"Unstrung" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you in the outer office, auntie, if you will only let me go. I am so unstrung that I cannot bear to be left ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... cried, "Put up a cent." Verily, the Indian has but a feeble hold on his bow now; but the curiosity of the white man is insatiable, and from the first he has been eager to witness this forest accomplishment. That elastic piece of wood with its feathered dart, so sure to be unstrung by contact with civilization, will serve for the type, the coat-of-arms of the savage. Alas for the Hunter Race! the white man has driven off their game, and substituted a cent in its place. I saw an Indian woman washing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... criticisms, and heated words of his opponents trickle off from him as easily as water does from a duck's back, which is the proper legal mental attitude in regard to such things. He told us that sharp, harsh, or bitter words entered his soul like barbed iron and he was upset and unstrung for hours afterward. A man with such an emotional nature as his and such an intellect is especially qualified for literature, and we are glad to say that he is now making a very flattering success in this ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... and unstrung the bow, putting it away in its niche. But from the same place he produced a ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... novelty and audacity of its statements. It was both bitterly attacked and enthusiastically praised, as it antagonized or attracted its readers. Buckle became the intellectual hero of the hour. The second volume appeared in May, 1861. And now, worn out by overwork, his delicate nerves completely unstrung by the death of his mother, who had remained his first and only love, he left England for the East, in company with the two young sons of a friend. In Palestine he was stricken with typhoid fever, and died at Damascus on May 29th, 1862. His grave is marked by a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... help being surprised." He saw her lips quiver and her bosom heave. "Marcia, do you blame me for feeling hurt at your coldness when I came here to tell you—to tell you I—I love you?" With his nerves all unstrung, and his hunger for sympathy, he really believed that he had come to tell her this. "Yes," he added, bitterly, I will tell you, though it seems to be the last word I shall speak to ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... who went in an uncertain mood to see either Sir Douglas or Sir William left with a sense of stalwart conviction. Both had the gift of simplifying any situation, however complex. When a certain general became unstrung during the retreat from Mons, Sir Douglas seemed to consider that his first duty was to assist this man to recover composure, and he slipped his arm through the general's and walked him up and down until composure had returned. Again, on the retreat from Mons Sir Douglas said, "We must stay here ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... under masks. Below these hung two pistols, such as courteous Claude Duval used for side-arms. Opposite were two old rifles, and beneath them two stone beer-mugs, and a German student's pipe absurdly long and richly ornamented. A mantel close by was filled with curiosities, and near it hung a banjo unstrung, a tennis-racket, and a blazer of startling colors. Plainly they were relics of German student life, and the odd contrast they made with the rough wall and ceiling suggested a sharp change in the fortunes of the young worker beneath. Scarcely six months since he had been suddenly summoned ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... their readers. Their God is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... hold, isn't it? And just between ourselves we will talk it all over—many times—and then it won't seem so dreadful to you. And, after all, you're not positive your grandfather killed Ned Joselyn. Perhaps he didn't. But you're afraid he did, and that keeps you unstrung and unhappy. Who knows but I may be able to help you discover the truth? Sit down, Ingua, and let's ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... stroke, when an arrow from the bow of the brave boy pierced his breast, and he fell insensible at his sister's side. A moment after Garanga was in the arms of her husband, and Louis, with his bow unstrung, bounded from the shore, and was received in his father's canoe; and the wild shores rung with the acclamations of the soldiers, while his father's tears were poured like rain ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... into this grim old house. Care and kindness were lavished on the delicate woman, who would scarce have needed either in her present delight; every luxury that could add to her slowly increasing strength, every attention that could quiet her fluttering and unstrung nerves, was showered on her, and for a time her brightest hopes seemed all to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the works Of Liberty and Wisdom down the gulf Of all-devouring night. As long immured In noontide darkness, by the glimmering lamp, Each Muse and each fair Science pined away The sordid hours: while foul, barbarian hands Their mysteries profaned, unstrung the lyre, And chain'd the soaring pinion down to earth. At last the Muses rose, [Endnote L] and spurn'd their bonds, And, wildly warbling, scatter'd as they flew, 20 Their blooming wreaths from fair Valclusa's [Endnote M] bowers To Arno's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... mischief they have done till they find the instrument all out of tune,—more often not knowing it ever. It is pity,—for how frequently a discord is left that jars all life long; and how much more frequently still the harp, though retaining its sweetness and truth of tone to the end, is gradually unstrung. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... couldn't do a thing. I really pitied her, for her hands trembled and her voice shook, and even the little bunches of gray curls bobbed up and down against her pale cheeks. I have had the shivers so often that I can sympathise with any one whose nerves are unstrung ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... divine each particular nerve and heartstring, and with long wails and tremblings and sobbing minors to make it yield up its last shred of grief. It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after, Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds, tripping over his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful with his team-mates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking spirit. Rather did he grow more grim and taciturn, biding his time ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... a bird's flying against such a gale; and after everyone else had settled down again for the night she could hear Ellen pacing the floor of the living-room. Poor Ellen, thought the girl, she was all unstrung over Shane's accident and frightened at ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... ecstasies, What rich ideals haunt, by day and night, Alone, and in the crowd, even to the death, The servitors of that celestial court Where peerless Mary, sun-enthroned, reigns, In whom all Eden dreams of womanhood, All grace of form, hue, sound, all beauty strewn Like pearls unstrung, about this ruined world, Have their fulfilment and their archetype. Why hath the rose its scent, the lily grace? To mirror forth her loveliness, from whom, Primeval fount of grace, their livery came: Pattern of Seraphs! only worthy ark To bear ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... ablaze the blood, What need to tell? Fit language there is none 220 For the heart's deepest things. Who ever wooed As in his boyish hope he would have done? For, when the soul is fullest, the hushed tongue Voicelessly trembles like a lute unstrung. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to Sara, and took the poor, unstrung little bundle of nerves into her arms, her very touch, both firm and gentle, bringing comfort to the half-crazed girl. She did not say much of anything, only kissed her and wept with her; but soon the violence of Sara's grief was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... I whispered to Denviers, as my nerves seemed to be almost unstrung at the unknowableness of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... weeks, or till another heroine, who had herself been murdered, obliterated the former horrors from her plastic mind,—Miss Macnulty could discuss the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie, finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the "Faery Queen;" but the "Faery Queen" fared even worse than "Queen Mab;"—and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For poor Macnulty, if she could only be ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... it lack the rare sentiment of that beautiful story; with more detail and consistency, if with less variety, than the history of Gudrun and her lovers in the Laxdaela; and more a work of art than that, or than the unstrung gems of Eyrbyggja, and the great compilation of Snorri Sturluson, the History of ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack of acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of the sweet homebred shyness, which is like the sanctity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... really been given by Count Walsegg, a foolish nobleman, whose wife had died, and who wanted, by transcribing Mozart's score, to pass it off as his own composition—and this he actually did after the composer's death. Poor Mozart, in the weak state of health in which he now was, with nerves unstrung and over-excited brain, was strangely impressed by this visit, and soon the fancy took firm possession of him that the messenger had arrived with a mandate from the unseen world, and that the "Requiem" he was to write was for himself. Not the less did he ardently set to work ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... in such a morbid, unstrung state that the least thing startled her. But imagine if you can her wonder and terror as she saw Dennis Fleet—the dead and buried, as she fully believed—enter, carrying a picture as of old, and looking ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... frequent use of an infusion of the herb, upsets our nerves, impairs healthful digestion, and brings on sleeplessness. I have several patients—old ladies, and those in middle life—whose nerves are so unstrung that I am obliged to dose them with opium occasionally, to enable them ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... if she had struck him. "You can't mean that! You're sick and unstrung and don't know what you're saying. I'll go ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... that the female body differs widely from the male both in the diseases it is subject to and in its capacity or non-capacity of recovery. The bracing effect of toil, exercise, and open air gives firmness and tone to the male; the female is soft and unstrung from its sheltered existence, and pale with anaemia, deficient caloric and excess of moisture. It is consequently, as compared with the male, open to infection, exposed to disease, unequal to vigorous treatment, and, in particular, liable to mania. With their emotional, mobile, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung during the days that followed. I wakened one night to a terrific thump which shook my bed, and which seemed to be the result of some one having struck the foot-board with a plank. Immediately following this came a sharp ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with a little cry, all her nerves trembling and unstrung. Inez stood before her—Inez with dark, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... left him; and for his part, he must needs return the way he came,—frustrated, yet not enlightened; cursing, in no measured terms, the unfathomable ways of women. No doubt she was upset, unstrung by the knowledge of all that her confession implied; and woman-like, showed small regard for his consuming impatience to possess her. But to-morrow he would ride home with ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... soon discovered, was not a member of the temperance society. He was very much intoxicated; and, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, he drove furiously. I felt very timid and nervous. Sickness makes us sad cowards, and what the mind enjoys in health, becomes an object of fear when it is enfeebled and unstrung by ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... I am not ill; only my nerves have had a great, a terrible shock; they seem all unstrung, and my ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... had died away Anne knelt there, sobbing, utterly unstrung, all her pride laid low, herself no more than a broken, agonised woman. But gradually, from sheer exhaustion, her sobs became less anguished, till at length they ceased. A strange peace, wholly unaccountable, fell gently upon her torn spirit. But even then it was long before she ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... never was happy afterwards; and when his intimate friends and favourites tried to console him he was wont to lead them to his bedroom and there show them a picture, painted by himself (for he was an excellent painter), depicting a Turkish bow unstrung, beneath, which was written, Arco per lentare piaga non sana (The bow although unstrung heals ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... below, and knew nothing more of the affair until called by Hogan, when he had run to Mr. Gleason's quarters, and after a moment had taken Ray home and insisted on his going to bed. The lieutenant was just recovering from a severe illness, was weak and unstrung, and the affair threatened to bring on a relapse. There had been an open breach between the two officers for over two years, and of late, he knew not how, it had widened. The deceased frequently maligned Lieutenant Ray, and the latter never spoke of him without aversion. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... already, and Ezra, with his hands folded behind him, paced twice or thrice along the room. Pausing before one of the green baize bags, he lifted it from its nail, and having untied the string that fastened it, he drew forth with great tenderness an unstrung violin, and, carrying it to the light, sat down and turned it over and over in his hands. Then he took the neck with his left hand, and, placing the instrument upright upon his knee, caressed it ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... presume that the mechanical skill I once possessed in the art has suffered by the unavoidable neglect. I may possibly recover this skill, and if anything will tend to this end, if anything can tune again an instrument so long unstrung, it is the kindness and liberality of my Cousin Edward. I would wish, therefore, the matter put on this ground that my mind may be at ease. I am at present engaged in taking portraits by the Daguerreotype. I have been ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... nerves were still more or less unstrung from her mental struggles of the night, and the memory of her dream came to her like a dim foreboding of misfortune. As though in sympathy with its mother's feelings, the baby did not seem as well as usual. The new nurse was by no means an ideal nurse,—Mammy Jane understood the child much better. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... no reply. There was an arduous task before him, and his nerves were unstrung. After he had unfastened the end of the rope and passed it to Ram, who did not secure the end about him, but the middle, after he had nearly drawn it tight, so that, if he did slip, the fall would not be so long. Then reluctantly, but feeling that it must be done, ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... did not know. She could not tell. Her nerves now were somewhat unstrung, and the tears that always came so readily to her eyes flowed quite unchecked. She could not very well move, for he held her knees imprisoned in his arms, but she was quite content to remain like this, and to yield her hands to him so that ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... unstrung. When not in use, they were carried strung, the archer either holding them by the middle with his left hand, or putting his arm through them, and letting them rest upon his shoulders, or finally ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... nerves were utterly unstrung. Then, pointing to a chair, he said: "Won't you sit ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Eben—" She was still looking at him with that directness which hinted at some thought foreign to her words—something as yet unmentioned which had left her unstrung. "It's not really a congenial role to you—this one of reshaping your life. At heart you hate it.... This house proves that. So does this ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... us! Cease your mirth! Damned be a friendship that so shames my worth! Never may I set eyes on one so low! I fling you off, an unstrung, broken bow. 41 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... back, as the dead body fell splashing into the pool, and Alric quietly unstrung his bow again and remounted to be ready. Then Gilbert would have ridden ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... and the rabbit under the hedge. I listen as of old to the chirp of the grasshopper in the stubble, to the hum of the bees among the foxgloves, to the song of the blackbird on the hawthorn, and, best of all—yes, best of all for brain unsteadied and nerve unstrung—I ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... doubt the power of man being equal to even imagine how wretched I felt. No language can describe my feelings. My position was painful, trying, and awful; my brain seemed to be on fire; my nerves were for a moment unstrung; humanity was overpowering as I thought of the cruel, unmanly part that I was acting. Tears of bitter anguish fell in streams from my eyes; my tongue refused its office; my faculties were dormant, stupefied and deadened by grief. I wished that the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to reply. His shoulders quivered, but he remained silent. She went on soothingly: "You are all unstrung. The shock was too sudden. It must have been a terrible one! Won't you tell me about it? Perhaps that will ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;—and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,—and the world talks of them, while ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ought to make a serious effort to become so. She found herself, even at this early hour of the day, tired with the strain of a misgiving that an earthquake was approaching; and as those who have lived through earthquakes become unstrung at every slightest tremor of the earth's crust beneath them, so she felt that the tension begun with that recurrence of two days ago had grown and grown, and threatened to dominate her mind, to the exclusion of all else. Every little thing, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... thus far, a friend has come in, and we have been talking and buffooning till I have quite lost the thread of my thoughts; and, as I won't send them unstrung to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... after Rosemary had bathed the poor bruised finger and Winnie had comforted the child with a cookie, Aunt Trudy declared that her nerves were too unstrung to spend the day in such a house and that she would go to town ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a more powerful lecture on temperance, than the silent pantomime of a man trying to hang his plug hat on an invisible peg in his own hall, after he had been watching the returns, a few years ago. I saw that he was excited and nervously unstrung when he came in, but I did not fully realize it until he began to hang his ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... a coupe, having ordered a carriage to follow him to the Grand Central Station. It was ten minutes yet before the express was due. Nervously he puffed at his unlighted cigar, wishing he had a match; in fact, his nerves were never more unstrung. It was a happy surprise, and no doubt his youthful vanity was elated, that his father should have named his new palace car "Alfonso." At least it convinced him that ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... and unexpected was her appearance that Jack had to grasp the desk to steady himself. Really, he thought, my nerves must be frightfully unstrung. I think I must take a holiday. Aloud, he said: "Why, Miss Easton, this is a most unexpected pleasure. Won't you be seated? Can I be ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the book of futurity! No, God forgive me this impious wish. It is He who hid the future from man, and what he does is well done. It were not good for man to know his destiny. The sense of duty would falter or be unstrung, if we were assured of the failure or success of our aims. It is because we do not know the future, that we retain our energy of duty, So on will I go in my work, with the full energy of my humble abilities, without ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... only ones who were thoroughly at ease. Barclay and Natalie, unstrung by the events of the day, ate little and talked listlessly. Dorothy, victim to an inward excitement which was half happiness and half disappointment, chattered feverishly. Rathbawne was wrapped in his own thoughts, and his wife, innocently unobservant of emotional manifestations in any and every ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... has plenty of support): God; road; last, waste; taught, not; break, cheek (two instances); ground, moaned; both, youth; rise, arise; song, stung; steel, fell; light, delight; part, depart; wert, heart; wrong, tongue; brow, so; moan, one; crown, tone; song, unstrung; knife, grief; mourn, burn; dawn, moan; bear, bear; blot, thought; renown, Chatterton; thought, not; approved, reproved; forth, earth; nought, not; home, tomb; thither, together; wove, of; riven, heaven. These are 34 instances of irregularity. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured garments and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue paper. It was a morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George's image constantly before her, and this was what her remorseful mood demanded. Her nerves were unstrung and her limbs languid after the recent tempest. By-and-by she locked the doors of the wardrobe, and passing into her own bedroom, flung herself on a couch with a bundle of papers—old bills, soiled and folded memoranda, sporting paragraphs cut from the newspapers—scraps ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... indifferent to the success of the Union, we should not forget that reaction against the softening and humanizing effect of modern civilization, led by such men as Carlyle, and joined in by a multitude whose intellectual and moral fibre is too much unstrung to be excited by anything less pungent than paradox. Protestants against the religion which sacrifices to the polished idol of Decorum and translates Jehovah by Comme-il-faut, they find even the divine manhood of Christ too tame for them, and transfer their allegiance to the shaggy Thor with his ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... he tried and failed, And still that lean, persistent dog At distance, like some spirit wailed, Safe in the cover of a fog. His nerves unstrung, with many a shout He strove to frighten it away, It would not go—but roamed about, Howling, as ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... "until I quiet my nerves a little. I am all unstrung." He felt her body tremble as it pressed ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... admitted the young pitcher modestly, as he thought of the times he pitched when his arm ached, and when his nerves were all unstrung on account of the receipt of bad news. "But other fellows worked hard, too," he went on. "You've got to ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... Tarrano's voice simulated sudden alarm; he scuffled his feet on the floor. The men jumped with fright; nerves unstrung, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... with held-back sobs or wailed softly. According to the custom that had unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... to have collected rather from the pleasure and reputation attached to such pursuits than from a thorough and keen relish of the kind of taste which it imparts. He had an ample purse, and it was most liberally unstrung when there was occasion for effectual aid. This observation may equally apply to matters out of the bibliomaniacal record; but as a book-purchaser he was considered among the most heavy-metalled and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... happiness. She once announced that she could not wish her daughter a happier fate. It may, however, be expected that destiny will save Mademoiselle Ada from that kind of happiness. From being a chubby, rosy child, she has changed into a pale, weak-chested girl, and her nerves are already unstrung. The number of Varvara Pavlovna's admirers has diminished, but they have not disappeared. Some of them she will, in all probability, retain to the end of her days. The most ardent of them in recent times has been a certain Zakurdalo-Skubyrnikof, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... back from his proposal with a sudden realization of what a desperately brutal thing this unstrung creature was about to do, with a terrible arraignment of self-reproach because she had made no effort to dissuade him or place an obstacle in the way of accomplishing his design. It was not strange, thought she, with a revulsion of self-loathing, that he accepted her as ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of my veins as it embraced me with a slimy kiss. Such dreams are not restful. I woke anything but refreshed when the morning came. And when I got up and dressed I felt that, on the whole, it would perhaps have been better if I never had gone to bed. My nerves were unstrung, and I had that generally tremulous feeling which is, I believe, an inseparable companion of the more advanced stages of dipsomania. I ate no breakfast. I am no breakfast eater as a rule, but that ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... excellent constitution is proof against its pernicious effects."—"It once did not yield to the strength of mind with which nature has endowed me, but the transition from a life of action to a complete seclusion has ruined all. I have grown fat, my energy is gone, the bow is unstrung." Antommarchi did not try to combat an opinion but too well-founded, but diverted the conversation to another subject. "I resign myself," said Napoleon, "to your direction. Let medicine give the order, I submit to its decisions. I entrust my health to your care. I owe you the detail of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Anna ought to have had a qualified nurse. Mother gives way to her. Mother spoils her. I wonder what she meant by saying I'd worried Anna yesterday. Nice remark to make to a husband at a time like this. Unstrung, I suppose—and my ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... to each Indian, so that the latter might not lose sight of him, even this, I believe would be insufficient. For scarcely has one left them for any short space of time, when they return to their natural way of life—just like the bow which, when strung, is bent; but, when unstrung, at once straightens ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... Plume, unstrung and shaken, "but hold you your tongue or I'll find a separate cell for you. No woman shall be knifing my men, and go unpunished, if I can help it," and so saying he turned ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... all unstrung. Why couldn't you have let him come in and talk awhile? It would have been the best way to get me quieted down. But no; you must always have your own way Don't twitch me, my dear; I'd rather undress myself. You pretend to be very careful of me. ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... round than any rose half-spread, Yet ever twisted with some nervous dread. He would have made her with one marble foot, Frail as a snow-white feather, forward put, Bearing sweet medicine for all distress, Smooth languor and unstrung forgetfulness; The other held a little back for dread; One slender moonpale hand held forth to shed Soft slumber dripping from its pearly tip Into wide eyes; the other on her lip. So in the watches of his sleepless care The cunning artist would have wrought her fair; Shy goddess, at keen ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... that he could have given any real reason for his emotion. But he was somewhat unstrung by the event. And a number of tumultuous feelings were stirring deeply in him. He turned hot and cold at the thought of his own possible cowardice. And then he felt a reaction of shame in the thought that ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and now, after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest depression took possession of his mind. Exhausted, unstrung, full of loathing of himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over the occurrences of the last ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was an exhausted artist—unnerved, unstrung, unfitted for the world, yet only showing it in a languid appreciation which her host and hostess were the first to understand. Indeed, it was the great lady who carried her off, bowing with her platform ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... nights, I stole from my needed rest to read and ponder on our human fate. Sundays! Things after a day's labour incomprehensible to my stunned brain were easily grasped on a glorious morning of religious leisure. The apathy of my fellows—how well I understood it when, with nerves unstrung and muscles relaxed, after a tense twelve hours of toil, I fell asleep over my beloved books! And how well, too, I understood their amusement—the appeal of the poor man's club!—when in gay carousal we tried to forget what we were. Even in the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... as I mused, touching all unconsciously the strings of my lute which was lying in my hands suddenly a thought came into my mind of its own accord. And I took the lute and unstrung it, and chose from among its strings one, which I rolled like a bangle on my wrist. And I said to the lute aloud: Old love, we will work together: for if indeed she is my enemy, she is thine as well. And if, as those assassins said, she is only a body without ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... nothing but a frightening sensation all over her body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived. She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone. Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run so far that it was a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... easy prey to the methodist; her sensibility and acute fears rendered her accessible to every impulse; her love for her child made her eager to cling to the merest straw held out to save him. Her mind, once unstrung, and now tuned by roughest inharmonious hands, made her credulous: beautiful as fabled goddess, with voice of unrivalled sweetness, burning with new lighted enthusiasm, she became a stedfast proselyte, and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... it would be wiser, Alice, for you to leave Sally and me alone for a little time; she is tired and unstrung. If you and the other girls have been unfair, you will have an opportunity to apologize later. Then Sally herself will feel more ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... for a moment, when he said, in a voice Grey would never have known as his: "When did she die? Tell me all about it, please, but tell it very slowly, word by word, or I shall not understand you. I seem to be terribly unstrung, it is so sudden and awful. Bessie dead!" and he stared at Grey with eyes which did not seem to see anything before them, but rather to be looking at something far away in ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... would stop to think," said Henry, "you would know that your trouble is mostly physical. Your nerves are unstrung. The public is not so willing to believe any story that Brooks may tell. The Colossus will not be injured. But I know that you place very little faith in what I say." The merchant looked at him. "But mark my words: Your standing will not be lowered—the Colossus will not show any ill effect. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the balcony rail, they watched the Pasig running wickedly below; and across, stretching away to where the stars lay low in the rim of the horizon, the wet teeming rice-lands brooded in the night-mist.... The piano, which had seemed unstrung from the voyage, as he passed through the house, sounded but faintly now through several shut doors. The ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... with nerves unstrung, I opened my door with my latch-key and returned to my room, where the reading-lamp had burned low, for it had been alight all through the night. I mixed myself a stiff brandy and soda, tossed it off, and then turned to look at myself ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... it for this the Spanish maid, aroused, Hangs on the willow her unstrung guitar, And, all unsexed, the anlace hath espoused, Sung the loud song, and dared the deed of war? And she, whom once the semblance of a scar Appalled, an owlet's larum chilled with dread, Now views the column-scattering bayonet jar, The falchion flash, and o'er the yet warm dead Stalks ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... room and put her arm around Lois, standing by her mother. "Let's you an' me get her in her bedroom, an' have her lay down on the bed, an' try an' quiet her," she whispered. "She's all unstrung. Mebbe ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... frequently deranged, the bowels costive, the urethra, by being pressed, becomes irritable and burns and smarts whenever the urine is evacuated. The sleep is disturbed and unrefreshing, and the whole nervous system is unstrung. ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... sometimes better than open speech. Facing adventure, I remembered that I had never known the want of food for any length of time during my conscious life. And I had a suspicion the soft life at De Chaumont's had unstrung me for what was before me. But it lasted scarce a year, and I was built ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... panted. "I'd forgotten. I'm unstrung, Mr. Annixter, and I'm running for my life. They're ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... where my will had to capitulate to Unreason—that unscrupulous usurper. My previous five years as a neurasthenic had led me to believe that I had experienced all the disagreeable sensations an overworked and unstrung nervous system could suffer. But on this day several new and terrifying sensations seized me and rendered me all but helpless. My condition, however, was not apparent even to those who worked with me at the same desk. I remember trying to speak and at ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... indeed the truth. The iron nature, so long overwrought, now utterly unstrung, had yielded for the first time to the stress of nature and of events. The relief from what he had taken to be death had come swiftly, and the reaction brought a lethal calm of its own. If he had indeed recognized ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... could not honestly pretend that she did; yet it had its sufficiently sinister side, its occasional admixture of sheer horror. But this was only when the mysteries which encompassed her happened to prey upon nerves unstrung by some outwardly exciting cause; it was then she would have given back all that he had ever given her to pierce the veil of her husband's past. Here, however, the impulse was more subtle; it was not the mere consuming ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... kind and good to Josiah [his stepson]. She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised." His mind was then too full of what was to be done; not as after the Nile, when, unstrung by reaction from the exhausting emotions of the past months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of men, so she longed to leave them behind her and die in bitterness less bitter for its solitude. But Maya fled not from herself: the winds wailed like the crying of despair in her harp-voiced pines; the shining oak-leaves rustled hisses upon her unstrung ear; the timid forest-creatures, who own no rule but patient love and caresses, hid from her defiant step and dazzling eye; and when she knew herself in no wise healed by the ministries of Nature, in the very apathy of desperation she flung herself by the clear fountain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... carried his new weapon proudly, hungering for the love and admiration of this girl of his, and eager to show her its powers and to exhibit his own skill. At his back hung his quiver of mammoth bone. His bow, unstrung, was in his hand. In front of the cave was a bare area of many yards in extent, then came a few scattering trees and, at a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, the forest began. Across the open ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Give me your arm that I may lean upon it, for I grow tired. It is the heat, not that I am ill or weaker; the heat, the heat, and I grow tired. And yet I must walk: I cannot rest; no, not for a moment; this—this horror has unstrung me." ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... necessary for me to take a short rest. Recent excitement in Manti has left me very nervous and unstrung. I shall be away from Manti for about two weeks, I think. During my absence any pending litigation must ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... my heart is unstrung; and to gladness Respond not its chords—but to sorrow and sadness:— Then speak not of mirth which my soul hath forsaken! Why would ye my heart-breaking ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... had made his examination of the wrecked car to confirm what the doctor had already observed. It took several minutes for them to satisfy themselves and meanwhile Violet Winslow, already highly unstrung by the news from Garrick, waited more and ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... I said, "because I'm hardly myself. I'm tired and excited, unstrung, as I always am on first ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... ails me to-night," said he, "my nerves are unstrung. I will leave you, for I need rest myself. I shall start to-morrow morning before you are up, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... so honest looking a man could be a murderer. The good woman was shocked, and not a little unstrung by the thought that she had been in the house alone when he had come and that if he had wished to he ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... light, without a blot; No moment of unkindness shrouding, No speck of anger overclouding: An awful and a sweet controul, A rainbow arching o'er the soul; A soothing, tender thrill, which clung Around the heart, while, all unstrung, The thought was still, and mute ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Mrs. O'Hara. Some considerable way back I met her toiling along with an infant in her arms, while a little child held on to her skirt, utterly tired out with the long walk. I helped her to finish the distance to the doctor's tent; she was so unstrung by her terrible night's experience and so exhausted by her trying march carrying the baby that she was scarcely able to speak. Dr. Rose at once did all he could both for her and for the children, the ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... soul. The music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... with the string of the bow slacked. If so, for what reason was it done before swimming? We can understand that it would be of advantage to keep the string dry, but how is it better protected when unstrung? Or, again, was it carried unstrung, and literally 'bent' before swimming? Or was the bow solid enough to be of support ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... to the salon. I was so unstrung that Mademoiselle, who in the meantime had returned, administered a cup of camomile tea to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... unstrung to auction off any stuff," admitted Matt. "That first scare was enough to take the heart right out of a fellow. You go ahead if you wish, and I'll clean out the window and get things ready for that new frame ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... others, besides being now able to draw on my own memories. Frances I had talked with on and off about their early married years ever since I had first known them, but she was, alas, too ill and consequently too emotionally unstrung during the last months for me to ask her all the questions springing in my mind. "Tell Maisie," she said to Dorothy Collins, "not to talk to me about ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... unstrung, and for two or three days the very mention of school brought on a fit of hysterical crying, and she begged that she might be allowed to go to some boarding-school at a distance, anywhere—away from Busyborough. Mrs. Woburn was inclined to yield to her wish; but her father would ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... laughed again, but not heartily. He felt that this marble ship was a conception of high humor and was not without its pathetic element. The whimsicality of the idea amused him, but the sad earnestness of the nervous, unstrung visionary at his side moved ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... smelling-salts from the chimney-piece. He hastened to obey, and found himself kneeling beside the sofa, holding the bottle to her nose. After a while she recovered sufficiently to tell him that she had not slept at all during the night, and felt extremely unwell and quite unstrung in consequence. Another fit of immoderate and tearful laughter followed, and Hyacinth, embarrassed and alarmed, fetched a tumbler of soda-water from the syphon on the sideboard. The lady refused to swallow any, and, just ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... carefully which end bends the most; then shave down the other side until it bends evenly. The middle scarcely bends at all. The perfect shape, when bent, is shown in Cut II. Trim the bow down to your strength and finish smoothly with sandpaper and glass. It should be straight when unstrung, and unstrung when not in use. Fancy curved bows are weak affairs. The bow for our boy should require a power of fifteen or twenty pounds (shown on a spring balance) to draw the string twenty-three inches from the bow; not more. The best string is of hemp or linen; it should ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... unstrung, and while a tremulous smile hovered about his mouth, his eyes so moistened that he turned toward the wall. After a moment he said, "Miss Walton, I am ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... two men returned with water and salts. After a while Ethel opened her eyes and looked up at Peg. Peg, fearful lest she should begin to accuse herself again, helped her up the stairs to her own room and there she sat beside the unstrung, hysterical girl until she slept, her hand locked in ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... age for myself, and again the sudden palpitation in my veins nearly prompted me to send my horses into a gallop. But instantly I checked myself. Not yet, I thought. On that long stretch north, beyond the bridge, there I was going to drive them at their utmost speed. I was unstrung, I told myself; this was mere sentimentalism; no emotional impulses were of any value; careful planning only counted. So I even pulled the horses back to a walk. I wanted to feed them shortly ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... communication to Mr. Brandram the plan which I conceived to be the best for circulating that portion of the edition of the New Testament which remains unsold at Madrid, and I scarcely needed a stimulant in the execution of my duty. At present however I know not what to do; I am sorrowful, disappointed, and unstrung. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... in use the bow was always left unstrung. To string it for use, it was necessary in cold weather to warm it, thus making it more elastic and easily bent. The best strings were also made of sinew, or of pax-wax cartilage, ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... although I had accomplished the journey through the earth three times with entire safety, I shrank with dread from the thought of jumping once more in the dark hole beneath. I suppose the trials which I had just endured had unstrung my nerves, and that the solemn hour of the night made the leap seem all the more fearful. And yet through I must go. China was not the place for me to remain in any longer; and so I stepped down some two or three feet into the cavity, and stood upon a little projection of rock, feeling that it ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... reached aft to pull it loose with his teeth and had encountered a second sheet laid on a chair. This had stuck to his neck. Job was an apprehensive animal by nature and as the result of experience, and his nerves were easily unstrung. He forgot the shovel, forgot the human whom he had been fearfully trying to propitiate, forgot everything except the dreadful objects which clung to him and pulled his hair. He rolled from beneath the table, a shrieking, kicking, snapping ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a child in the yard or on the back steps will give invaluable information. This is particularly true when the older persons are attempting to conceal facts or are too much excited from a death or an accident to talk. Children usually are less unstrung by distressing events and can give a more connected account. Moreover, they are almost always willing to talk, and they generally try to ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... in all probability, had he not been unstrung by the knowledge that four of his comrades were working to secure the evidence which should warrant his expulsion from the Naval Academy. Oppressed by dread, this young scoundrel was not capable of doing his best ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... division of mind and body, of will, emotion, understanding; the division is good in logic, but its convenient lines are lost to us as we watch a being with soul all blurred, body all shaken, unstrung, poisoned, by erotic mania, rising in slow clouds of mephitic steam from suddenly heated stagnancies of the blood, and turning the reality of conduct and duty into distant unmeaning shadows. If such a disease were the furious mood of the brute in spring-time, it would ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... no, James, I wasn't practising. I was at a big gathering last night, and my hands are unstrung like. We'll talk for a while, and then I'll go out ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... binding law, But ground them with inexorable jaw: The luscious fat distilled upon his chin, Exuded from his nostrils and his eyes, 30 While still like hungry death he fed his maw; Till every minor crocodile being dead And buried too, himself gorged to the full, He slept with breath oppressed and unstrung claw. Oh marvel passing strange which next I saw: In sleep he dwindled to the common size, And all the empire faded from his coat. Then from far off a winged vessel came, Swift as a swallow, subtle as a flame: I know not what it bore of freight or host, 40 But white it was ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... had been a severe one upon the zealous Mr. Holcombe, who found himself at the end of it in a very bad way, with nerves unstrung and brain so fagged that he assented without question when his doctor exiled him from New York by ordering a sea voyage, with change of environment and rest at the other end of it. Some one else suggested the northern coast of Africa and Tangier, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... behind thy clouds. Stars of the night, arise! Lead me, some light, to the place where my love rests from the chase alone! His bow near him unstrung, his dogs panting around him! But here I must sit alone by the rock of the mossy stream. The stream and the wind roar aloud. I hear not the voice of my love! Why delays my Salgar; why the chief of the hill his promise? Here is the rock and here the tree! here ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... as usual, undisturbed by anything from without, the confessions which now fell from her lips so easily would never have found words. But she had been unsettled by what had happened in the early evening, and unstrung by her great anxiety for the Count's safety. Her own words sounded in her ear before she knew that she was going ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford |
