced a grotesque dance, and it smelt abominably, with the stench of ten fish-markets on ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Parisian taxicabs gave us the first hint of General Gallieni's clever maneuver which helped save the capital—and then the wind brought towards us a nauseating odor, which paralyzed our appetites, and sent us doggedly onwards: the stench of the battlefield. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... man of moderate fortune saw his house vie with, nay, superior to, the old palaces of his governors. When he paced his streets, he felt the genial western breeze pass him, rich with the perfumes of the country, instead of the stench described by Erasmus; and looking upward, he beheld the beautiful blue of the air, variegated with fleecy clouds, in place of projecting black beams and plaster, obscured by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... desire a settlement before the election. And Sumner's speech on the "Crime of Kansas" was a challenge to war. He compared Douglas to "the noisome squat and nameless animal whose tongue switched a perpetual stench," and Senator Butler, of South Carolina, a leader of the highest character, was a man who could not open his ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... boulders and across stretches of sand and boggy patches of black mud formed by little springs leaking out under clumps of willows. Here and there the white ribs of a steer's skeleton peered through the brush; once or twice an overpowering stench gave notice of a ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... personal guarantee behind the old and new loans, and proceeded to roll up my sleeves in the stock-market. I got results at once. A change became apparent in public sentiment—the rottenness of Addicksism was overcome by the stench of "Standard Oil." The prices of Bay State stocks and bonds shot up; loan funds were offered freely and at ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... from the rest on a tolerable mattress. But the inspector was now accommodated with my birth and my bed; and I was compelled to lie on the floor with the sailors; my head being placed even with the feet of my two next neighbours. The stench and closeness of the atmosphere of my den drove the blood into my head, and I thought I should have been suffocated. Early in the morning my companions began to eat and drink: I kept at a distance. "Come here, and eat," said Salviti.—"I can't."—"The inspector will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... She would have preferred to sit up to receive her husband, even if it had meant sitting up all night, but her body was too heavy for her spirit. She lay in the dark. She had eaten nothing. Gerald came straight into the room. He struck a match, which burned blue, with a stench, for several seconds, and then gave a clear, yellow flame. He lit a candle; and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... usual. The burghers are recalcitrant and in consequence the General's authority wanes rapidly. There is hardly any food, the remaining bags of biscuits are yellow from the lyddite fumes, so is everything, damp and yellow. The stench of the decomposed horses and oxen is awful. The water of the rivers is putrid with carrion. A party of men caught three stray sheep early on the morning of the 10th. In haste they killed them and started to skin them desperately; ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... was fallen light and there rose that hot, sickening reek, that suffocating stench that is like unto nothing on earth save one of these floating hells, and the which, if a man hath but smelled it ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... trail through the Virginia mountains on the way home to Kentucky. These were men who carried memories of the Ohio defeat last year which they were determined to wipe out this season, just as a lot of them had to flush with gunsmoke the stench of a Northern prison barracks from ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number involved in it. What's this? "A band of dealers in fleshpottery." Do you detect a gleam of sense? He underscores it. Then he comes to this': Captain Baskelett requested Colonel Halkett to read for himself: 'The stench of the trail ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... men to the appointed place, and soon Eidothea arrived, bearing four hides of seals, freshly flayed. Then she hollowed out four pits in the sand for us to lie in, and clothed us in the skins, and couched us together. Now that bed had like to have been our last, for we were stifled by the dreadful stench of the seabred seals. But the goddess saw our distress, and found a remedy; for she brought ambrosia and set it beneath our nostrils, and that heavenly perfume overpowered the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the crone, drawing nearer and with still more frenzy; "Glencoe has songs on it already. The stench from Invcrlochy's in the air; it's a mock in Benderloch and Ardgour, it's a nightmare in Glenurchy, and the women are keening on the slopes of Cladich. Cowards, cowards, little men, cowards! all the curses of Conan on you and the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of this people to Christianity. Then he went to work to accomplish this purpose in a businesslike way. He set himself the infinite task of mastering the difficult language. He lived their life with them, visiting and sleeping with them in their filthy igloos—so filthy and so filled with stench from the putrid meat and fish scraps that they permit to lie about and decay that frequently at first, until he became accustomed to it, he was forced to seek the open air and relieve the resulting nausea. But ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... (Gentlemen:) Only take this Caution along with you; Do not forget to have in your Pack a couple of Hounds, called Hunters in the Highwayes, that will Scent upon hard Ground, where we cannot perceive Pricks or Impressions; and for your Huntsman's and your own Ease, let a couple of Old stench Hounds accompany you, by whose sure Scent, the too great Swiftness of the young and unexperienced Ones may be restrained and regulated; and if you please, take the following Observations with ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... rude and melancholy was their sepulchre—'unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.' The immediate loss of life was upward of five hundred beings! Thousands of wild beasts, too, had perished in the woods, and from their putrescent carcasses issued streams of effluvium and stench that formed contagious domes over the dismantled settlements. Domestic animals of all kinds lay dead and dying in different parts of the country. Myriads of salmon, trout, bass, and other fish, which, poisoned by the alkali formed by the ashes precipitated into ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... bastard of truth, exhaling odors as vitiated as the breath of a toad! The very saints could not be revivified from such a poison, much less our poor selves, sir, who strive a lifetime constructing character for those damned polluters to blight with their graveyard whisperings! I detest it, sir! The stench of it is repulsive to honest men and gentle women! But come," he added more genially, "before we ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... shrewdness of your reply," rejoined Aram; "but note how far more pure and lovely are its waters in these retreats, than when washing the walls of the reeking town, receiving into its breast the taint of a thousand pollutions, vexed by the sound, and stench, and unholy perturbation of men's dwelling-place. Now it glasses only what is high or beautiful in nature—the stars or the leafy banks. The wind that ruffles it, is clothed with perfumes; the rivulet that swells it, descends from the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scent, redolence, perfume, savor; stink, stench, fetor. Associated Words: deodorize, deodorization, deodorant, deodorizer, antibromic, disinfectant, disinfect, disinfection, exhale, exhalation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... more than six hundred years were not, indeed, without medicine, but they were without physicians." They used traditional family recipes, and had numerous gods and goddesses of disease and healing. Febris was the god of fever, Mephitis the god of stench; Fessonia aided the weary, and "Sweet Cloacina" presided over the drains. The plague-stricken appealed to the goddess Angeronia, women to Fluonia and Uterina. Ossipaga took care of the bones of children, and Carna was the deity presiding over the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... damaged Paine's reputation in America, where the name of "Tom Paine" became a stench in the nostrils of the godly and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of "the young," whose religious ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... impatient at the delay, Philibert took advantage of the open door and entered the great hall. He stood in utter amazement for a moment at the scene of drunken riot which he beheld. The inflamed faces, the confusion of tongues, the disorder, filth, and stench of the prolonged debauch sickened him, while the sight of so many men of rank and high office revelling at such an hour raised a feeling of indignation which he had difficulty in keeping down while he delivered his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... follow Socrates. Sir, the impression is universal[768]; yet it is strange. As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such crouding, such filth, such stench[769]!' BOSWELL. 'Yet sailors are happy.' JOHNSON. 'They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh meat,—with the grossest sensuality. But, Sir, the profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... door is carefully closed after you, and locked by means of an iron lock about the size of a pictorial family Bible. You then remain on the inside for quite a spell. You do not hear the prattle of soiled children any more. All the glad sunlight, and stench-condensing pavements, and the dark-haired inhabitants of Rivington street, are seen no longer, and the heavy iron storm-door shuts out the wail of the combat from the alley near by. Ludlow Street Jail may be surrounded by a very miserable and dirty quarter of the city, but when you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... and it lasted for a full hour. The rank petroleum lamp in the sconce burnt out and left a sickening stench upon the air. The whole space in which the wounded men lay went dark, and the wild free wind and the cruel driving rain beat at the window. In the black darkness voices spoke here and there. There were notes of fever from ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... of the poor girl, whose mother finishes pants for the postal uniforms at nine and one-half cents a pair, slaving eighteen hours for fifty-seven cents; and she, the daughter, toils all day long, in the midst of the physical and moral stench of a Jewish sweater's shop, for sixteen and two-thirds cents. But she is better off than the orphan girl that works beside her, whose ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... heavy with the stench of oil. The room hung with soot from the lamp. A thin spiral thread of black smoke rose from the taper. In the dim light the leering face of Sipsu appeared like the face of the great demon himself. His small half-closed ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... say, I had no inclination to forsake my pure dark airy height. I had no inclination to get nearer to this human ant-hill. It seemed as though a hot, heavy, reddish vapour rose from it, half-fragrance, half-stench; so many lives were flung struggling in one heap together there. I was hesitating.... But suddenly, sharp as the clang of iron bars, the voice of a harlot of the streets floated up to me; like an insolent tongue, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... of removing the dead bodies by carts was now grown so very odious and dangerous, that it was complained of that the bearers did not take care to clear such houses where all the inhabitants were dead, but that some of the bodies lay unburied till the neighboring families were offended by the stench, and consequently infected. And this neglect of the officers was such, that the churchwardens and constables were summoned to look after it; and even the justices of the hamlets[166] were obliged to venture their lives among them to quicken and encourage them; for innumerable ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... them how he had fallen in with a sperm whale, dead of disease, floating as high as a frigate; how, with a very light breeze, the skipper had crept down toward her; how, at half a mile distance the stench of her was severe, but, as they neared her, awful; then so intolerable that the skipper gave the crew leave to go below and close the lee ports. So there were but two men left on the brig's deck, and a ship's company that a hurricane ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... plan To show us that a Judge can be a Man; Through moral mire exhaling mortal stench God-guided sweet and foot-clean to the Bench; In salutation here and sign I lift A hand as free as yours from lawless thrift, A heart—ah, would I truly could proclaim My bosom lighted with so pure a flame! Alas, not love of ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... her innocence and simplicity, by the trouble in her face and eyes, and the wrong which is done to her in making her swear and in proclaiming her publicly as an adulteress. Giotto has also expressed with great realism a man afflicted with sores, as all the women who are about him, disgusted by the stench, turn away with various contortions in the most graceful manner imaginable. Then again the foreshortening in a picture containing a number of lame beggars is highly praiseworthy, and should be much prized by artists, since it ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... dead soldiers to decay and create a stench around Vicksburg presents the worst feature of the Yankee die-nasty we have yet had ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the stench from the beautiful moonlit water grew overpowering. The officer told me ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... harbour the streets are narrow and irregular: in the other parts of the town they are tolerably wide. None of them, however, are paved, and all are filthy. During the hot months of summer, the stench that proceeds from some of ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour 100 Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost That it should spare the eldest flower of spring: Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free; Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead 105 With famine, or wind-walking Pestilence, Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man! Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words, In deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must die: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... English twenty-gun ship of war, coming up, the prize was sent by her into port, where she herself was to refit. In this condition did I and fourteen of our crew lie for six weeks, till the fetters on our legs had almost eaten to the bone, and the stench of the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... the knee. Shipping to Red River was an experiment with them, and I hope they've got their belly full. We've got dead and dying cattle in every pasture from the falls to the river, while these in sight aren't able to keep out of the stench of those that croaked between here and the ford. Oh, this shipping is a fine thing—for the railroads. Here I've got to rot all summer with these cattle, just because two of my trains went into the ditch while no other foreman had over one wrecked. And mind you, they paid the freight in advance, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... a rough passage to Liverpool, and the steamer was laden with cattle and pigs, the stench from which, combined with sea-sickness, was, I recollect, a terrible experience, and it was in no enviable condition of mind or body we arrived at the Liverpool Docks on a foggy, wet and dismal morning. My mercantile brother, Tom, came on board, and had all our belongings speedily conveyed ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... French, Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek— What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak? Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek Dead consciences and plague earth with their stench. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... hue as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Etna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate; Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... they drove on the Canada shore up past the Clifton House, towards the Burning Spring, which is not the least wonder of Niagara. As each bubble breaks upon the troubled surface, and yields its flash of infernal flame and its whiff of sulphurous stench, it seems hardly strange that the Neutral Nation should have revered the cataract as a demon; and another subtle spell (not to be broken even by the business- like composure of the man who shows off the hell-broth) is added to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... or other, the interview was arranged. 'Little James' found his desire fulfilled at last. When he passed into the stifling, crowded prison den, where human beings were herded together like beasts, he never heeded the horrible stench or the crawling vermin that abounded everywhere. Rather, he felt as if he were entering the palace of a king. He paid no attention to the crowd of savage figures all around him. He saw nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing, until at last he found that his hand was lying in the grasp of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... lay upon dark carpets, heaps big and small which seemed to move, around which hung an overpowering, sickening stench of blood. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the place, I spied what seemed to me a little cupboard, over the mantel-shelf, and I told John to see if I was right. The lad mounted upon a chair, and pulled open a small door, but almost fell to the ground with the dreadful stench which seemed to rush ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness, the stench is appalling, the fetid air can barely struggle out through chinks in the walls and roofs, and for all I can observe the men die without the least effort being made to save them. They lie just as they were let down on the ground by the poor ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hall, where great fires of pine logs were piled up for their comfort; and for the remainder of the day they abode there in various states of nakedness, relieved by blankets and straw capotes, what time the house was filled with the steam and stench of their drying garments. Rations had been short of late on the Agueda, and, in addition, their weary ride through the rain had made the men sharp-set. Abundance of food was placed before them by the solicitude of Fernando Souza, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... strike him at will. Blows fell on his back, his legs, even his face, and he cringed away, trying desperately to escape the stinging pain. Under the smarting blows, he remembered previous whippings, administered by a strong-armed kitchen master, and he seemed to smell the stench of the scullery once more. Suddenly, he sank to his knees ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... flavour of this fruit which the real Sakai calls sumpa. I can but repeat that it is exquisite and far superior to any sweet dainty prepared by cook or confectioner. There is nothing to equal it, and in eating one does not discern the least smell as the disagreeable stench comes from the husk alone and the worse it is, the more delicate is the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... and the hunters entered the fringe of dead trees. By the time they reached the center of the little island where the dead trees were thickest, the little party was nearly overcome by the horrible stench. At every step they crushed in nestfuls of decayed eggs which sent up their protests to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... "Beggin' fer fish-heads. They up-eend the way when they're hungry. Breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain't he?" A horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white sank, and the water bubbled oilily. "Hain't ye never seen a grampus up-eend before? You'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore ye're through. Say, it's good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was too old, an' a Dutchy at that. Him an' me we fought ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... clouded over again, and in the consequent obscurity he slipped and rolled and slid for a hundred feet, landing bruised and bleeding on the bottom of a large shallow hole. From all about him arose the stench of dead horses. The hole was handy to the trail, and the packers had made a practice of tumbling into it their broken and dying animals. The stench overpowered him, making him deadly sick, and as in a nightmare he scrambled out. Half-way up, he recollected Bondell's gripsack. It had fallen ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... contractor who had undertaken the job, nor the foreman who was supervising it. It was a question which concerned only me and Mother Earth who seemed to be doing her best to balk us at every turn. I forgot the sticky, wet clay in which I had floundered for nine hours, forgot the noisome stench which at times we were forced to breathe, forgot my lame hands and back. I recalled only the problem itself and the skill with which the man they called Anton' handled his crow bar. He was a master of it. In removing the smaller slabs which ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... rheumatism groaning in agony, two others dazed and very still, with high fever. We walked round quickly, don Felipe as before mechanically looking at their tongues and feeling their pulse, speaking a word to the assistant and moving on. The windows were shut and there was a horrid stench of ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... inhale in these valleys. And, if it is very warm, the dust bears with it a light odor of vanilla and of the stable, for so many cows pass over these routes that they leave reminders everywhere. And this odor is a perfume, when it would be a stench if it came ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... into captivity, under the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" He referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its stench ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Than it, hell cannot hold a fouler form— A thing of more unholy loathsomeness! Its heavy eyes are dim and bleared with blood, Its jaws, by strong convulsions fiercely worked, Are clogged and clotted with mixed gore and foam! A nauseous stench its filthy shape exhales, And through its heaving bosom you may mark The constant preying of a quenchless flame That gnaws its heartstrings! while a harsh quick moan Of mingled wrath, and madness, and despair, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... a narrow, dark dungeon, where the damp and stench were intolerable, and nothing could be seen until a light was procured, they found something lying on filthy straw that had human shape. The hair and beard were long and overgrown; the features, begrimed with filth, were such ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... atomic weight 79.96), a chemical element of the halogen group, which takes its name from its pungent unpleasant smell ([Greek: bromos], a stench). It was first isolated by A.J. Balard in 1826 from the salts in the waters of the Mediterranean. He established its elementary character, and his researches were amplified by K.J. Loewig (1803-1890) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... what a stern expression he has got," said Fitzgerald, letting his subaltern come up to him. "What a scene those birds and this stench ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... brandy, which Lovell administered externally. Still, Scaife remained unconscious. Then a pillow was ripped open, and enough feathers burned to restore—as the Caterpillar put it afterwards—a ruined cathedral. The stench filled the passage and brought to No. 15 a chattering crowd of Lower Boys. And then the conviction seized everybody that Scaife ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... all around here seem dead. Ugly hounds!" muttered the monarch, still peering down; "even in death they seem to grit their teeth and defy me. Faugh! The stench is already terrible. It is just as well they are dead. Angra-Mainyu surely possessed them to fight so! It cannot be there are many more who can fight like this left in Hellas, though Demaratus, the Spartan outlaw, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... supporting and protecting it during the time we live on earth; just as we honor our corrupt, filthy bodies, adorning them with beautiful, costly garments and golden ornaments, and reposing them on cushions and beds of luxury. Though but stench and filth encased in flesh, they are honored above everything else on earth. For their sake are all things performed—the ordering and ruling, building and laboring; and God himself permits sun and moon to shine that ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... of the great larvae and kicking monsters which made up a large item in my list of wonders: all of a sudden the horror of the place came over me; those grim prison-walls above, with their canopy of lurid smoke; the dreary, sloppy, broken pavement; the horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools; the utter want of form, colour, life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... hunger, and the bowls go round; When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry And clattering wings, the hungry Harpies fly: They snatch the meat, defiling all they find, And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind." —VIRGIL'S AEneid, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Israelites in the wilderness, the Parisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished to eat. The crowd was lined up, men, women and children tightly packed together, under a sky of molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting foulness of the kennels and exaggerated the stench of unwashed, sweating humanity. All were pushing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks fraught with every sort of emotion one human being can feel for another,—dislike, disgust, interest, attraction, indifference. Painful experience had taught them ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... carrying on their several employments round a fire in the centre. The interior displays as much filthiness as if the inhabitants belonged to the dirtiest class of the brute creation. The smoke; the stench of bad fish, and blubber; the repulsive figures of the women, disgustingly occupied in seeking for vermin on the heads or skins of the men, and actually eating them when found; the great utensil for the service of the whole family, which is also the only vessel capable of containing water to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... was the first question the girl asked, when the combined stench and suffocation had ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of the Himalayas, for the snow-covered mountains could be seen in the distance, but we elephants were so proud of our own height that we never bothered about the hills. I once asked my mother, 'Why do tigers smell like this? Wherever a tiger goes, he brings a terrible stench with him.' This is what ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... that amid the confusion she had completed her intention, had with a terrific effort launched the big jar as she had meant to do. Smothered curses followed and a second, duller smash, then, though she could see nothing, she smelled the strong, acrid fumes of ammonia rising, mingling with the stench of the powder. Had she hit him? She must not stop to inquire. During the ensuing instant of silence she tugged at the ledge above with a fresh, despairing effort, dragged herself up to the brink, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered; for their families and for their children. This sham humanitarianism has become a stench. The cry now is for righteousness. The past generation has abolished human slavery. It is for the present to deal with the problems of the future, and among them ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... about their heads and then hurled out onto the purple patches. Fire arose from the water and ran with frantic speed across the crests of the low waves, while the Salariki coughed and buried their noses in their perfume boxes, for the wind drove shoreward an overpowering stench. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to us to doubt Jim Hawkins, but we were alarmed for his safety. With the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage. The six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... served a throne; but the second and the third intended to fill one. A small degree of ambition warms the mind in pursuit of fame, through the paths of honor; while too large a portion tends to unfavorable directions, kindles to a flame, consumes the finer sensations of rectitude, and leaves a stench behind. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... place was the stench of decaying horses. About twenty yards down the hill the horses belonging to a whole Battery had been struck by a shell. About a dozen of them lay dead where they had been standing. The story had been told of how one of the Subalterns of the other Company had left ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... a few,— Because in half a score of haughty minds The night lay black and terrible, thy winds, O Europe! are a stench on heaven's blue. Thy scars abide, and here is nothing new: Still from the throne goes forth the dark that blinds, And still the satiated morning finds The unending thunder ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... names are very old and their original meaning is obscure. Such names are iron, gold, and copper. (2) Many names indicate some striking physical property of the element. The name bromine, for example, is derived from a Greek word meaning a stench, referring to the extremely unpleasant odor of the substance. The name iodine comes from a word meaning violet, alluding to the beautiful color of iodine vapor. (3) Some names indicate prominent chemical properties of the elements. Thus, nitrogen means the producer of niter, nitrogen being a constituent ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... dying smile Of triumph, when his cruise was o'er, And to the vast eternal shore, Launched forth by death's o'erwhelming gale His gallant spirit spread its sail! O'er flowing bowl with might and main, He fought his battle's o'er again, Talked of chain shot, and "Stinkpot's" stench, And hated cordially the French, Whom he believed were but created To be by sailors killed and hated What e'er he was, what passage o'er, He took to the mysterious shore, Old Charon never cleft the wave. Yet ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... in rubble. No four walls for him to settle down into; all levelled and burnt out, the villages turned into dumps of rubbish, churches and church towers laid out in ruins. Smouldering fires and smoke and stench; a rumble spreading from village to village—the mine charges still doing their final work, which ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... therefore inform him, that their strong Holds have all the open Places cover'd with Canvass stretch'd from Side to Side; upon which is strew'd an Herb so venemous, that, in six Hours after it has been expos'd to the Sun, it emits so pestiferous a Stench, that no Fowl can approach it by many Yards, but what will fall dead; and this Stench, by the Effluvia mounting, is no way offensive to those below. This is the Reason their Sieges are rather Blockades, and no fortify'd Town was ever taken ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... was for an indefinite period. A most horrible fate now stared the crew in the face, for although they had food enough to last them for many weeks, they only had a very limited supply of water, and the intense heat and terrific stench from the weeds made them ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... without arousing suspicion. However it seemed likely that it would carry me once more safely through the crowded passages and chambers of the upper levels, and so I set out with Perry and Ghak—the stench of the illy ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mangled carcases of Buffalow which had been driven over a precipice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished; the water appeared to have washed away a part of this immence pile of slaughter and still their remained the fragments of at least a hundred carcases they created a most horrid stench. in this manner the Indians of the Missouri distroy vast herds of buffaloe at a stroke; for this purpose one of the most active and fleet young men is scelected and disguised in a robe of buffaloe skin, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... had strength and opportunity to look around them; for there they beheld the naked bodies of their fellow-soldiers and comrades floating up and down the harbor, affording prey to the carrion-crows and sharks, which tore them in pieces without interruption, and contributing by their stench to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the scarf of filmy lace which she always liked to wrap round her shoulders, and through the lace the pearly sheen of her skin, of her arms, and of her throat. The air around him had become pure and rarified: that horrible stench of powder and smoke and blood no longer struck his nostrils—it was roses, roses all around him—crimson roses—sweet and caressing and fragrant—with soft, velvety petals that brushed against his cheek—and from somewhere close by came ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... morsels of musty wisdom, and he exists like a storeroom where a stingy housewife keeps all sorts of rubbish which is absolutely unnecessary to her, and worthless. If you touch such a man, if you open the door into him, the stench of decay will be breathed upon you, and a stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. These unfortunate people call themselves men of firm character, men of principles and convictions. And ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... misfortune. It is probable that the wretched inhabitants had been compelled to live on mussels and limpets till they had no strength left to gather them, and that numbers dying from starvation, the survivors had been driven by the horrible stench of the corpses in the houses to seek for pure air and provisions along the shore. Here they had been killed by the savages, in whose possession a variety of European ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... a lad of about sixteen, in the uniform of a midshipman, said to another of about the same age as, after the last boat had left the ship's sides, they leaned against the bulwarks; "what with the heat, and what with the stench, and what with the captain and the first mate, life is not worth living. However, only another two or three days and we shall be full up, and once off we shall get rid of a good deal of the heat and most of ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... group legislative, But barred them the making of laws, They could only memorialize Congress And give it the reasons and cause. The cry of the world is for Home Rule Yet imported fools crowd our bench, And some of their mining decisions Send up to high Heaven their stench. ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... comfort of construction even, in the furniture. Here were no viciously-attractive pictures on the walls—no enervating sweet odors in the atmosphere—no contrivances of ventilation to cleanse away the stench of bad tobacco-smoke and brandy-flavored human breath with which the room reeked all night long. Here, in short, was vice wholly undisguised; recklessly showing itself to every eye, without the varnish of beauty, without the tinsel of wit, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... consequently, must have lasted for more than three entire days and nights at the very least. Latterly, I have had reason both from my own experience and the assurance of others, to be acquainted with the strong soporific effects of the stench arising from old fish-oil when closely confined; and when I think of the condition of the hold in which I was imprisoned, and the long period during which the brig had been used as a whaling vessel, I am more inclined to wonder that I awoke at all, after once falling asleep, than that I ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which entered sounds of every kind: shrieks, groans, the rattle of musketry, the crash of falling walls. Men could scarce see one another; great livid clouds drifted athwart the sun and obscured his light, bearing with them an intolerable stench of soot and blood, heavy with the abominations of the slaughter. In every quarter the work of death and destruction still went on: the human brute unchained, the imbecile wrath, the mad fury, of man devouring his ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... brother chief to save; But ah! his reckless generous ire Served but to share his grave! 'Mid blazing beams and scalding streams, Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke, Where Muggins broke before. But sulphury stench and boiling drench Destroying sight o'erwhelmed him quite, He sunk to rise no more. Still o'er his head, while Fate he braved, His whizzing water-pipe he waved; "Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps, You, Clutterbuck, come, stir your stumps, Why ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... dinner, and did not wait to partake of our Christmas cheer. Indeed I believe no one invited them, and for good reasons; for their dirty persons, and the stench they carried about them, were enough to spoil the appetite of any European; and that would have been a real disappointment, as we had not experienced such fare for some time. Roast and boiled geese, goose-pye, etc. was a treat little known to us; and we had yet some ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... and see her and hearken. This is she. Stop the ways fast against the stench that nips Your nostril as it nears her. Lo, the lips That between prayer and prayer find time to be Poisonous, the hands holding a cup and key, Key of deep hell, cup whence blood reeks and drips; The loose lewd limbs, the reeling hingeless hips, The scurf that ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 'May ten thousand curses light on your head!' I shouted. 'If you wish for my life, Mula, take it and be for ever damned; or else let me pass, and go back to Satan, your master, and tell him from me to keep a stricter watch on your movements; for why should the stench of purgatory be brought to my nostrils before my time! And now, hateful ghost, what more have you got to say to me?' At this speech the ghost shouted with laughter, slapping its thighs, and doubling itself ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Stables stunk him out. Let it to a man; I forget his name. Stables stunk HIM out. He said, 'I shall go.' 'You can't,' said my friend; 'you have taken a lease.' 'Lease be d—d,' said the other; 'I never took YOUR house; here's quite a large stench not specified in your description of the property—IT CAN'T BE THE SAME PLACE;' flung the lease at his head, and cut like the wind to foreign parts less odoriferous. I'd have got you the hole for ninety; but you are like your wife—you must go to an agent. What! don't you know ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... no ear to these appeals, but shook his head pessimistically. He was not a politician—so much the better, we don't want a politician; he was a plain business man exactly what is needed; a conservative, level-headed business man wholly lacking in those sensational qualities which are a stench in the nostrils of good citizens. Mr. Giles Henderson admitted that the time had come when a man of these qualities was needed—but he was not the man. Mr. Tredway was the man—so he told Mr. Tredway; Mr. Gates of Brampton was the man—so ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... errand of the great Physician is to us all. The Pharisee who knows himself a sinner is as welcome as the outcast. The most outwardly respectable, clean-living, orthodoxly religious formalist needs Him as much, and may have Him as healingly, as the grossest criminal, foul with the stench of loathsome disease. That great saying has changed the attitude towards the degraded and unclean, and many a stream of pity and practical work for such has been drawn off from that Nile of yearning love, though all unconscious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... blacker than the mouth of hell, and her eyes still seemed to have in them the dazzle of light and triumph she had just left. There was a frightful stench of garbage; and it appeared to be a vault, because the outcry of the men besieging the door volleyed and echoed the more thunderously. There came the sharp click of a latch and Katharine found herself impelled to descend several steps into a blackness from which came up a breath ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... most urgent motives, to be patient. As he saw that the man became calmer, he asked him what might seem most agreeable to him; what he should do for him. He said that he should now wash his whole body, that he could no longer endure the stench of the infection. The saint quickly got some water warmed, into which he put aromatic herbs, and began to wash him himself, while his companion poured out the water. As he washed, his cure advanced, and, at the same time, the grace of God ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... sharply, and saw "It" standing close beside her. She described it as being human in shape, and about four feet high; the eyes were like two black holes in the face, and the whole figure seemed as if it were made of grey cotton-wool, while it was accompanied by a most appalling stench, such as would come from a decaying human body. The lady got a shock from which she did not recover ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... and handsome, and the banks of the canals are planted with rows of trees, that make a very pleasing appearance; but the trees concur with the canals to make the situation unwholesome.[131] The stagnant canals in the dry season exhale an intolerable stench, and the trees impede the course of the air, by which, in some degree, the putrid effluvia would be dissipated. In the wet season the inconvenience is equal, for then these reservoirs of corrupted water overflow their banks in the lower ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr |
