"Smothering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of every young woman," says the female writer above quoted, addressing herself to the husband, "depend upon it, there is a fund of exalted ideas; she conceals, represses, without succeeding in smothering them. So long as these ideas in your wife are directed to YOU, they are, no doubt, innocent, but take care that they be not accompanied with too much pain. In other respects, also, spare her delicacy. Let all the antecedent parts of your ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... dreams; brimming with pent energy; theorizing, arguing, disputing; ready at an instant's notice for any sort of a joke or excitement that would relieve the tension; boisterous, noisy, laughing loudly, smothering by sheer weight of ridicule individual resentments—altogether a wonderful picture of the youth and hope and energy and ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Cecilia, smothering her concern for this last piece of intelligence by pretending to feel it merely for the former, expostulated with Lady Honoria upon so mischievous a frolic, and earnestly entreated her to go ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... He felt he hated the smothering haze that rolled in front and hid the dangers, but they must go on and trust to luck. He knew Adam's plans and no arguments would shake his resolve. Half an hour later a twinkle broke out some distance ahead and ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... to go," Ned said at last, smothering one more sob, and loosening his arms. "Take him, boy, please, quick ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you see, a great success; but we were, after a few days, most unexpectedly troubled with it. Thus far the wind had been blowing only in one direction; but afterwards it shifted to the opposite quarter, driving the smoke all down into the hut, and smothering us out. Neither of us being a skilful mason, we could not imagine what was the matter; but finally it occurred to us, after much useless labor had been spent in tearing part of it down and building it ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... Steve's body and face as a hammer does upon an anvil. Only by his catlike agility and the toughness born of many clean years in the saddle did the cowpuncher weather for the time the hurricane that lashed at him. He dodged and ducked and parried by instinct, smothering what blows he could, evading those he might, absorbing the ones he must. Out of that first melee he came reeling and dizzy, quartering round and ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... at the hotel where we stopped at Berlin. I had rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned German feather bed. I had heard that one scaled the side of a German bed on a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering folds like a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but this hotel happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside the United States. It had been built and it was managed on American lines, plus German domestic service—which ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... convulsively—"of you! Please, please, don't!" At the same time, she tightened her clutch upon his hand and crept closer to him, governed by an unconquerable craving. Chase had the sensation of smothering; he could not believe the senses which told him that she was responding to his appeal. His brain was whirling, his heart bounding like mad. Her voice, soft and appealing, turned his ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... translate the speech to the colonel. Carg reported that it was translated verbatim. Then the general sat back and squinted at his companion, who seemed fairly bewildered by the threat. Patsy caught the young officer smothering a smile, but neither of them interrupted the silence ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... Pisanio, Who long'st like me, to see thy Lord; who long'st (Oh let me bate) but not like me: yet long'st But in a fainter kinde. Oh not like me: For mine's beyond, beyond: say, and speake thicke (Loues Counsailor should fill the bores of hearing, To'th' smothering of the Sense) how farre it is To this same blessed Milford. And by'th' way Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as T' inherite such a Hauen. But first of all, How we may steale from hence: and for the gap That we shall make in Time, from our hence-going, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the wings from this, the legs from that, From some the heads, of some ripping the crops; Till, tens and scores, the fowl rained down to earth Bloody and plucked, and all ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... a derisive little smile, all to herself, as she thought how small a power lay in jewelled pendulums to make a brilliant evening, and she felt a certain thrill of pride at the thought that her associations lay in a world removed from all this smothering materialism. The lavish sumptuousness which till now had appealed to her rather strongly, seemed suddenly tainted with vulgarity, and her thoughts wandered half unconsciously to the bare little room where she had gone to see Nora Costello. The name brought ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... he could not swim. Or the house might catch fire. That would do better. It would be in the night, and Ambrose would be the only one awake, and would have to rouse his father, who slept at the other end of the house. He would wrap himself in a blanket, force his way through smothering smoke and scorching flames, cross over burning planks with bare feet, climb up a blazing flight of stairs just tottering before they fell with a crash, and finally stand undismayed at his father's side. Then he could say quietly, "Father, the house is on fire, ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... handful of the vinegar-like globules, when she caught sight of another vine deeper in the woods. It was much larger and climbed fully a dozen yards from the ground, winding in and out among the limbs of a ridgy beech, which seemed to be forever struggling upward to get away from the smothering ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... well. When we had dug down about 6 feet we struck water, but continued excavating until the water lay 3 feet deep in the well. While making the excavation we shored up the sides with planks, to prevent the loose soil from falling in on us and smothering us, as it so nearly did when we were digging our first cave. By "shoring," I mean we lined the walls with planks, which were driven into the ground with large wooden mallets. The planks were braced apart with sticks at frequent ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... Molossian. And now, in his unquenchable lust of power, amid the monuments of combination and deception he had created, this man was weary, disgusted and irritated,—believing himself vanquished and smothering the anger of defeat in the luxurious isolation of his wealth. He was neither officially influential nor liked. Feared he was, probably, and envied because of his good fortune, recognized, too, as a force, but only as acting in the whirlwind ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... of Jack, or Jack was sent to take care of me. I can't remember that we had committed any unusually heinous offence at home. Indeed, since our attempt a week or two previously to emulate history by smothering the twins, after the manner of the princes in the Tower, we had been particularly quiet, not to say dull, at home. For the little accident of the squib that went off in the night nursery in the middle of the night counted for nothing, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... master of my wishes, for my mother came and took her last (though she little thought it) leave of me, and smothering me with her caresses and prayers for my well-doing, in the height of her ardour put into my hand another guinea, promising to see me again quickly; and desiring me, in the meantime, to be a very good husband, which I have since ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... had stolen out of the alcove, and his two hands—so slender and elegant looking, and yet with a grip of steel—had fastened themselves upon Heriot's mouth, smothering within the space of a second the cry that had been half-uttered. Ffoulkes was ready to complete the work of rendering the man helpless: one handkerchief made an efficient gag, another tied the ankles securely. Heriot's own coat- sleeves supplied the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... compass—were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the subprefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the subprefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance. "My men," said he, "are working down the bedtop for the first time; the men whose money ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... favor," I asked, smothering my indignation, and trying to speak calmly. "I have fought and bled for Spain. Let me at least die a soldier's death, and allow me before I ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... worthless and profligate people about the Court, interested in smothering any signs of common sense and good feeling on the part of the heir apparent to the throne, in order to maintain their ascendancy over him as he grows up, that he has not the slightest chance of becoming fit to take any ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of the flowers she was holding, at him. Tom caught them and hurried out of the room, pressing the fragrant blossoms against his waistcoat, and smothering a mortal pang. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the massive face weighed down by solemn reflection. He noticed him casting inquiring glances at the sun, as seeking the cause of the darkness. Nor did he fail to notice the solicitude with which Esther clung to him, smothering her ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... said the turnkey, smothering his mirth at the recollection, perhaps, that the prisoner's purse was not exhausted. "I only laughed because you said you were Sir Geoffrey's son. But no matter—'tis a wise child that knows his own father. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... another silence deeper than the last. Even young Archie, smothering himself with a huge slab of bread and butter and caring little about anything else, understood that to be related to a tavern-keeper placed one far beyond the pale of respectability. Annie was looking at her lap now, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of Royal Academicians pronounced John Kendal's work impertinent, if not insulting, meaningless, affected, or flippant. Collectively, with a corporate opinion that might be discussed but could not be identified, they received it and hung it, smothering a distressful doubt, where it would be least likely to excite either the censure of the right-minded or the admiration of the unorthodox. The Grosvenor gave him a discreet appreciation, and the New received him ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... something old-fashioned and inartistic, but never turn one solitary eyelash when Hamlet follows up his death by rushing before the curtain and grinning his thanks. Desdemonas who come forward, after the smothering scene, to receive flowers, and Romeos and Juliets who rise from the tomb that they may bow and smirk before an audience—while we have such as these among us, let us not cast stones at the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... vows: he, wholly convinced and overcome, snatches her in his arms, and bursting into a shower of tears, cried—'Take—take all my soul, thou lovely charmer of it, and dispose of the destiny of Octavio.' And smothering her with kisses and embraces made a perfect reconciliation. When the surgeons, who came to visit him, finding him in the disorder of a fever, though more joy was triumphing in his face than before, they imagined this lady the fair person for whom this quarrel was; for it had made ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... a man who dreams with his eyes open. If he had been alone, he could have watched her dance on for hours, and wished that she would never stop; but there were other men in the tent, and he had a maddening desire to snatch the girl in his arms, smothering her in his burnous, and rushing away with her ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... impossible, for one reason or another, to make a single movement toward withdrawing it. Again and again he tried to write to her, but the haunting suspicion that she would lay his epistle before her new friends, always made him throw down his pen in a smothering indignation. He found himself compelled to wait what opportunity chance or change might ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... all this, farming did not afford much profit. for want of a sufficient market; beyond a small demand by the Hudson's Bay Company, there was no outlet for their superabundance; and to use an Austrian phase in regard to Hungarians, the Selkirkers are metaphysically 'smothering in their own fat.' To remedy this state of things they were beginning, when I was there, to turn their attention towards raising cattle and horses, for which their country is well calculated; and the first fruits of this new decision given ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... the conversation lapsed. I buried myself in the Paris "Herald," but found I could not read. Simmering with wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen times I had longed to fling ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... She had been fighting so long, and she felt utterly inert. She was like a swimmer who can battle no longer and prepares to yield to the numbness of exhaustion. The heat of the room pressed down on her like a smothering blanket. Her tired nerves cried out under the blare of music and the clatter ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... life," he was saying past the slice of bread with agricultural prosiness to father, who had completely sweated down the very high and stiff collar which he always wore swathed in a wide tie of black after a Henry Clay cut, in a savage attack with the hoe upon the mulch that was smothering the dahlias in richness. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... enabling us to see the land distinctly to leeward, some six miles distant, the wind had increased to such an extent that sail had been reduced to close-reefed topsails and reefed courses, while the sea had risen in proportion and was now so heavy that the frigate was literally smothering herself forward at every plunge. The fact was that she was being terribly over-driven; yet the skipper had no alternative. He dared not relieve the ship of another inch of canvas, for we were on a lee-shore, and embayed, the land astern curving out to windward so far that its farthest visible ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... chest. The next act was to cover the earth which lay over the man's legs with a thick layer of mud; then plenty of sticks and grass were collected, and a fire lit on the top directly over the fracture. To prevent the smoke smothering the sufferer, they held a tall mat as a screen before his face, and the operation went on. After some time the heat reached the limbs underground. Bellowing with fear and covered with perspiration, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... battalion are trained as grenade throwers. Their principal weapon is a bucket or bag of grenades or bombs. They operate not only from trenches but accompany the firing line in an attack and dispose of sheltered or isolated group of the enemy by smothering their position with a shower of hand grenades ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... his face to her, his sobbing breath smothering itself in the soft masses of her hair, while her arms rose weakly and fell around his neck. He heard the quick, gasping struggle for breath within her bosom, and, faintly again, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is—was—so crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then—and then—" She shuddered, and clung to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... long, and it afforded me a most welcome support, especially as the seas were still breaking over me so furiously that it was only with the utmost difficulty I contrived to snatch a breath between whiles. But the breaking seas that came near to smothering me were also sweeping me away fast to leeward, and after a time I found myself in smoother water, the seas no longer broke over me, and, the water being quite warm, I experienced no discomfort, apart from the uncertainty ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... drew from Mrs. Babbit a very close inspection of the veiled figure, who, smothering her wrath, felt greatly relieved when the train started and prevented her from hearing anything more. At the next station, however, Mrs. Douglas showed her companion a crochet collar, which she had purchased for two shillings, and which, she said, was almost exactly like the ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,— The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... into his mind. In his hand he still held the revolver. He pressed it upwards against the thing that was smothering him, and pulled the trigger. Again he pulled it, and again, for it was a self-cocking weapon, and even there deep down in the water he heard the thud of the explosion of the damp-proof copper cartridges. His lungs were bursting, his senses reeled, only enough of them remained ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... poorhouse. Angy, panting for breath, one hand against the smothering pain at her heart, was trying, with the other, to drag "Father" along. "Father" was shaking his head at Ishmael, at the proffered nickels and pennies—shaking his head and choking. At length he found his voice, ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... way, crowded with its dying victims; new cargoes are being added in mid-ocean a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained, is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any "outbreak." ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch any body else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there; ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the explicit terms of the Treaty of 1783, British garrisons still held strategic posts along the Great Lakes, exercising a strong influence upon the Indians and guarding the interests of British fur traders. Such a situation would have been intolerable to a self-respecting nation. Smothering his pride, Adams mustered all the diplomacy which his nature permitted and sought an explanation of this extraordinary conduct from the ministers. He was finally told that he need not expect Great Britain to relinquish ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... thick and spongy sod With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god. Now while the earth was drinking it, and while Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile, And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright 'Neath smothering parsley, and a hazy light 230 Spread greyly ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... to me about power, grandeur, and even royalty. Is a prison the fitting place? You wish to make me believe in splendor, and we are lying hidden in night; you boast of glory, and we are smothering our words in the curtains of this miserable bed; you give me glimpses of absolute power, and I hear the step of the jailer in the corridor—that step which, after all, makes you tremble more than it does me. To render me somewhat less incredulous, free me from the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Griffin, the author of The Collegians and Gisippus, who, had he lived in our day, would have been in danger of having his head turned by premature success, instead of being heart-sickened by long neglect and coarse rebuffs, and smothering his aspirations in a convent. In striking contrast with this pale figure is the portly and imposing one of Robert William Elliston, type of theatrical charlatans, embodiment of bombast and puffery, monarch over the realm of pasteboard, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... ceases when obstacles are encountered or opposition met; though he manifest enthusiasm for a time persecution deters him; he is offended,[620] and endures not. Grain sown where thorns and thistles abound is soon killed out by their smothering growth; even so with a human heart set on riches and the allurements of pleasure—though it receive the living seed of the gospel it will produce no harvest of good grain, but instead, a rank tangle of noxious weeds. The abundant ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... He agreed to advance another day's stint, in order to see the caravan well started into safer regions. With the rise of the sun, a gale also arose. The wind blew hot and hotter, driving the sand in clouds and almost smothering the men and animals. Therefore little could be done. The mules and oxen had to be unyoked—they stood with tongues out and tails to the gale; the wagon covers lashed and bellied; the men sheltered ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... There were some of them who had read of the practice in the Middle Ages of smothering smallpox patients in red blankets, giving them red wine to drink and hanging the room with scarlet. Finsen had not heard of it, and was much interested. Evidently they had been groping toward the truth. How they came upon ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the Spaniards are therein so dispersed as they are nowhere strong, but in Nueva Espana only; the sharp mountains, the thorns, and poisoned prickles, the sandy and deep ways in the valleys, the smothering heat and air, and want of water in other places are their only and best defence; which, because those nations that invade them are not victualled or provided to stay, neither have any place to friend adjoining, do serve them instead of good arms ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... Gerrit, to dwell on the vast number of perils held in store by the sea; there was always the possibility of scurvy, an entire crew rotting alive in the forecastle and the ship broached to, dismasted; of mutiny; the sheer smothering finality of volcanic waves. He had never realized until now, in the misery of uncertainty, the hellish loneliness of a shipmaster at sea; the pride of duty, the necessity of discipline, that put him beyond all counsel, all assistance and human interdependence. Jeremy, who had arrogantly accepted ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that I hate doing; but here are three unanswered letters of yours on my table, and I shall never get through the payment of them if one letter may not do for the three, for every day brings fresh claims of this sort, and I feel a kind of smothering sensation as they accumulate round me, such as might attend one's gradually sinking into a well: what though Truth were at the bottom—if one was drowned ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... heard some sound which he could not understand, and upon these occasions he sprang up, smothering the low growl that tried for exit, and seeming to understand the necessity for caution, he began to reconnoitre in the direction from which the suspicious noise ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... the elder woman asked, stopping suddenly as she crossed the room, her face drawn in a quick stroke of fear, her hands lifted to ease the smothering in ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... startled baby, and then the sudden ungovernable fury that lashed him, the two children—! Lark shuddered! She glanced over her shoulder again. The fearful dark shadow was very close, very terrible, ready to envelope her in its smothering depths. She sprang to her feet and rushed out of the office. Mr. Raider was in the doorway. She flung herself upon him, crushing the ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... at my shins, his knee struck me in the stomach and for an instant I sickened. Now I tripped him; we toppled together, came to the ground with a thump. Here we churned, while he flung me and still I stuck. The acrid dust of the alkali enveloped us. Again he spat, fetid—I sprawled upon him, smothering his flailing arms; gave him all my weight and strength; smelled the sweat of him, snarled into his ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the leather began to blaze. With swift presence of mind Dave stepped his right foot on the flame, smothering it at once. ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... of the buggy, smothering his laughter, and leaving the two to argue the question, he went after the truant horse which might help to establish his master's lost identity. Lawyer Ed dismounted and helped him hitch it, and apparently satisfied by its reappearance, Peter stretched himself on the seat and went ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... to her. She was gazing spell-bound into his eager, shining eyes. He waited. She came to him as if drawn by some overpowering magnet. His arms closed about her....She was crushed against his body, she seemed a part of him. His arms were like smothering coils that pressed the life out of her; his hungry lips were fastened upon hers, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... for that, and smothering a sigh she retreated into the house. As she did so the first flakes fell of the storm that was not to have come ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... from Chili. I should like to see it over there on the marge of some monstrous great river. In another order, the Ipomoea (Morning Glory), which comes from East Africa, runs it close. I had one seed in Sussex which completely overflowed a garden wall, smothering everything upon it. A kind of Jack's beanstalk, and every morning starred with turquoise blue trumpet mouths of ravishing beauty, which were dead at noon. The poor thing was constrained to be a hierodule, gave no seed. Nature ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... becoming, sir," said Blakeney, politely smothering a slight yawn, "and it is vastly unbecoming in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the backs of borders or hiding unsightly objects. After the seeds have been dibbled about an inch deep in either April or May, the only attention the plants require is to nip out a straggling shoot occasionally, or prevent a stray branch from reaching over and smothering some plant which will not ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... lips Cleggett stood and suffered beneath the smothering presence of this terror while the slow seconds mounted to an intolerable minute; then there burst from him ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... meats is that they may become tainted, or begin to spoil, or decay, before they are used. Unfortunately, the ingenious cook has invented a great many ways of smothering, or disguising, the well-marked bad taste of decayed, or spoiled, meat by spices, onions, and savory herbs. So, as a general thing, the safest plan, especially when traveling or living away from home, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... penetrated beneath the edge of the slate shivered it into small bits. The flames cracked and leaped angrily under the gushing water; only when the jet was turned directly upon them, and then more by means of its smothering power than its inherent qualities, did it finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... otherwise it is very dangerous, love; and many a person, by such neglect, has caught a cold which has terminated in a fever. Sweet child! I do not like to trust it from me,' added she, hugging her still closer, and smothering her face in a check cotton handkerchief which ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... he had said nothing more. He was waiting for her to speak; but her voice felt parched; it seemed to her as if hands of steel were gripping her throat, smothering the words she ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Lacoste was thus smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had come to her. From the first days of her widowhood she was constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage. Her choice was already made. "If ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... unable to hold their man down. He tore off the smothering coat and rose with them, despite all they could do. They cried ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... know that it is all my fault," cried Mary, with the brine almost smothering her tears, as she flung her arms around his neck; "but I never will do it again, my darling. And I never will run away and let you drown. Oh, if I only had a knife! I can not even cast your bridle off; the tongue has stuck fast, and my hands are ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... called smothering, is that of cooking meat in a tightly covered jar in a moderate oven for an hour (the moderate heat serves to draw out the juice of the meat), after which the heat is increased, and the meat cooked in its own juices one half hour for ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and every thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that way, we saw only America! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... twenty feet back from the shore line. A blanket of yellow and black fur ... covering the earth, covering mangrove roots, fitted neatly around the bent palm tree trunks, lying over the rocks that had cut his feet last night ... smothering, ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... that Midwinter Day gave them seasonable weather, pitch dark, with wind and a smothering drift outside. The men awoke early and were so eager and impatient for their full ration on this special occasion that they could not remain in their sleeping-bags, but turned out to cook a "full hoosh breakfast" for the first time for many weeks—that evening they repeated ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... entirely impossible; the bride has come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... bravely. The subject, as I understand, was simple addition (which knows no frontiers and looks the same in any language), and there is no whispering or secret conversation in our school, I can tell you. There they sat side by side for two hours, each contemplating the other as an alien, each smothering pent-up feelings of home-sickness. And then suddenly, at a single Flemish word from the schoolmaster, the moment of revelation came; it dawned on both of them at once that they were not alone, and, rising to their feet, they embraced with tears ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... was contagious and, smothering their laughter, the girls waltzed after her, throwing sticks and stones and all sorts of improvised weapons into the midst of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... lay silence. The sea has its undertone on the stillest nights; the woods are quiet with an hundred lesser noises; but here was absolute, terrifying, smothering silence,—the suspension of all sound, even the least,—looming like a threatening cloud larger and more dreadful above the cowering imagination. The human soul demanded to shriek aloud in order to preserve its sanity, and yet a whisper uttered over against the heavy ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... were not obtuse. They saw they had roused the susceptibilities—prejudices, they called them—of the Lady de Tilly. They rose, and smothering their disappointment under well-bred phrases, took most polite leave of the dignified old lady, who was heartily glad to be rid ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I told you to get up, and I'll say so,' said Lance, smothering her in his arms after the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... affection for their beautiful natures, of appreciation of the magnificence of their physical equipment, and of sympathy for them in their decline and inevitable passing under the changed conditions of environment made by the sudden smothering of their instinctive needs in the sepia of commercial civilization. I saw that those natives remaining, laughing and full of the desire for pleasure as they were, must perish because unfit to survive in the morass of modernism in which they were ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... dress might come in mighty handy on SOME occasions; so I guess you'd better hold on to it for future use, and go and select another for this Fairford dinner," he said; and before he could finish he was in her arms again, and she was smothering his last word ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... was watching the sea with dreadful anxiety. Was it coming up? Was it going down? Were there to be more of those smothering floods? If so, they were lost. He knew he could not lift again that ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... holder, smothering the flame in the can, bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... tingle of the over-charged shield as it caught and absorbed the hostile bombardment. Under me the platform seemed heated. My little Erentz motors ran with ragged pulse. I got too much oxygen; my head roared with it. Spots danced before my closed eyes. Then not enough oxygen. I was dully smothering.... ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the kitchen, with the warm-heartedness of their race, broke out into a perfect Irish howl of sorrow; and at the last moment, Biddy, our fat cook, fell on her neck and lifted up her voice and wept, almost smothering her with her tumultuous embraces; and the whole party of them would go with her to the New York station, one carrying her shawl, another her hand-bag and parasol, with emulous affection; and so our very pleasant and desirable ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... unless he was aware of circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in the crime of her death from knowing the precise moment of its occurrence. If Lucy was the kind of person not obscurely pourtrayed in the poem; if Wordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting her throat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself released from an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly from the threat of an action for breach of promise, then there is not a syllable in the poem with which he ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... smothering in its effect on me—close draperies to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed—and I closed the door and lighted my candle with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... vengeance to prepare. He hung a night of horrors o'er their head (The shaded ocean blacken'd as it spread): He launch'd the fiery bolt: from pole to pole Broad burst the lightnings, deep the thunders roll; In giddy rounds the whirling ship is toss'd, An all in clouds of smothering sulphur lost. As from a hanging rock's tremendous height, The sable crows with intercepted flight Drop endlong; scarr'd, and black with sulphurous hue, So from the deck are hurl'd the ghastly crew. Such end the wicked found! but Jove's intent Was ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... to you and Minna when you were with her before the doctor arrived?" questioned Miss Kiametia, smothering her ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... his pocket when sent to Harvard had severely tested his moral fiber, but this great fortune came near smothering all his native commonsense. If a man makes his money himself, he stands a certain chance of growing ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... instant there came a scream, so freighted with agony that it burst the bonds of gripping fingers and smothering palms that tried to close it in, and rose for the fraction of a second on the foul air of the alley. Then a light showed and a ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... of gritty dust. The cottonwoods along the waterway moaned as if in pain and flung up their white arms in feeble protest. The wild plum bushes in the draw were almost buried by the wind-borne drift smothering the narrow crevice, while out on the plains the long lashing waves of bended grass made the eyes burn with weariness. And the sun watched it all with unpitying stare, and the September heat was maddening. But it was cool inside the cabin. Sod houses shut out the summer warmth as they shed ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... go," said Jack, who had just tucked Mrs. Leigh in. A couple of bounds, a smothering scream, and they disappeared ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Smothering his resentment at the last part of Ione's question, Arbaces continued: 'You know his pursuits, his companions his habits; the comissatio and the alea (the revel and the dice) make his occupation; and amongst the associates of vice how can he dream ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... than the rats, which were certainly bad enough. "Tame as Trenck's mouse, they stood in their holes, peering at you like old grandfathers in a doorway;" watching for their prey, and disputing with the sailors the weevil-biscuit, rancid pork, and horse-beef, composing the Julia's stores; or smothering themselves, the luscious vermin, in molasses, which thereby acquired a rich wood-cock flavour, whose cause became manifest when the treacle-jar ran low, greatly to the disgust and consternation of the biped consumers. There were no delicate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... "Let go! You are smothering me! It is not my fault. It was the gentleman there, who hired my boat for a sail. I, I would not make ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... already got assault and battery against us, and smothering-with-a-pillow, to say nothing of burglary, breaking and entering, and banjo-playing after 10 P. M. We won't any of us live long enough to serve out our sentences, not even if we get old enough to make Methuselah look like ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... thanked him warmly, and, taking a candle, withdrew to the unwonted luxury of clean sheets and a soft bed. For some time he lay awake in deep thought and then, smothering a laugh with the bed-clothes, he gave a sigh of content ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... sure to win. The next week he called three times at Grassmere instead of twice, and asked himself how much longer he must wait before he should speak out. Prudence said, "A little more patience;" and so he still hid in his bosom the flame that burned him the deeper for this unnatural smothering. But he drank deep, silent draughts of love, and reveled in the bright future of his passion. It was no longer hope, it was certainty. Susan liked him; her eye brightened at his coming; her father was ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... kissing her into silence. "We must have more faith. I think everything will be all right. And there is no reason why we should lose our Winky," he added, very tenderly, smothering the doubt as best he could, "although we may find his name changed. Like the rest of us, he will get a ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... He called for help, struggled, and was thrown down on a pile of gravel, seized by the throat, and gagged with a handkerchief that his assailant forced into his mouth. His eyes closed, and the man who was smothering him with his weight arose to defend himself against an unexpected attack. A blow from a cane and a kick from a boot; the man uttered two cries of pain, and fled, limping and cursing. Without deigning to pursue the fugitive, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... round-cheeked boy again, smothering his kitten in his pinafore, prattling of Red Riding Hood by his school-mistress's knee, and guddling in the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... the confident reply. "She's a different child since her saltwater bath and her big bowl of oatmeal. Mamma says she really has a splendid physique, only she was smothering down there ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... immense economy of labor. It was far easier to cut off a weed when only an inch high than when grown up to the stature of a young tree. It was the same with the white clover or a grass-root. These two seem native to the soil, and will come in and take possession, smothering and routing out the strawberries, unless cut up as fast as they appear. When attacked early, before their rambling, but deeply penetrating roots obtain a strong hold, they are easily destroyed. I consider, therefore, that watchfulness may be made an effective substitute ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... her face; she turned to leave the office, but the hand of death seemed to clutch her heart, arresting its pulsations, stopping the current of her blood, smothering her breath, and she fell ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the Senate in this day, When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail; When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons; When kingly men, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... felt hope sink within him. For the gray stallion, even with fore leg broken, was smothering the prostrate Pat in a raging attack. He saw Pat struggle time and again to gain his feet. At last, only after desperate effort, he saw him rise. He saw him spring upon the crippled gray and tear his back and neck and withers until his face and chest were covered with blood. And then—and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... but I don't see why I shouldn't be credited with a little common sense even then. I know they haven't much as a rule; what with their sewing-classes, and praying-classes, and mothers' meetings smothering up their minds till they can't see beyond their noses. I never had much to do with that part of it. They didn't like me well enough in the village to want to pray with me nor sew with me; which ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain. She turned ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... no sound was to be heard. I could wait no longer; I wrapped the child in a shawl, and carried her into the Millars' house, and left her under the care of Mrs. Millar's little servant. And then I ran down, through the thick, smothering ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... half-circle they made, a cushion from the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood, but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in the home appeared not only warrantable but obligatory. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... the gentle babe made moan— And Garry heard them with a heart of stone ... With fiendish laugh, he saw the leaping flames Possess the pyre; he heard the shrieking dames, And maids and children, wailing in the gloom Of smothering smoke, e'er they had met their doom. Then when the high stockade was blazing red, Ere yet their cries were silenced, Garry fled, And westward o'er the shouldering hills ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... pictures sold. He has enough to tapestry Trafalgar Square. He has painted, since he came back to England, "The Flaying of Marsyas," "The Smothering of the Little Boys in the Tower," "A Plague Scene during the Great Pestilence," "Ugolino on the Seventh Day after he was deprived of Victuals," &c. For although these pictures have great merit, and the writhings of Marsyas, the convulsions ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ponderous as continents in their majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony's burden, was dismayed to discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a smothering ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... of Gubbio ware upon the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay—the pavement paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets—that pavement where Monsignor Bombo courted 'dear dead women' with Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia, lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... present undergoing long terms of imprisonment inflicted by the Orange "Free" State Circuit Courts for criminally outraging coloured women whom the pass laws had placed in the hollow of the hands of these ruffians. Still many more mothers are smothering evidence of similar outrages upon innocent daughters — cases that could never have happened under ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... BE SMOTHERING" "I suffered with irregular periods, was weak and run-down, could not eat and had headaches. The worst symptoms were dragging down pains, so bad I sometimes thought I would go crazy and I seemed to be ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous
... remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... came, Richard's friends went off for a holiday, but he stuck to his work. The heat of Paris was faint and smothering. On the first Sunday he went out to St. Germain, loveliest of all the Parisian suburbs, and wandered all day in the green and mossy forest. He was lonely and depressed. Not even the cool verdure of the woods, nor the splendour ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Ah how she looks into his eyes! What thanks if there is light there; what grief and pain if he casts them down, and dares not say "hope!" Or it is the house-father who is stricken. The terrified wife looks on, while the Physician feels his patient's wrist, smothering her agonies, as the children have been called upon to stay their plays and their talk. Over the patient in the fever, the wife expectant, the children unconscious, the Doctor stands as if he were Fate, the dispenser ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... choose for combat; you shall pay me a price for the dead!" When Sieglinde in alarm places herself between the two men, Hunding orders her roughly: "Out of the room! Loiter not here! Prepare my night-drink and wait for me to go to rest!" Siegmund, smothering his anger, stands in contemptuous composure beside the hearth; his eyes frankly follow every movement of the woman as she prepares Hunding's drink. On her way out of the room, she pauses at the threshold of the inner chamber, and seeking Siegmund's eyes with her own, tries by a long ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... "if by chance a woman is involuntarily subjected to feelings other than those society imposes on her, you must admit that the more irresistible that feeling is, the more virtuous she is in smothering it, in sacrificing herself to her husband and children. This theory is not applicable to me who unfortunately show an example to the contrary, nor to you whom it ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac |
