"Benumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or start when Mr. Fullarton's words caught her ear, but a heavy, chill faintness stole over her, till she felt all her limbs benumbed, and every thing before her eyes grew misty and dim. The numbness passed away almost immediately, but still the figures around her appeared distorted and fantastically exaggerated; they seemed to be tossing and whirling round one steadfast centre, as the dead ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Newbolt's; probably she walked, for there were no cabs in that part of town and no car line passed Mrs. Newbolt's door. The time after she left Mrs. O'Brien's was a blank. Even when she had swallowed the hot whisky, and began to feel warmer, she was still mentally benumbed, and couldn't remember what she had done. She did not notice Johnny Bennett; she saw Edith, but did not, apparently, understand that she was staying in the house. When the doctor came she was as silent to him as to ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... craves All dues be rend'red to their owners. Now, What nearer debt in all humanity Than wife is to the husband? If this law Of nature be corrupted through affection; And that great minds, of partial indulgence To their benumbed wills, resist the same; There is a law in each well-order'd nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory. If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta's king— As it is known she is-these moral laws Of nature and of nations speak aloud ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... mental or physical, reaches a certain degree of acuteness, partial insensibility sets in—I have known cases where men have slept while being subjected to the most awful tortures—and such was undoubtedly the case with me on that memorable night. My sensibility had become so benumbed that I had partially lost control of my mental processes, and my thoughts broke away at intervals to dwell for a few moments upon some entirely trivial matter which, one would have supposed, could not possibly have had the slightest interest for me, under the circumstances. Yet so it was; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... few words have sufficed to show that Ina Klosking's heart was all benumbed and deadened; and, with the help of insult, treachery, loss of blood, brain-fever, and self-esteem rebelling against villainy, had outlived its power ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the sombre low-hanging clouds, from which a few flakes of snow fell, her terror vanished suddenly before the excitement which ran through her body. She forgot her hunger, her loneliness, her shivering flesh, her benumbed and aching feet. A sensation not unlike the one with which the rector had marched into his first battle, fortified and exhilarated her. The fighting blood of of her ancestors grew warm in her veins. New York developed suddenly from a mere spot on a map into a romance made into brick; ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... generally refused to follow the head in these fantastic movements. Hence, after a short spell of St. Vitus' activity, there always came a time of strife, followed only too often by torpor, when the body reduced the head to a state of benumbed subjection. The triumph of rural notions accounts for the reactions of 1831-47, and 1851-70. Paris having once more regained freedom of movement by the fall of the Second Empire on September 4, at once sought to begin her politico-social experiments, and, as we pointed ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... upon their chins to a prodigious length. Their mouths were forced open to such a wideness, that their jaws went out of joint, only to clap again together, with a force like that of a spring lock. Shoulder-blades, elbows, wrists, and knees were similarly affected. Sometimes the sufferer was benumbed, or drawn violently together, and immediately afterwards stretched out ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which broke the shock) and the lion was on the top of me, and the next those great white teeth of his had met in my thigh—I heard them grate against the bone. I yelled out in agony, for I did not feel in the least benumbed and happy, like Dr. Livingstone—who, by the way, I knew very well—and gave myself up for dead. But suddenly, as I did so, the lion's grip on my thigh loosened, and he stood over me, swaying to and fro, his huge mouth, from which the blood was gushing, wide open. Then he ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely ever a miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away with them. The last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of coffee, marked "Commercial Breeding of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... increased; the wind howled, and whirled the snow into huge heaps. In the hope that he might possibly meet a traveler, the child forced his way for awhile through the snow; but at last, exhausted, benumbed with the cold, and discouraged, he fell upon his knees, joined his hands devoutly together, and cried, as he raised his face, bathed in tears, toward heaven, 'O my God! have mercy on a poor child, who has nobody in the world to care for him!' As he lay in the place where ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... in the garden below. Her garden! Is it possible? Something in the action reminds him of that bright, hopeful morning at Calais. Something in the scent of the flowers steals to his brain, half torpid and benumbed; his heart contracts with an agony of physical suffering. "My darling! my darling!" he murmurs, "shall I never see you tying those flowers again?" and turning from the window, he falls on his knees by the bedside with a passionate burst of weeping ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... washed off, and had not been so fortunate as we were, in getting hold of a spar. Strange as it may seem, I scarcely for a moment expected to lose my own life. In a cold climate I do not think I could have held on as I did, but the sea was warm, and I did not feel in any way benumbed. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... sudden joy filled Scraggy's heart. Her benumbed love for Lem Crabbe grew mighty in a moment and rushed over her. His words were softly spoken with an old-time inflection. She sank down with a cry. She was so near him that the cat rose and spat venomously. Lem's curses brought Scraggy out ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... seemed to be—that was the unshaped thought in the back of his brain. There were explanations to make which had not yet been made. If he told himself that he had solved the problem by leaving the house, he knew in reality that he had not done so. He was benumbed, bewildered. He must get back his reasoning faculties, and then he would see more clearly, both as to what had been done and what ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... came to her—perhaps it was a dream—a sound as of voices whispering together. She turned in her sleep and tried to listen, but her senses were fogged, benumbed. She could not at the moment drag herself free from the stupor of weariness that held her. But she was sure of Peter, quite sure that he would call her if any emergency arose. And there was no one with whom ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... of the bladder has become benumbed or paralyzed by overdistention, we may seek to restore its tone by doses of one-half a dram of powdered nux vomica repeated daily, and by mustard plaster applied over the loins, on the back part of the belly inferiorly, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened—even through the spear by which it is itself wounded—that while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed without sense or motion. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... land. Many of them leaked, some were abandoned, and provisions ran short. The weather became cold and rainy. The whole rear division, with its officers, lost heart and turned back, taking with them a large share of food and ammunition. The rest toiled on through swamps and mire, half-starved and benumbed with cold. Many perished, some lost their way, and the men of one company were reduced to eating their dogs and gnawing the leather of their shoes. It was not until November 9 that Arnold's troops, a ragged and shivering ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... her veins. He quickly went forward, met him, and shut him out, persuading him, with difficulty, to remain outside, and giving him the occupation of sending out for an anodyne—since the best hope, at present, lay in encouraging the torpor that had benumbed her crushed faculties. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Burns's "Wounded Hare," And certain burning lines of Blake's, And Ruskin on the fowls of air, And Coleridge on the water-snakes. At Emerson's "Forbearance" he Began to feel his will benumbed; At Browning's "Donald" utterly His soul surrendered ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... we began to try to move about, and gradually straighten ourselves, which was something of an effort, stiffened and benumbed as we were with remaining in our wet clothing so many hours. We had now an opportunity of examining our habitation. It was a building of about four hundred feet long, by seventy-five or eighty wide, three stories high, and built of stone, with massive doors and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... Motionless, benumbed, as if struck by lightning, remained the prince upon the threshold; behind him were seen the astonished faces of his generals, who, on tiptoe, stretched their necks to gaze, over each other's shoulders, upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... however, discovered that it was not diffidence, but indifference toward others that characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love and sympathy had been denied. Unconsciously his heart had become chilled, benumbed and overshadowed by his intellect. The actual world gave him little and seemed to promise less, and, as a result not at all unnatural, he became something of a recluse and bookworm even before he had left behind him the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... desperately keen to extract a Gurkha Brigade out of Egypt and you might lend a hand, not only to us, but to all your own Sikh and Dogra Regiments, by making K. see that the Indian Army was never given a dog's chance in the mudholes. They were benumbed: it was not their show. Here, in the warm sun; pitted against the hereditary dushman[9] who comes on shouting 'Allah!' they would gain much izzat.[10] Now mind, if you see any chance of an Indian contingent for Constantinople, do everyone a good ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... lay, quaking, when all the caitiffs had departed, and the black, chill night received me into itself. At first my mind was benumbed, like my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the boughs through which I had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear. I turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the sky, but nothing fell on me from heaven save a cold rain, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... not repulse her—that is beyond him—but in this new strange voice of his there is assuredly no welcome. He feels choking. The dead past is so horribly dead that he cannot bear to look upon it. He feels cold—benumbed. What is he to say to her, or she to him? Must this battle be fought? And through all this weary wondering there is ever present ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... seems to say:— Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast, Which neither deadens into rest, Nor ever feels the fiery glow That whirls the spirit from itself away, But fluctuates to and fro, Never by passion quite possessed And never quite benumbed by the world's sway?— And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield, and be Like all the other men ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the coachman and returned home, profoundly depressed, with a desire to take to her bed, to see no one, to sleep and forget. Having shut herself up in her room, she remained there until the dinner hour, lying on a couch, benumbed, not wishing to agitate herself longer with that thought ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... we met in the public garden, I took you back at the end of the afternoon through the suburbs. The road was so peaceful and quiet that our footsteps seemed to disturb nature. Benumbed by emotion, we slackened our pace. I leaned over ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... that, from a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness in vice. But, no—there is not even one!" Massillon, the great preacher of truth and morality, said: "The worm of conscience is not dead; it is only benumbed. The alienated reason presently returns, bringing with it bitter troubles, gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties"—a true ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... this like a man whose brain is benumbed by the crashing echoes of a thunderbolt, hardly aware of the fury of the speaker, but this final threat cleared his mind and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... last from this night of marching, across concentric circles as it seems, of darkness less dark, then of half-shadow, then of gloomy light. Legs have a wooden stiffness, backs are benumbed, shoulders bruised. Faces are still so gray or so black, one would say they had but half rid themselves of the night. Now, indeed, one never ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... exhausted, he could say no more. So while the chief still held the little ivory compass, and watched the quivering needle, his followers led Smith away to his own camp fire. Here lay the other white men dead, thrust through with many arrows. And here the Indians warmed and chafed his benumbed body, and treated him with all the kindness they knew. But that brought Smith little comfort. For he knew it was the Indian way. A famous warrior might be sure of kindness at their hands if they meant in the end to slay him ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... his body out of the mud puddle, while the eyes of his pale youthful face were already covered with the film of death. But no one paid the slightest attention to either of them. Each one felt upon himself the keen, merciless eye of the enemy and dared not budge or even stretch out a benumbed foot. A grey soldier attempted once to change his place, whereupon three shots thundered from the other side, and the man only turned over and remained still. Later two men were killed, one on each side, and again ...
— The Shield • Various
... extremely alarming. Had I been capable of comprehending my condition, I would have invoked aid and advice on my knees. The narcotic of an unsuspected influence was acting upon me, and my perceptions were benumbed. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rigging were seen small objects, which were found to be the crew, and in answer to the shouts of the lifeboatmen they came down and crawled or clung along the sea-beaten weather rail. Half benumbed with terror and despair and lashed by ceaseless waves, they slowly came along towards the lifeboat, and the state of affairs at that moment was described by one of the lifeboatmen as, 'Yes, bitter dark it were, and rainin' heavens hard, with ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... devoted to selected works from modern artists. Two of these I would give every thing I have to possess. One of them is a winter scene, representing the portico of an old Gothic church. At the base of one of the pillars a woman is seated in the snow, half-benumbed, clasping an infant to her breast, while immediately in front stands a boy of perhaps seven or eight years, his little hands folded in prayer, while the chill wind tosses the long curls from his forehead. There ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... began to stretch our poor limbs which, besides being stiffened and benumbed by the horrors of the past night, and the thick dew that had fallen upon us, had also been an unconscious prey ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... who had escaped with their lives. The cloak of the dead man was lying underneath him; it was a capote, such as are worn by officers. I unclasped it from his neck, round which it was fastened with two bear's-paws chased in silver, and, wrapping it round my benumbed limbs, proceeded further on to where I now occasionally heard voices much plainer than before. I again fell in with two more prostrate bodies, and, as the day had now begun to break, perceived that they were clothed like ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... they saw him before them in safety. Calmly he renewed his orders, saying that his life was the last and least consideration, and they were obliged to obey, leaving the ship in as orderly a manner as if they were going ashore in harbor. But they were so benumbed with cold that many were unable to climb the rock and were swept off by 5 the waves; among these ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... blocks of ice, which would have submerged and sunk them with their weight; in a word, warring even to the death with cold, the greatest enemy of life. This marvelous feat was accomplished by our French pontoon corps. Many perished, borne away by the current or benumbed by the cold. The glory of this achievement, in my opinion, exceeds ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... was securely pinioned. Very gently he placed Annadoah upon the mass of walrus meat and lashed her body in turn to the sled and about the stakes. With Maisanguaq's assistance he tied the cowering dogs to the harpoons. This done, the two men, benumbed and dazed, clung ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... not carried very far, however. In a moment or two he had recovered himself, and crept out gasping and laughing, just below Mercy. Ian did not move. He was so benumbed that to change his position an inch would, he well knew, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... exposed to all the inclemency of the weather both by day and night. Sometimes they were overtaken by snow-storms, when they would have to struggle on for their lives. Sometimes, after riding a stage in severe frost, they would have to be lifted from their saddles benumbed with cold and unable to dismount. At other times accidents of a different kind happened to them, and, as has been shown, they sometimes lost ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... solicitude in their efforts to revive me, which I took especial care they should not accomplish too quickly. But, oh, what exquisite torment was mine when, my bonds being released, the blood once more began to circulate through my benumbed members! I could have screamed aloud with the excruciating agony, had not my pride prevented me; and it was a full hour before I had sufficiently recovered the use of my hands to enable me to convey food and drink to my lips. The food and drink provided ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... spirit he rose benumbed, yet calmed, as one who feels that he has made his last effort and can do no more. He opened the door of his study and listened. There was no sound. The children had all gone to bed. He turned back to the old table to work until midnight ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... give an electric response. Finding that a universal reaction brought together metals, plants and animals under a common law, he next proceeded to a study of modifications in response, which occur under various conditions. He found that they are all benumbed by cold, intoxicated by alcohol, wearied by excessive work, stupified by anaesthetics, excited by electric currents, stung by physical blows and killed by poison—they all exhibit essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... slaves grew fainter and yet fainter in their horrible workroom, and the lash of the whips resounded the more often. Hernando was lashed twice, for no real reason that his companions could discover. The second blow curled across the muscle of his arm and benumbed it for a while, and Johnnie whispered him to move in rhythm with them, whilst he and Jeffreys did the actual rowing. The fellow was grateful, and vowed by the Virgin never to ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... terror and joy. My gestures and looks enjoined upon her silence. I stooped down, and, taking another hatchet, cut asunder the deer-skin thongs by which her wrists and ankles were tied. I then made signs for her to rise and follow me. She willingly complied with my directions; but her benumbed joints and lacerated sinews refused to support her. There was no time to be lost; I therefore lifted her in my arms, and, feeble and tottering as I was, proceeded with this burden along the perilous steep and over a ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... 'coward as well as traitor! If thou hast the slightest spark of manhood in thee, cause these thy fellows to unbind my hands, give me back my father's sword, stand face to face against me on the greensward, and, benumbed and frozen as I am, thou shalt yet feel the arm of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... much at ease—not chill, as I ought to have been after sitting so still for at least two hours; my cheek and arms were not benumbed by pressure against the hard desk. No wonder. Instead of the bare wood on which I had laid them, I found a thick shawl, carefully folded, substituted for support, and another shawl (both taken from the corridor where such things ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Self-consciousness now was like an iron band about him, the devilish thing that constricts a talent. The hideous knowledge that he was surrounded by women, intent on him and what he was supposed to be doing, benumbed his intellect. He imagined the cook in the kitchen discussing his talent with a rolling-pin in her hand, Charmian's maid musing over his oddities, with a mouth full of pins, and patterns on her lap. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and ears of the pedestrians, their feet began to pain them so that each step was a penance, and when they reached the open country it looked so mournful and depressing in its limitless mantle of white that they all hastily retraced their steps, with bodies benumbed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... he had put off the evil moment till the postponement had become cruel. But he had lived through it so often in thought, he had so acutely suffered with her in imagination the staggering humiliation of it all, that now, when the time had come, his feelings were benumbed. As he turned into his own grounds that day it seemed to him that his deadness of emotion was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room he might ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... o'clock we reached Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... salutary to be rejected; but there is likewise some danger lest timorous prudence should be inculcated till courage and enterprise are wholly repressed and the mind congested in perpetual inactivity by the fatal influence of frigorifick wisdom.' Is there not some danger, we ask, that the mind will be benumbed into perpetual torpidity by the influence of this soporific sapience? It is still true, however, that this Johnsonese, so often burlesqued and ridiculed, was, as far as we can judge, a genuine product. Macaulay ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups of coffee that were placed before them. He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of him and felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming. He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma. Events thus far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to raise the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... all sorry to be saved that trudge of a mile in the face of those bitter blasts of sleet; and he was greatly obliged to Sir Keith Macleod for stopping his pony, and getting out his pencil with his benumbed fingers, and putting his initials to the sheet. And then, again, when he had got into Glen Finichen, he was talking to the pony and saying,—"Well, Jack, I don't wonder you want to stop, for the way this sleet gets down one's throat is rather ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... departed were praised with emphasis, but the masculine pronouns originally used were altered above the lines all throughout to feminine pronouns, and the word "brother" to "sister," so that no difficulty might arise in reading it for either sex. I was faint, benumbed, and with no heart for anything. I talked for about half-an-hour about what I considered to be the real meaning of the death of Christ, thinking that this was a subject which might prove as ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... immediately, but looked at Deronda again, straining to see him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the oar. It seemed as if she were half roused, and wondered which part of her impression was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her. Her look was full of wondering timidity such as the forsaken one in the desert might have lifted to the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed. The rapidity with which this work was composed, is a wonderful circumstance. Johnson has been heard to say, 'I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... struck the waters and dragged at a frightful speed through the lake, compelling the passengers to stand on the edge of the basket and cling to the ropes, the cold so intense they were well-nigh benumbed. At length they were rescued by a passing boat, but this was not until after three o'clock in ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Grace," says he, "to understand that witches and sorcerers within these four last years are marvellously increased within Your Grace's realm; Your Grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God," continues the courtly preacher, "they never practise further than upon the subject." The petition of the polite prelate appears to have been answered. The virgin queen resisted ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... — N. numbness &c (physical insensibility) 376; anaesthesia; pins and needles. V. benumb &c 376. Adj. numb; benumbed &c v.; deadened; intangible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in that crowd, as if they expected something, or were benumbed by sorrow, or tried to catch the last echo of sobbing despair, carried away by a ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... here they certainly looked most pitiable objects. Whilst searching for water the weather was most favourable, although sometimes freezingly cold when travelling at night; so much so that to keep ourselves from getting benumbed Mr. Bourne and I often walked. Being able only to take a small quantity of water with us Jemmy, who was suffering very much from his back, injured by the burning, felt often very thirsty but, poor fellow, we could only spare ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... is now become trackless, and he wanders amid the dreary solitudes until night overtakes him; and then, when he pauses from fatigue or uncertainty with regard to the path he should pursue, his limbs are speedily benumbed. Fatal slumbers, which he cannot shake off, steal upon him, and he crouches under some ledge and sleeps, to wake no more. The snow drifts on. It is almost continually falling, and he is soon concealed ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Made the straps of steel and copper, Waited long without the dwelling, Long I listened at the portals, Hoping he would end his ravings, Hoping he would sink to slumber, But he did not seek for resting, Did not wish to still his fury. Finally the cold benumbed me; As an outcast from his cabin, I was forced to walk and wander, When I, freezing, well reflected, This the substance of my thinking: 'I will not endure this torture, Will not bear this thing forever, Will not bear this cruel treatment, Such contempt I will not suffer In the wicked tribe of ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... embrace, when his eyes met the sight of her before-agitated features tranquillized in death. She fell from his palsied arms back on the couch, and he stood gazing on her as if struck by a power which had benumbed all his faculties. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... twice, twice she had failed him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember," again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to her. If ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... growing very serious, all their food having been consumed and they left in imminent danger of starvation. Many of them were reduced to eat the leaves of the trees in their extremity. They found themselves also benumbed with cold as they spent the night unsheltered on the chilly river-bank. During the next day their route followed the stream, the canoes being dragged along, or rowed where the water was of sufficient depth. The Spaniards still carried away all food from ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... suffer. From October, 1795, to the January following, an accident confined him to his house. A few days after he began to go out, he dined at a tavern, and returned home about three o'clock of a very cold morning, benumbed and intoxicated. This was followed by rheumatism. He was never well again, though he lived until the end of June. His mind during all this time was wrung with the most poignant agony in regard to the family he must leave,—for he knew he should not recover. It is heart-rending to read ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... prince who sought his glory in smothering free thought among his own people, and in wasting his immense resources in vain efforts to repress it also outside of his own dominions through all Europe. From that hour, Spain became benumbed and estranged from all the advances of science and art, by means of which other nations, and especially ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... she is about done for!" muttered Harriet Burrell. She turned Tommy over on her back and, placing a hand under the little girl, began swimming slowly. The added burden was almost more than Harriet, in her benumbed state, was able to handle. She knew that she could not support Grace and herself through the rest of that long, dark night. She knew, too, that unless they were rescued, her companion would be past help by the end of another ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... let nature take its co'se, an' treckly I commenced to doze off, an' seemed like I was a feather-bed an' wife had hung me on the fence to sun, an' I remember how she seemed to be a-whuppin' of me, but it didn't hurt. Of co'se nothin' couldn't hurt me an' me all benumbed with morphine. An' I s'pose what put the feather-bed in my head was on account of it bein' goose-pickin' time, an' she was werrited with windy weather, an' she tryin' to fill the feather-beds. No, I won't never try to deceive her ag'in. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... there had been no marked deficit in the productiveness of industry, when there had been no extraordinary dissipation of its results by waste and extravagance,—when no pestilence or famine or dark rumor of civil revolution had benumbed its energies,—when the needs for its enterprise were seemingly as active and stimulating as ever,—all its habitual functions are arrested, and shocks of disaster run along the ground from Chicago to Constantinople, toppling down innumerable well-built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... agitation any longer; besides, it is hard even for a strong man to picture in his imagination certain images without risking the loss of his reason. Only in this way can I explain the strange hallucination which appeared before my fatigued eyes in the solitude of my cell. As though benumbed I gazed aimlessly at the tightly closed door, when suddenly it seemed to me that some one was standing behind me. I had felt this deceptive sensation before, so I did not turn around for some time. But when I turned around at last I saw—in the distance, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... man read a paper indifferently; his even voice filled the hall with weariness, and the people, enfolded by it, sat motionless as if benumbed. Four lawyers softly but animatedly conversed with the prisoners. They all moved powerfully, briskly, and called ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... appeared when nerved by indignation and despair, that stormy interview with Farnham—his scarcely veiled threats, his heartless scoffing—had left her a wreck, for the moment scarcely mistress of her own mind. One thing alone stood forth as a rallying point for all her benumbed energies—she must save Winston from a real danger, the nature of which she did not in the least doubt. The gambler's boast was no idle one; she, who had before tasted of his depravity, felt fully convinced of his intention ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... at the age of forty-five, that his entire system was showing signs of breaking up. He was suffering from neuralgia, which we believe means something like tic-douloureux extending over the whole body; he was threatened with paralysis, which had advanced so far as to have benumbed his right side; his memory was going; his mind was weakened; he was, in his own words, 'no use to anybody:' there were deep cracks round the edge of his tongue; his throat was ulcerated; in short, he was in a shocking state, and never likely to be better. Like ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... intimation. His clothes were drenched, and his whole frame stiffened and benumbed with cold. His position, too, crouching amongst decayed branches and alder twigs, was none of the most eligible or easy to sustain. He felt fully resolved, however, to follow the leadings of his friend, being convinced that his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... upon hers—perhaps the warmth would flow back into the cold arm, the chill heart; perhaps he could give her some of his vitality. The possibility afforded him a meager comfort, instilled a faint glow into his benumbed being. His hand closed upon that covered by the linen like a shroud. He sat rigid, concentrated, in his effort, his purpose. The light flickered again from the fiery perishing ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... less benumbed by liquor than his fellows, heard the sounds from the river and called the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... succeeded in making the ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew when death stole upon them. Couttet moved a few steps further and discovered five more bodies. The eleventh corpse—that of a porter—was not found, although diligent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mysterious slumber, tell us that when it begins the insect is as if benumbed, and will move when touched; but that as the cold increases, the torpor deepens, until the little dormant creature seems no longer to breathe, but lies to all appearance dead, until the warmth of the sun shall break the spell, and call ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... shout, but his voice was gone, or was blown away. He understood that a vessel must be above him. Would it finish all by running him down? He perceived that he was bidden to catch something. A rope! His benumbed hands and the heaving of the boat made him fail once, twice, and he was being swept away as at last he did grasp a rope, and was drawn, as it ground his hands, close to the dark wall that rose ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... commander, "you are called to Italy; your general needs you. Advance and conquer, first the mountain and the snow, then the plains and the enemy!" Blinded by the winds, benumbed with the cold, and far beyond the reach of aid, Macdonald and his men pressed on. Sometimes a whole company of soldiers were suddenly swept away by ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... of the tavern stood the young duke, motionless, with his gun in his shoulder-belt, his cap over his eyes, his benumbed hands in the pockets of his red trousers, and shivering in his sheepskin coat. He gave himself up to his sombre thoughts, this defeated soldier, and looked with sorrowful eyes toward a line of hills, lost in the fog, where could be seen each moment, the flash and smoke ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... death was destined to be the early portion of them all; nevertheless she deserved every opportunity for life that remained, and with the ending of hope—well, there are worse fates upon the frontier than the unexpected plunge of a bullet through a benumbed brain. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the posting-station, though approaching old age had had time to set its mark upon them; but their expression had become different. His eyes had a changed look; his whole being, his movements, which were at one time slow, at another abrupt and disconnected, his crushed, benumbed manner of speaking, all showed an utter exhaustion, a quiet and secret dejection, very different from the half-assumed melancholy which he had affected once, as it is generally affected by youth, when full of hopes ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... nodded his head absent-mindedly. He thought of the nights in his room when the hard heavy work of the day in the warehouse seemed to have benumbed ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... cold, hunger, and fear, the snow nearly up to her knees, saw ere long, to her intense horror, a savage bear approaching; and Catharine, making a frantic effort to escape, found her limbs so benumbed and her weakness so great that she could ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... spoil, or in chase of the wild fowl. Then, to procure his food he took down his spear, and wandered far out on the frozen water to catch the foolish duck, which had suffered itself to be imbedded in the congealed clement; or, nearer to his cabin, he cut holes in the ice, and, as the stupid and benumbed fish glided across the opening, applied his unerring dart, and threw him to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... homeward road, and excited by the fantastic play of wayside lights and shadows, swept her along at a wild gallop with which the fevered rush of her thoughts kept pace, and when she reached the house she dropped from the saddle with aching wrists and brain benumbed. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... truth; the cry of Dominique, "They have finished me!" and the circumstances of his disappearance from her side returned vividly, and her heart sickened. But misery is like a thermometer; after reaching a particular degree it can fall but slightly lower. The death of Dominique only benumbed her brain. Her next impression was that this place in which she lay must be a dungeon, and as her eyes could make out nothing whatever in the darkness she concluded that the woman she heard must be a prisoner ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... property, and were now about to kidnap, if not to murder me. I opened my eyes, it was to no purpose—all around me was dark, for a day had passed over during my captivity. A dispiriting sickness oppressed my head—my heart seemed on fire, while my feet and hands were chilled and benumbed with want of circulation. It was with the utmost difficulty that I at length, and gradually, recovered in a sufficient degree the power of observing external sounds and circumstances; and when I did ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... last emerging from this load of wretchedness triumphant over my enemies. So long and ardently did my fancy dwell on this picture, that my mind at length acquired a heroism which Socrates himself certainly never possessed. Age had benumbed his sense of pleasure, and he drank the poisonous draught with cool indifference; but I was young, inured to high hopes, yet now beholding deliverance impossible, or at an immense, a dreadful distance. Such, too, were the other sufferings of soul and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... there being no room to stand up, for four or five days more. His hostess, however, managed to bring him food, and moments were seized during the latter days of the search to get him out that he might warm his benumbed limbs by a fire. While these things were going on at Harrowden, another priest, little thinking into whose hands the well-known sanctuary had fallen, came thither to seek shelter; but was seized and carried to an inn, whence it was intended ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... Crackle! What a funny noise! And yet he was obliged to throw himself flat upon the bough to keep from falling. It seemed to have snapped beneath him and benumbed his right leg. He did not know that the master's bullet, fired in the air, had ranged along the bough, stripping the bark throughout its length, and glancing with half-spent force to inflict a slight flesh wound on ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... It was a benumbed sort of life that she led, in her picturesque old home, whose charm she perceived but dimly with the remnants of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... very fine; but a hundred such victories could not compensate Mr. Kennet's female hearers for one such defeat as he had announced—a defeat that, to their minds, carried disgrace. Their Edward plucked! At first they were benumbed, and sat chilled, with red cheeks, bewildered between present triumph and mortification at hand. Then the colour ebbed out of their faces, and they encouraged each other feebly in whispers, "Might it ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... can I attempt to give any idea of the feelings with which, one and all, we now contemplated the fate be- fore us? For my own part, I was possessed rather by a benumbed indifference than by any sense of genuine resigna- tion. M. Letourneur was entirely absorbed in his son, who, in his turn, thought only of his father, at the same time exhibiting a Christian fortitude, which was shown by no one else of the party except Miss Herbey, who faced her danger ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... and a contest—that was, perhaps, the secret! There would be days, no doubt, of gloom and heaviness; days when life would run, like the stream which he could hear murmuring below him, through dark coverts, dripping with rain; days of frost, when nature was leafless and benumbed, and when the rut was barred with icy spikes. But one could live in hope and faith, waiting for the summer days, when life ran swift and bright; under a pale sunset sky, till the streaks of crimson light died ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... vulture's throat and strangle it; but the bird was too active, and made all such attempts perfectly useless. He could scarcely hope to continue such a dangerous struggle much longer. He was becoming faint from terror, and his left hand was fast growing benumbed with grasping the rock. He had almost resigned himself to his fate, and expected the next moment to be dashed to pieces on the field of ice beneath. Suddenly, however, he recollected his pocket-knife, and a new ray of hope dawned. Giving up the attempt to clutch at the furious bird, ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his knightly combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord. The Lord bids us give our coat and our cloak to him who would take them from us; whereas the knight's part is to strip all that remains from him from whom he hath already taken his coat and his cloak. These contradictory principles benumbed sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety; but when the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of all their sins to all Christians who should go and fight the Gentiles, then Tancred awoke in some sort from his dream, and this new opportunity fired ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... nothing really interested him now. Since he had heard of Lilla's death, the gloom of his remorse, emphasised by Mimi's upbraiding, had made more hopeless his cruel, selfish, saturnine nature. He heard no sound, for his normal faculties seemed benumbed. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... there were classes, where are now equal citizens in various callings. I never starved in the People's famine; I never groaned, personally, in the People's miseries; I never sweat with its sweat; I was never benumbed with its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I hunger in its hunger, thirst with its thirst, warm under its sun, freeze under its cold, grieve under its sorrows? Why should I not care for it as little as for that which passes at the antipodes?—turn away my eyes, close my ears, think ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... under the steamer's side, deep in the waves. He goes down suddenly, cold, frightened, benumbed. He feels that some one is trying to pull the rope out of his hands. It must be Lockwin. The drowning man clutches with a hundred forces. The tug increases. The struggling man will lose the rope. Lockwin is striking Corkey with a bludgeon. That is unfair! There ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... keeps our minds at peace. Even the refuge in God does not always secure us from external suffering. The heart may be quite happy and strong when the hands are benumbed with cold. Yes, the heart even may grow cold with coming death, while the man himself retreats the farther into the secret place of the Most High, growing more calm and hopeful as the last cold invades the house of his ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... "Why, who's a-gwine to shoot Babe? Lord, Cap'n! you dunner nothin' 'tall 'bout Babe ef you talk that away.—Come on, honey." With that Abe lifted his child in his arms, and carried her into the house. Chichester followed. All his faculties were benumbed, and he seemed to be walking in a dream. It seemed that no such horrible confusion as that by which he was surrounded could have the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... infallible, perhaps because it is automatic, regard for its own comfort and well-being—it cannot be induced to tie itself into a knot. It is in mind that once in the old country a very long and very cold lethargic boa constrictor became benumbed and forgot the primal instinct of the family, and paid for its absent-mindedness with its life. But the ordinary snake under extraordinary conditions, whatsoever its length, is most careful to disentangle itself even when knots are designed for the special purpose ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... dreamed what was in store for him just inside the door where he stood ringing one morning early in May, and which, when at last it was opened, shut in a very different man from the one who went through it three hours later, benumbed and half-crazed with ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... that rent the air were the first sounds that Dorothy heard as her benumbed brain gained consciousness. And as she staggered, benumbed and dazed, to her feet she almost fell over a slimy knife lying there, and at that instant a strong hand flung back the rose-vines and Harry Kendal, white and quivering with ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... seemed to him for long that the clergy were becoming dangerously ready to throw the Old Testament overboard, and all that it appeared to him to imply was that men's logical sense is easily benumbed where their hearts ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... envy at Kate, who had got two pieces. Giles seized his and rolled it along the floor and gambolled after it. Kate put down her crutches and sat down, and held out her little arms to Gerard with a heavenly gesture of love and tenderness; and the mother, fairly benumbed at first by the shower of gold that fell on her apron, now cried out, "Leave kissing him, Kate; he is my son, not yours. Ah. Gerard! my boy! I have not loved you ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... produced. She made a collection of all the poisons which she could procure, and administered portions of them all, that she might see which were sudden and which were slow in their effects, and also learn which produced the greatest distress and suffering, and which, on the other hand, only benumbed and stupefied the faculties, and thus extinguished life with the least infliction of pain. These experiments were not confined to such vegetable and mineral poisons as could be mingled with the food or administered in a ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... discomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon him; and although the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable as was his success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the chaplain ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... strained it all, and the sea-weed was drying on the sieve. Then she went back into the bedroom, and pulled down the green slat curtains with a shaking hand. Twice her father called her to bring his sermons, but she only answered, "Yes, father!" in dull acquiescence, and did not move. She was benumbed, sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another woman held his vows, and she was degraded. Her ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... direction for some time, I came to a barn. Benumbed, fatigued, and ready as I was to drop from the saddle, I entered it as joyfully as a shipwrecked sailor climbs a barren rock. I scarcely could dismount, and it was with great difficulty I could unbuckle and take off the bridle of Bay Meg: but my hands were so frost ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... entire forgetfulness of all around me, for I was lying on my bed in the monastery cell, with my hands clasped over my eyes, as I had thrown myself down on coming in; and, with a strange contrariety, my mind, broken rudely from its hope, had flown to my far away home, oblivious of the benumbed links that lay between. A knock at my door completed the return to my despair, for with a look at the walls of my little chamber, in the bright beam of moonlight that streamed in at the narrow window, I was, by recognition, again at Vallambrosa, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... deserved to be placed in it. He was on a wicked errand—an errand for which he should have suffered a severe punishment. Still the time went on, and the cold grew more intense, until their teeth chattered, and their fingers were benumbed; ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... a sallow, tall man encased in a dirty canvas shroud of an apron, was apparently expecting the party. More beans, more biscuits, more steaming tea—and then a bunk was spread for Parker. His previous night of vigil and his day spent in the wind had benumbed his faculties, and he speedily forgot his fears and his bitter resentment in ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... repose. The frequent use of half notes induces a predominance of the minor key, and this, with the constant recurrence of the rhythmical fall, imparts to Semitic and Hindoo music that melancholy, lethargic uniformity which expresses in a striking manner the benumbed energies and undeveloped spirit of the people among whom it is found. When a race has substituted habit and custom for national feeling, its music is necessarily monotonous and characterless, for the stronger the national feeling of any people, the more intense, vivid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... only remained to make sure of the other two. And this, as it happened, was a very easy task. For both, exhausted by their long, forced march and utterly benumbed by the cold, had fallen into a drowsy stupor under the hedge where they had been left, crouching beside my faithful steed for warmth. In this state it was simple work to secure them and march them off to custody, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... long waiting, my turn came. I was as stupefied, as benumbed, as if I had already ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Before I reached the line the water was up to my shoulders; but it was the still water of the eddy. I soon caught the line and found that it was round a stump, as I had feared. With a heavy heart I eased it off—when lo! a tug sent an electric shock through my benumbed body, and I saw the salmon not three yards off, at the bottom of the pool! He also saw me, and darting in terror from side to side wound the line round me. I passed it over my head, however, and was about to let it go ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... kept upon him; but as the Dipsey was anchored some distance from the landing-place, Mr. Marcy was of the opinion that if he attempted to swim ashore it might be well to let him do so, for if he should not be benumbed in the water into which he would plunge he would certainly be frozen to death as soon as ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... completely given me up: everybody conjectured that I perished last night; and they were wondering how they must set about the search for my remains. I bid them be quiet, now that they saw me returned, and, benumbed to my very heart, I dragged up-stairs; whence, after putting on dry clothes, and pacing to and fro thirty or forty minutes, to restore the animal heat, I adjourned to my study, feeble as a kitten: almost too much so to enjoy the cheerful fire and smoking coffee which ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... this, the shoe pinched in the United States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury, not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... have had cause to dread some unspeakable evil from this strange persecutor, and to know that this was the very crisis of her calamity; for as he drew near, such a cold, sick despair crept over her that it impeded her breath, and benumbed her natural promptitude of thought. Miriam seemed dreamily to remember falling on her knees; but, in her whole recollection of that wild moment, she beheld herself as in a dim show, and could not well distinguish what was done ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there now." Jimmy lifted his right foot and held it from the ground. The warmth of the room was bringing pain to the benumbed member into which something had been stuck. "She told me to tell you please, 'm, to come if you could. Mrs. Cotter says she can't die until she sees you, and she's so tired trying to hold out. She won't have breath left to talk, mother ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... His Excellency and staff were seated in the residency close by, resorting to cordials and all those creature comforts to be found in monasteries, not forgetting Grande Chartreuse, to restore circulation through their benumbed frames!—How the reverend fathers showered down the blessings of St. Michael, the patron saint of the parish, on the youth and chivalry of France!—How the Sillery duennas, the Capitainesses, closely watched ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... unseasonable intrusion, but at length I obtained the object of my visit, and returned to my room, when, on opening the door, I saw poor Mangrove lying on his back in the middle of the floor, with his legs and arms extended as if he had been on the rack, his eyes set, his mouth open, and every faculty benumbed by fear. At his feet sat the negro child, almost as much terrified as he was, and crying most lamentably; while, at a little distance, sat the spectre of the old woman, scratching its head with the greatest composure, and exclaiming in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... whom there was no future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the interested traveller ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... follows that the Soul does not see well thro' purblind Eyes. The Ears hear not clearly when stopped with Filth. The Brain smells not so well when oppressed with Phlegm. And a Member feels not so much when it is benumbed. The Tongue tastes less, when vitiated ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... was that of a man clinging to a state-room door, and so benumbed with the chill of the water that in a few moments more his hold must have relaxed. Beside him swam ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... his feet Lay prostrate in the arms of death! And now the poor lack food and heat, Benumbed by ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... it melted off our clothes, but higher up on the open, windy heights it froze to a cake of ice, and before long our clothes on the windward side were converted into a thick cuirass which prevented every movement. At last we were practically frozen fast in the saddle. Our hands were benumbed, the reins fell on the horses' necks, our eyes were sore from the snowstorm which dashed straight into our faces. I was so stiff that I lost all feeling in my arms and legs, tumbled off my horse, and went on foot, but I had to hold on to the animal's ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... stunned and benumbed on first reading this letter. Then he read it over mechanically two or three times. The date was a month old, but the postmark showed that it had just been mailed. She must have postponed her departure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... fertile in genial ideas, represented the gods of Phidias and Plato, besides being downfallen and vagabond, selling rabbit skins on the seashore, and being forced to light brushwood fires by which to warm their benumbed bodies during the winter nights. To-day the writers, salaried by Bismarck, known as reptiles, now turn on him, for a similar salary, the venomous fangs which he formerly aimed at his innumerable enemies. And yonder, in the parliament where formerly he strode in with sabre, and belt, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... that both have been overruled by the last, and neither Head nor anybody else can do more than conjecture what has really been the secret history of our Colonial policy. Glenelg, however, was evidently feeble, and his faculties seem to have been entirely benumbed ever since the flagellations he got from Brougham in the beginning of last session. His terror of Brougham is so intense that he would submit to any humiliation rather than again expose his back to such a ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... up to his knees in cold water—or engaged, said I, for months together in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his rear today; harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded there; resting this night out upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, [he] must say his prayers how and when he can. I believe, said I—for I was piqued, quoth the Corporal, for the reputation of the army—I believe, an't please your reverence, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived him, a majority dying in infancy; and of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... all was the terrible hunger that tormented her. But could she not stoop and break off a piece of the loaf on which she stood? No, her back was too stiff, her hands and arms were benumbed, and her whole body was like a pillar of stone; only she was able to turn her eyes in her head, to turn them quite round so that she could see backwards: it was an ugly sight. And then the flies came up, and crept to and fro over her eyes, and she blinked her eyes, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... philosopher's privilege to call upon the artist to show that what he is about is either good in itself or a means to good. It is the artist's duty to reply: "Art is good because it exalts to a state of ecstasy better far than anything a benumbed moralist can even guess at; so shut up." Philosophically he is quite right; only, philosophy is not so simple as that. Let ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... it," burst out the little inventor, his benumbed faculties beginning slowly to assemble themselves. "Why, there ain't a finer, better-spoken young man to be found than ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the river to oppose him, so that the Spaniards had to fight both to the front and rear while their baggage, horses, and selves were wafted over. Having got safely over, they found it necessary to go to the town, as one of their comrades was quite benumbed in passing the river. Believing the Spaniards more numerous than they really were, the Indians only defended their town till their wives and children were got away to a place of safety, and then abandoned the place, of which Anasco took possession. The Spaniards made four large ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... one of the older midshipmen being usually with him. "Well I remember," writes one of his officers, "that on being one day relieved to go down to my dinner, I was obliged to have some of the main-top-men to help me down the rigging, I was so benumbed with the intense cold: yet the captain was there six or seven hours at a time, without ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... mystery. It was naturally to be expected therefore that those splendid legions—the famous Neapolitan tercio of Trevico, the veteran troops of Sultz and Hachicourt, the picked Epirote and Spanish cavalry of Nicolas Basta and Guzman—would be hurled upon the wearied, benumbed, bemired soldiers of the republic, as they came slowly along after their long march ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the terrible picture hidden by the pall of night; it illuminates the faces of the stark dead, but awakens the living and suffering, the wounded and bleeding, from their benumbed slumber, and recalls them to consciousness and the dreadful ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... determined, if possible, to reach the Corbeau or Raven river, the highest point that had ever been reached by traders, in bark canoes. But he was not able to accomplish his intention; for, on the seventeenth, many of his men were so benumbed with cold, that their limbs became useless, and others were laid up with illness. He consequently fixed on a station near Pine Creek, where the borders of the Mississippi consisted of prairie, with groves of pine ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... screamed above us—the distant cliffs grew dimmer, their outline less distinct—the rushing tide earned us rapidly onwards—the cold wind pierced through our wet clothes, and sent the spray dashing over us. Shivering, benumbed, hungry and faint, I felt as if I could no longer retain my hold. Death—death, I thought, was truly approaching. Still, notwithstanding all Cousin Silas had said, I did not so much picture the future; I did not even dread it as I mourned for what I was leaving—the ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the streets, pulling up here and there, the parcels accumulating round me and the engine in my head gathering more way every minute. The composure of the people on the pavements was provoking to a degree, and as to the people in shops, they were benumbed, more than half frozen—imbecile. Funny how it affects you to be in a peculiar state of mind: everybody that does not act up to your excitement seems so confoundedly unfriendly. And my state of mind what with the hurry, the worry and a growing exultation was peculiar enough. That engine in my ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... bandage dropped to the ground—eyes, hands, mouth were free. But Mr. Rashleigh could make no use of his freedom; he sat pale, benumbed, confounded, helpless. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... cabin. Coyotes were paying us a call, and judging from the chorus of yelps and howls from our dogs, it was not a welcome visit. Above the medley rose one big, deep, full voice that I knew at once belonged to Sounder. Then all was quiet again. Sleep gradually benumbed my senses. Vague phrases dreamily drifted to and fro in my mind: "Jones's wild range—Old Tom—Sounder—great name—great ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... experienced, with almost accentuated discomfort, the trials and weariness of the preceding day. The water was colder than ever, our feet were by this time in a dreadful condition, cut and bleeding, because it was constantly necessary to walk bare-footed. Aching and benumbed we stumbled on, in and out of water, always, it seemed, encountering sharp small stones. For us there could be no turning back however; the pain had to be borne before the march was finished, and we won our camping-ground at last under the lee ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... at length, and felt a dense Benumbed dead weight. And now The night air hung in deep suspense! A singing hush that pressed my sense And stunned me like ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... so absolute a mistress of the goose-quill, I can't imagine; how you can maintain the writing posture and pursue the writing movement for ten hours together, without benumbed brain or aching ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... agony clutched her throat with an aching sense of suffocation, and she sat up, with nerveless hands lying on the package in her lap. She was prepared for, expectant of the worst, but the details added keener stings to suffering that had benumbed her. At last, with a shuddering sigh, she broke the seal, and took from folds of tissue paper, a long thick tress of the beautiful black hair. Shaking it out of its satin coil, she held it up, then wrapped it smoothly over her hand, and laid it ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in search of food. Birds frequently perish from sudden changes in our whimsical spring weather of which they had no foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window, was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. It should seem that their coming was dated by the height of the sun, which betrays ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... bomb-shells while they were yet in the air, warmed their hands upon them, and then threw them back into the enemy's camp, where they exploded with great carnage. They did not even know when they were killed, so benumbed by the cold had they become. In short, those days on the Alps made us invincible. No wonder, then, that in 1804, when I got permanently back to Paris, I found the people ready for an emperor! They were bloody years, those from 1800 to 1804, but it was not entirely ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... not agree to it, and they quarrelled; whereupon one of the two, either Becquet or Massi, threatened him that he would repent of it; and at the end of two or three days, he was seized with a sickness in which he first burnt like fire and then was benumbed with cold so that nothing would warm him, and this without any cessation; he suffered in this way for nearly a month. Collas Becquet heard that witness charged him with being the cause of his sickness, and he threatened that he would kill witness; but very soon afterwards the ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... time by the eccentricities of trains, and in whose presence you grope about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute more benumbed and speechless, and the babies feel the frost in the air and look vacant, and the callers go through the usual form of wondering who they most take after, generally settling the question by saying that the May baby, who is the beauty, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... lie was surrounded by the huntsmen. It was bitterly cold; the wind howled through the firs, and drove the light snow-flakes right in my face, so that when at length it came on to be dusk I could scarcely see six paces before me. Quite benumbed by the cold, I left the place that had been assigned to me and sought shelter deeper in the wood. There, leaning against a tree, with my firelock under my arm, I forgot the wolf-hunt entirely; my thoughts had travelled back to Seraphina's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... silent and inert. Yet they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton |
