"Spasmodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the execution of his office, until he could further signify his pleasure. In 1657, the Council of State requested Cromwell to appoint some person to go to Virginia as its Governor, but this he failed to do.[358] With the exception of such spasmodic interruptions as these, and the partial enforcement of the Navigation Acts, the colony was left almost to its own devices ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... at the brandy for a full half minute. Then, with one quick flip of his wrist and a sudden spasmodic movement of his gullet, he ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... enthusiastic company never gathered to a public show. Though the rain had ceased, and the sun shone, those who possessed umbrellas were not to be coaxed, but held them aloft with a settled air of gloom which defied the lenitives of nature and the spasmodic cajolery of the worst band in Edinburgh. "It'll be near full, Jock?" "It wull." "He'll be startin' in a meenit?" "Aiblins he wull." "Wull this be the sixt time ye've seen him?" "I shudna wonder." It occurred to me that, had we come ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always on the alert for easy duties, and used to plead his delicate health as the reason for assuming them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... tempered by the cool river draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy watery murmur grew up for a moment ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... his manner of holding his hand to his forehead as if seeking inspiration, the almost spasmodic movements of his mouth, the sort of plaintive groan that started the prayer, and the steadily accumulating earnestness ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... warily, and not taking her eyes from the feeble Graham. Of course her approach always galvanized him to new and spasmodic life: the game of romps was sure to be exacted. Sometimes she would be angry; sometimes the matter was allowed to pass smoothly, and we could hear her say as she led him up-stairs: "Now, my dear boy, come and take your tea—I am sure ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Upon cheek and lip, once so delicately blooming, now glanced and glowed a rich, bright crimson. Her once softly falling step had become firm, elastic and stately. "A peeress in my own right," was the thought that sent a spasmodic joy to the heart of Alice. I am sorry she was not more philosophical, more exalted, but I cannot help it, so it was; and if Alice "put on airs," it must not be ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Senior Third. Strangely precocious in some ways, she was woefully lacking in many branches of school work, and barely kept a class ahead of Mary. The fear that Mary would overtake her was the one thing that spurred her to spasmodic efforts. And now, like a bolt from the blue, came the dreadful news. She and Mary were to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... phenomenon was regarded. The star remained at its brightest only a few days; then, like a veritable conflagration, it began to languish; and, like the reflection of a dying fire, as it sank it began to glow with the red color of embers. But its changes were spasmodic; once about every three days it flared up only to die away again. During these fluctuations its light varied alternately in the ratio of one to six. Finally it took a permanent downward course, and after a few ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... wooden nutmegs, he went to a wholesale grocer and bought a bushel of the genuine ones, and these he palmed off upon the innocent and unsuspecting, until he was brought to book on the charge of false pretenses. Human service, as taught by Jesus of Nazareth, has only been tried in a very spasmodic way, except for advertising purposes. The world has now, for the first time in history, reached a point where as a vital problem the production of wealth is secondary to the question of how we shall distribute it. And so the Religion of Service is being seriously considered, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... caught sight of Paul Deulin a long way off, despite her short sight, which was perhaps spasmodic, as short sight often is. She stopped, and half turned, as if to dismiss Martin. When Deulin perceived them he was standing in the middle of the pavement, as if they had just met. He came up with a bow to Netty and his hand stretched out to Martin—his left hand, which ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... clasped to him, his hand raising her pale, languishing face about which her fair hair fell loosely; to him she looked like one asleep, her pink nostrils still dilating with a spasmodic movement, and it seemed to him that he had just suffered from the perturbing contact of a courtesan in the depths of some ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... behind touching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the thither side of Phlegethon, with charge on charge, was driving tormented humanity, with ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... anything is air—for lungs and mind. We have overdone herd-life. We are dimly conscious of this, feel vaguely that there is something "rattling" and wrong about our progress, for we have had many little spasmodic "movements" back to the land these last few years. But what do they amount to? Whereas in 1901 the proportion of town to country population in England and Wales was 3 10/37—1, in 1911 it was 3 17/20—1; ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of somnambulism,—to show that he was even an artist, without reference to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,—that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... health is, I think, greatly improved; I have had some returns of my spasmodic affection, but tolerable in degree, and yielding to medicine. I hope gentle exercise and the air of my hills will set me up this summer. I trust you will soon be out now. I have delayed reading the sheets in progress after Vol. I., that I might enjoy them ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... find their way between the clenched teeth. For fully ten minutes he strove to coax a small quantity of the spirit down his chiefs throat, and at length had the satisfaction of seeing that some at least had been swallowed. The almost immediate result of this was a groan and a slight, spasmodic movement of the emaciated limbs; and presently, after a few minutes of further persistent effort, Butler opened ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... by no weak, sickly, faint-hearted, lukewarm, languid, and spasmodic efforts that the cause is to be kept alive. God will have all or nothing. This is an age in which, if never before, both good men and bad men are truly in earnest. The devil is fearfully and terribly in earnest "Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines—"O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be undeviatingly so?—shall this conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who—who knoweth ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... situation in which we lay. I cast my eyes on my companions. They lay like dead men; my only wonder, now that I can calmly think of the subject, is, that they still kept upon the seats, and did not tumble into the deep. I had scarcely any power of thinking. I sat, writhing under the spasmodic action of suffocation, my eyes fixed in the sockets, my brain swimming, and a burning sensation, like that which attends a paroxysm of brain fever, shooting through the recesses of thought. The recollection of that moment is even yet madness. The bell was almost dark, and the green light ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... said Aunt Emmeline, "you are not in your first bloom. That we can't expect. Your colour is a little harder and more fixed" (the figure in the glass gave a spasmodic jerk. The sulky expression was pierced by a gleam of fear. "Fixed!" Good gracious! She might be talking of those old people who have little red lines over their cheek-bones in the place of "bloom". It's ridiculous to say I am "fixed". It is a matter of indifference to me how I look, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Joe escape the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which, perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long and tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his nature to wish to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any blow he struck. In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to down ...
— The Game • Jack London
... seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, sublimity, suborn, subpoena, subsidiary, subsidy, substratum, subtend, subterfuge, subterranean, subvention, subvert, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... liquid notes of passionate love, there was a spasmodic, fearful gasp succeeded by a long, deep groan. The music stopped abruptly, and the piercing cry of a woman rang out. I threw open the door and rushed headlong into the room. I heard an oath, an exclamation of surprise, and the muffled cry of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... treated him roughly, and never stopped talking to him,—just the worst treatment for a person really insane. In less than an hour I had wearied him out, his feigned madness became so fatiguing to him that there was finally only a spasmodic attempt, and when I had done with him the sane man was perfectly apparent. He grew too much frightened and too tired to act a part. He was hanged, to the satisfaction of all concerned, and he made ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men engaged in a great and solemn cause. Not by processions and idle parades and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can a cause like ours be carried onward. Leave these to parties contending for office, as the "spoils of victory." We need no disguises, nor false pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to present before our ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... then the most accepted poets. Mr. Browning spoke fluently and persistently, but only to a very little circle; Mr. Horne's "Orion" and Mr. Bailey's "Festus" were the recent outcomes of Keats and Goethe; the Spasmodic School, to be presently born of much unwise study of "Festus," was still unknown; Mr. Clough, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Patmore were quite unapparent, taking form and voice in solitude; and here was a new ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... clinch of the fighting men remained unbroken. They lay there upon the ground locked in a deadly embrace. A spasmodic jolt, a violent, muscular heave. The result was changed position, while the clinch remained unrelaxed. There were movements of gripping hands. There were changes of position in the intertwined legs clad in their hard cord trousers. The ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... all others, its diuretic properties have been the most lauded. Dr. Fowler was the first to bring them extensively into notice. In dropsy, dysury, gravel, and nephritis calculosa or inflammation of the kidneys, the infusion and tincture were given by him with astonishing success. In spasmodic asthma, the same distinguished physician found ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... The spasmodic lunge of the Shawanoe had overturned the craft, which resembled a huge tortoise, drifting with ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the skeleton steed after considerable effort, he gave his parting shot—"Crown and anchor—wait till he comes!" and rode off in a spasmodic trot down ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... was increasing momentarily, and with it the species of delirium which had distressed me more or less since my first falling asleep. For some hours past it had been with the greatest difficulty I could breathe at all, and now each attempt at so doing was attended with the most depressing spasmodic action of the chest. But there was still another and very different source of disquietude, and one, indeed, whose harassing terrors had been the chief means of arousing me to exertion from my stupor on the mattress. It arose from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... there were awkward silences, followed by spasmodic local bursts of talk. Sommers, who sat between Miss Hitchcock and Mrs. Lindsay, fell to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... changed to purple hue, his hand trembled just enough to incite Shirley to a desperate chance. As the criminal drew the trigger with a spasmodic jerk, Shirley was dropping to the floor, whence he pushed himself forward with a froglike leap, as he straightened out the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... have in store. She could not speak—could not have found utterance even had words come to her. She could only rest passive in his arms, inert and dumb, feeling in the short gasps that caught his breath how he struggled for speech and failed, then strove again. At last his voice came—short, spasmodic sentences breaking or broken by like spans ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... their struggles appeared each moment to grow less violent, and their melancholy cries became weaker and weaker. Their contortions at length came to an end. A feeble effort to raise themselves alone could be perceived,—then a spasmodic motion of their long crooked limbs,—their cries became indistinct; and, after a while, both lay motionless and silent! Were they dead? ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... young and behaved accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, they were only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results. She herself had grown old as people should grow old—steadily and firmly. No interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodic returns. If, after all these years, she were now going to be deluded into some sort of unsuitable ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... flowing. It falls naturally into regular periods, and resembles the Teranah, with the exception that the latter is only sung by men. The character of the Tuppah is not very clear, but the Ragni is a direct descendant of the old magic songs and incantations; in character it is rhapsodical and spasmodic. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... on Mallalieu was extraordinary. Bent felt the arm into which he had just slipped his own literally quiver with a spasmodic response to the astonished brain; the pipe which Mallalieu was smoking fell from his lips; out of his lips came something very like ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... the amount out of my wages!" My heart relented; I gave him the order, and paid Paganini the dividend. I told him what it was, thinking, as a matter of course, he would return it. He seemed uncertain for a moment, paused, smiled sardonically, looked at the three and sixpence, and with a spasmodic twitch, deposited it in his own waistcoat pocket instead of mine. Voltaire says, "no man is a hero to his valet de chambre," meaning, thereby, as I suppose, that being behind the scenes of every-day life, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... any sort," he said, "since I and the old farmer took our turn down in the Docks. How's this?" He seemed to rock. He was near upon indulging in a fit of terror; but the impolicy of it withheld him from any demonstration, save an involuntary spasmodic ague. When this had passed, his eyesight and sensations grew clearer, and he sat in a mental doze, looking at things with quiet animal observation. His recollection of the state, after a lapse of minutes, was pleasurable. The necessity for motion, however, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder—yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... should be a picture of common life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius," he says; but again, with strange imperviousness, "A small daily task, if it be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." Beat them, how? Why, in quantity. But how about quality? Is the travail of a work of art the same thing as the making of a pair of shoes? ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... negative, was so overcome by the popular breeze in favor of the soldiers, that he came into the hospital with a roll of bank-bills in his hand, and passing from cot to cot gave each wounded man a five-dollar bill, repeating, with a spasmodic jerk of his head and a forced smile, "Make yourself comfortable; make yourself comfortable, my good fellow." I am afraid he, poor fellow, did not feel very comfortable, as his money was screwed out of him by ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... conclusive proof that the dread of hunger is a real and a terrible power for evil among Continental nations; that their choice lies, in a word, between a recognition of the right to subsistence—a Poor Law with severe labour tests and restrictions—and periodical, spasmodic measures of relief enforced by insurrection? Or can there be a doubt, that the latter is infinitely the more dangerous and demoralizing alternative: that only the adoption of a Poor law can prevent the lessons of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... chords and runs that he could not resist playing them passionately over and over. A dangerous laugh, started among the younger set, began to strangle and stifle his audience. Martie, looking straight ahead of her, gave only an occasional spasmodic heave of shoulders and breast, but her lips were compressed in an agony, and her eyes full of tears. From the writhing boys on each side of her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... to the full length of his arm; there was a soft dab, and Fred uttered a subdued "Oh!" as his companion's right hand grasped his with spasmodic violence. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... on fire all right," said Copple, grimly, as he loaded still more rapidly. Carefully he aimed and pulled trigger. The grizzly gave a spasmodic jerk as if stung and suddenly he made a prodigious leap off a ledge, down into a patch of brush, where he threshed ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... broad, necks thick and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' stagnant water, Every day, I blush to own it, Cambridge strokes are rowing shorter. With a short spasmodic impulse see the boats a moment leap, Starting with a flying motion, soon they stop and sink to sleep. Where are Stanley, Jones, and Courage? where is 'Judas' stout and tall, Where the Stroke named ''all' ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... cause of death was spasmodic contraction of every muscle in the thing's body; some of them were partly relaxed before we could get to work on it, but not completely. Every bone that isn't broken is dislocated; a good many both. There is not the slightest trace of external injury. Everything was done by its own muscles." ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... learned apparently that his design was discovered, so he started a loping gallop, turning to a quick, mad sprint, as though he attempted to jump over the bar before it had time to rise higher. With a beautiful take-off, a splendid spring—a quick, writhing twist in air, and two spasmodic kicks, the whole being known as the scissors form of high jump, the mosquito-like youth made a strenuous effort to clear the needed height, but—one foot kicked the cross-bar, and as Hicks fell flat on his back, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... all Ben knew or felt outside of his hot, hated work, his dread of a lashing on Saturday night. All the pleasure left him was 'possum and hominy for Sunday's dinner. It did not content him. The spasmodic religion of the field-negro does not teach endurance. So it came, that the slow tide of discontent ebbing in everybody's heart towards some unreached sea set in his ignorant brooding towards that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... He made spasmodic attempts at literary work. Abstruse essays were begun under the impression that he had something brilliant and original to say, but before they were finished a new train of thought led him captive. He dreamed ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... that had reddened her eyelids and impaired the freshness of her cheeks. But her eyes expressed the scare of terror; and the obsession of the tragedy imparted to all her attractive personality, to her gait and to her movements, something feverish and spasmodic that was painful to ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... clear enough to see that Harry was right. A ship was on fire. The flames, at first spasmodic, uncertain, had now gained a complete hold of the ship, and were shooting upward, like fiery serpents, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... biting speech Sorenson's face went red and pale by turns. His lips twitched and worked, moving his mustache in little angry lifts, while he breathed with short spasmodic intakes. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... called for the breakdown. Bob begins a jig on his guitar, the whistler claps and the sable dancer edges his way to the center of the floor in little spasmodic shuffles. He begins with his heel tap, then the toe, then in leaps and whirls. The guitar swelled to a steady roar. The whistler quickens his claps. And Stuart's boyish laughter ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... de Braque, and he had hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little vexed that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had defrauded him of the first evening. His regret on that account came to the surface every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in which everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted by innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of affection and joy. Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and the pleasure it had given him to be in their old ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... was silent save for some strange cry of night bird, croak of reptile, or weird whirr of insect that seemed to be magnified in power by the heated misty air, the black's fingers would tighten upon the lad's arm with spasmodic suddenness, in company with what seemed to be the piercing humming trumpet of a mosquito. Twice over Murray as he toiled on in the black darkness took it for granted that the black had stopped short to avoid being bitten or stung, but only to find afterwards that the sound came with ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... conversation, playing with the theme of war, spread itself in spasmodic blurs about the room, bursting in little crescendoes of conviction, pronouncements, suddenly serious and inviolable truths, Dorn found himself listening excitedly. An unusual energy pumped notions into his thought. But it was impossible to give vent to ideas ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... cases, more or less severe spasmodic pains are felt in the chest. Angina Pectoris (literally, agony of the chest) is one of the worst of these. All these pains, as a rule, may be removed completely by treatment ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... State had ceased to be a State in the Union, is not to be wondered at. The extent and determination of the secession movement were imperfectly understood, and the belief among the supporters of the government, and, perhaps, of the government itself, was, that it was a spasmodic movement for a temporary purpose, rather than a fixed determination to found an independent separate nationality; that it was and would be sustained by the real majority of the people of none of the States, with perhaps the exception of South Carolina; that the true policy of the government ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... civilized people. Aristocracy, in our sense of the word, came to an end before the beginning of the Christian era, and government was in the hands of officials chosen for their proficiency in writing in a dead language, as in England. Intercourse with the West was spasmodic and chiefly religious. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Buddhism was imported from India, and some Chinese scholars penetrated to that country to master the theology of the new religion in its native home, but in later times the intervening barbarians made the journey ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... men set to deal with heartbreaking perplexity. All weakness comes to the surface. We are homeless in a jungle of machines and untamed powers that haunt and lure the imagination. Of course our culture is confused, our thinking spasmodic, and our emotion out of kilter. No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century. Our ancestors thought they knew their way from birth ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling. Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon the floor. Otherwise, the room ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... from the crowd, lay on the deck farther aft. One was on top of the other, his fingers clutching the gullet of his helpless opponent. The agony of the man underneath found expression only in the drumming heels that beat a tattoo on the floor. The spasmodic feet were shod in Oxford tans of an ultra-fashionable cut. No doubt the owner of the smart footwear had been pulled down as he was escaping to shout ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... fainting fit was giving place to a violent nervous attack; spasmodic movements shook her whole body and strangled cries came from her throat. The young man leaned over her and made ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... pages, its confusion was increased by the appearance of the cholera morbus. This frightful malady first appeared on the banks of the Ganges, in 1817. The early manifestations of it consisted in violent vomitings and discharges of the bowels. After this, spasmodic contractions, beginning in the fingers, gradually extended themselves to the trunk; the pulse sank; the skin became cold; the lips, face, neck, hands, and feet, and soon after the thighs, arms, and surface assumed a leaden, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... but endorses Henry Carey's theory of wealth, and acknowledges unreservedly, in its broadest sense, the universal domination of Law. Statistics bourgeon into prophecies under his pen: he does not disdain their significance, but rather aids their influence with all the power which his spasmodic style has given in drawing our grotesque-loving public to him. We suspect Buckle, and feel a cheerful sense of Bacon and Comte. In his plea for socialism, for education, we see the dawn of the ultimate triumph and dignity of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... arose, and, going to a small box, took thence a needle not larger than those in ordinary use, but of greater length. Returning to the bed where Thora still lay, breathing with the long, heavy respiration of slumber, he leaned over her, and the moment he did so, and but for a moment, a low, spasmodic cry was heard, a slight struggle shook the bed, and all was hushed as before. M. de Lacroix had driven the needle into Thora's heart! Wiping with his finger the trifling drop of blood which oozed from the puncture, he effaced all trace ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... only sorry I ever uttered a word about the edition, and leave you to be the judge. I have had a vile cold which has prostrated me for more than a fortnight, and even now tears me nightly with spasmodic coughs; but it has been a great victory. I have never borne a cold with so little hurt; wait till the clouds blow by, before you begin to boast! I have had no fever; and though I've been very unhappy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... connected with the inlet, and another with the outlet of the wide-mouthed bottle. The first guards against the mechanical carrying over by the air current of sulphuric acid from the acid bottle into the sample, whilst the second prevents spasmodic outbursts of water from the exhaust from reaching the sample. The method also gave satisfactory results with nitro-glycerine. The dry substance may now be wrapped in filter paper, the whole weighed, and the nitro-glycerine extracted in the Soxhlet apparatus with ether. ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... room opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine mirror above the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at Dijon—saw himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and dressed, but furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which he corrected by a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders whenever a glass confronted him: a tired middle-aged man, baffled, beaten, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Light, the photographic representation of all that has ever happened. These records are really and permanently impressed upon that higher medium called the Akasha, and are only reflected in a more or less spasmodic manner in the astral light, so that one whose power of vision does not rise above this plane will be likely to obtain only occasional and disconnected pictures of the past instead of a coherent narrative. But nevertheless pictures of all kinds of past ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... almost ceased to be performed between Newcastle and Carlisle, even Hexham being deserted for a time. After the battle of Bannockburn, matters were worse, if possible, and all the north lay in fear of the Scots, but from time to time spasmodic efforts at retaliation were made by the boldest of the Northumbrian landowners. In the reign of Edward III., however, many of these great landowners thwarted the King's designs by making a traitorous peace ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... prayers were brief, for the tumult came nearer and nearer; Apollodorus wrung his hands, and struck his fist against his forehead; his movements were violent—spasmodic. Terror had entirely robbed him of the elegant, measured demeanor which he had acquired among his Greek fellow-citizens, and mingling heathen oaths and adjurations with appeals to the God of his fathers, he flew first one way and then another. He searched for the key ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the windows of the Eclipse office dropped the walls of a terrible chasm in the darkness of which could be seen vague struggling figures. Looking down into this appalling crevice one discovered only the tops of hats and knees which in spasmodic jerks seemed to touch the rims of the hats. The scene represented some weird fight or dance or carouse. It was not an exhibition of men hurrying along ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... base blow his rage and blood-lust that had been gathering was swiftly freed. It was all that was needed to set him at the work of torture. For an instant he stood almost motionless except for the spasmodic twitching—now almost continuous—at his lips and for the slow turning of his head as he looked about for a weapon with which he could more quickly satiate the murder-madness in his veins. The knife appealed to him not at all; but his eye fell on a long, heavy club of spruce that had ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... stood back from the front, but between the heads of those before them they could see what was going on below. Victor stood immovable, his face as pale as death. His cap had fallen off, his hair was dank with perspiration, his eyes had a look of concentrated horror, his body shook with a spasmodic shuddering. In vain Harry, when he once saw what was going to take place, urged him in a low whisper to leave. He did not appear to hear, and even when Harry pulled him by the sleeve of his blouse he seemed equally unconscious. Harry was greatly ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... performing a flourish of unparalleled beauty. Mr. Winkle struck wildly against him, and with a loud crash they both fell heavily down. Mr. Pickwick ran to the spot. Bob Sawyer had risen to his feet, but Mr. Winkle was far too wise to do anything of the kind, in skates. He was seated on the ice, making spasmodic efforts to smile; but anguish was depicted on every lineament of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of sexual intercourse is called the orgasm. It is the moment at which the pleasurable sensation is at its highest point, the body experiences a thrill, there is a spasmodic contraction in the genital organs, and there is a secretion of fluid from the genital glands and mucous membranes. This fluid in women is not a vital fluid like the semen in man; it is merely mucus, and in some women it is very slight in amount or altogether absent. Adult women who ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... any country in the world equal to America in the irregularity and spasmodic nature of the demands which society makes upon its women? Are there any girls in the world so ready to rush headlong into all kinds of exercise, mental or physical, which may be recommended to them, as our American girls? It is a pity that, to balance our greater amount of fiery energy in the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... her teeth were fixed convulsively. It was only by an effort that I could force the brandy into her mouth. Once more, and for the last time, the fiery liquid gave her a momentary strength. She roused herself from the stupor into which she was sinking, and, springing to her feet with a wild, spasmodic effort, she ran with outstretched hands toward the shore. For about twenty or thirty paces she ran, and, before I could overtake her, she ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... been burned for a witch in old times. I have seen the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not the least idea of it, and all at once I would see her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and move round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up and go to her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked like hysterics;—do you believe in the evil ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... which was first manifest in this Colony in 1884, still continued. Remedies of most original character were suggested in the public organs and private circles, and a renewed spasmodic tirade was directed against the Chinese. A petition, made and signed by numbers of the retail trading class, was addressed to the Sovereign; but it appears to have found its last resting-place in the Colonial Secretary's waste-paper basket. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... quivering under his hand for a moment, and heard her breath come in swift, spasmodic pants. He was wondering what was the effect upon her of this climax of his revelation, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... shelter us in front, at the same moment we are blinded by a flash of lightning, and the electric fluid strikes the earth within one hundred yards of us. The horses plunge and prance with fear, and my companion falls in spasmodic convulsions. She throws herself upon me, and folds me in her arms. The cloak had gone down, I stoop to place it around us, and improving my opportunity I take up her clothes. She tries to pull them down, but another clap of thunder deprives her of every particle of strength. Covering ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not met. Their poor shifts at self-deceit are painfully familiar to us. In the company of this keen-eyed detective we can follow human selfishness and cowardice through all their disguises. The emptiness of conventional respectabilities and pieties and the futility of the spasmodic attempts ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... in. I am satisfied, of course, that it is a forgery. I know you would not do such a thing as to ask a brother rhymer, utterly exhausted by his centennial efforts, to endanger his health and compromise his reputation by any damnable iteration of spasmodic squeezing. [Laughter.] So I give you warning that some dangerous person is using your name, and taking advantage of the great love I bear you, to play upon my feelings. Don't think for a moment that I hold you in any way responsible for this note, looking so nearly like your own handwriting ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... like me having a bottle of hartshorn bobbed under her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... so much the worse for Nahoon, and if it should wither in his grasp, so much the worse for the flower; it could always be thrown away. Thus it came about that, not for the first time in his life, Philip Hadden discarded the somewhat spasmodic prickings of conscience and listened to that evil whispering ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... him as a douce old man, leading a cow by a straw-rope." The master of the "gay science" gradually slipping down from the clouds, and settling quietly and doucely on the plain hard ground of ordinary life and business! Let all pale-faced and sharp-chinned youths, who are spasmodic poets, or who are in danger of becoming such, keep steadily before them the picture of minstrel Burn, "leading a cow by a straw-rope"—and go ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the history of the Dutch, who are, after all, only the extreme expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and effective a revolution as any people in Europe. Before the war ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... exile was far different from the joyous creature who shed light on Pitt. Her spasmodic nature needed his strength; her waywardness, his affectionate control. As for her tart retorts, terrifying to bores and toadies, they only amused him. In truth she brought into his life a beam of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... force the situation; but she felt disappointed when at the approach of lighted houses he put her down without further caresses. In silence they returned to the hotel, where a few tired couples were still revolving to a spasmodic music. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... remark in privacy, behind the back of the hand, this followed by a nudge and a knowing look, perhaps even by a snicker, the latter quickly suppressed. Little by little these bursts of courage had their effect. Whispers became spasmodic, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of considerations connects itself with the heightened and plethoric fulness of the style: its accumulation and contrast of imagery; its occasional jerking and almost spasmodic violence;—and above all, the painful subjective excitement, which seems the element and groundwork even of every description of Nature; often taking the shape of sarcasm or broad jest, but never subsiding into calm. There is also a point which I should think worth attending to, were I planning ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... human being, Dr. Johnson: "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir, but not in brains." Carlyle was regarded by those writers of his day who clung to and revered the time-worn ruts, as chief of the "Spasmodic School," the members whereof were supposed to be distinguished by "a stained and unnatural style." This "School," which was satirized by Aytoun while editor of Blackwood's Magazine, was thought to include Tennyson, Gilfillan and other popular authors of the time. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... air like the sound of a bell, yet it was only whispered. The man nearest him on the other side shook with a single spasmodic movement and laid his fingers gently on the bandaged hands. And then for a long while there was ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... was unable to move, and the matter was settled for her in the course of an illness which, happily, was not prolonged. I have said that she was not obstinate, and the resistance that she made on the present occasion was not worthy even of her spasmodic energy. Brain-fever made its appearance, and she died at the end of three weeks, during which Georgina's attentions to her patient and protectress had been unremitting. There were other Americans in Rome who, after this sad event, extended to the bereaved young lady every ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... of the preceding year the Midlands, after several spasmodic struggles, appeared prostrate and helpless at the feet of the Conqueror, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to build strong castles everywhere, and to garrison them with brave captains and trusty soldiers. Warwick Castle was given to Henry de Beaumont, whose ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... arose and he turned with a growl in his throat. The Harvester dropped his load with a crash and ran in leaping bounds, but the dog was before him. Half way to the house, Ruth Jameson swayed in the grip of her uncle. One hand clutched his coat front in a spasmodic grasp, and with the other she ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... dead, so still did he lie; but the moment Syd took hold of one hand to feel the injured boy's pulse, there was a sudden spasmodic jerk and a loud yell which ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... pearly white powder of loose texture, turning grey on exposure, and blackened by sulphuretted hydrogen. It is chiefly used as a cosmetic, but is said to injure the skin, rendering it yellow and leather-like; and it has been known to cause a spasmodic trembling of ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... had his opportunity, accepted it and became one of the elect. He passed on to the staff of the Courier, where his work was spasmodic and of a leisurely character, but always valuable and appreciated. His salary, which was liberal, seemed to him magnificent. Besides, he had the opportunity of doing other work. All the magazines were ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... mining is by native methods under licence-fees of Rs.5 and Rs.10 a month. They are, however, only moderately successful. Gold is found in most of the rivers in Upper Burma, but the gold-washing industry is for the most part spasmodic in the intervals of agriculture. There is a gold mine at Kyaukpazat in the Mawnaing circle of the Kathra district, where the quartz is crushed by machinery and treated by chemical processes. Work was begun in 1895, and the yield of gold in that year ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... did seem as if some of Nurse Byloe's seventy devils had possession of the girl. All the strange spasmodic movements, the chokings, the odd sounds, the wild talk, the laughing and crying, were in full blast. All the remedies which had been ordered seemed to have been of no avail. The Doctor could hardly refuse trying ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly. All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity. These lakes were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had long since died out of them. Under a noon-day sun they showed like shallow ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... public station that he has filled. A different kind of man—a man conscious that accident alone had elevated him, and therefore nervously anxious to prove himself equal to his fortunes—would thus have been impelled to spasmodic efforts. He would have thrust himself forward in debate, taking the word out of the mouths of renowned orators, and thereby winning notoriety, as at least the glittering counterfeit of true celebrity. Had Pierce, with his genuine ability, practised ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... electric wires in a circle about the mastodon and themselves, they sat down and did justice to the meal, with appetites that might have dismayed the waiting throng. Whenever a snake's head came in contact with one wire, while his tail touched the other, he gave a spasmodic leap and fell back dead. If he happened to fall across the wires, lie immediately began to sizzle, a cloud of smoke arose, and lie was reduced to ashes. "Any time that we are short of mastodon or other good game," said Ayrault, "we need not hunger if we are not above grilled ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... pulse, and a fever of expectancy in all her blood. The girdling arm lifted higher and drew her toward him, drew her slowly and caressingly. She could wait no longer. With a tired sigh, and with an impulsive movement all her own, unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested her head upon his breast. His head bent over swiftly, and, as his lips approached, hers flew to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... together, though this made very little difference. The first died suddenly as hands like steel claws found his neck and in a single spasmodic contraction did such damage to the large blood vessels there that they burst and tiny hemorrhages filled his brain. The second man had time for a single scream, though he died just as swiftly when those hands ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of infants is spasmodic croup, and is very rarely dangerous, although the symptoms seem ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... expend themselves in spasmodic and violent ebullitions, but the great deep of this man's serene character had never stirred, until the one mighty love of his life had lashed it into a tempest that tossed his hopes like sea-froth, and finally engulfed the only rosy dream of wedded happiness that had ever flushed ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... General Grant was not. But the earnest, persistent, and determined efforts of men only moderately endowed by nature with intellectual gifts, sometimes surpass what is accomplished by the spasmodic flashes of those born to be conquerors. So far as the successful career of the most prominent hero of the War of the Rebellion may be used to "point a moral," it forcibly emphasizes the results of energy, perseverance, and a determination ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... silence was so great as the 'Lexington' approached the dam, that a pin might almost be heard to fall. She entered the gap with a full head of steam on, pitched down the roaring torrent, made two or three spasmodic rolls, hung for a moment on the rocks below, was then swept into deep water by the current, and rounded to safely into the bank. Thirty thousand voices rose in one deafening cheer, and universal joy seemed to pervade the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... more and more tightly, and the younger woman could feel her neighbor's breathings grow deeper and more spasmodic, as though uncontrollable ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... stared blankly upward, with the rigid, convulsed look of a woman who has been stricken with dumbness. Her flaxen hair, damp with camphor, which Mrs. Carr had wildly splashed on her forehead, clung flat and close to her head, while the only pulse in her body seemed to beat in irregular, spasmodic throbs ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that effort in the ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... vain to attempt to give the broken and disjointed converse that here took place between the two friends. After a time they became more rational and less spasmodic in their talk, and Tommy at last condescended to explain the way in which he had managed to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... the skin as well as their own. Then, in case the lungs are the weakest organ, the mucous secretion becomes excessive; so that it would fill up the cells, and stop the breathing, were it not for the spasmodic effort called coughing, by which this substance is thrown out. In case the nerves are the weakest part of the system, such an exposure would result in pains in the head or teeth, or in some other nervous ailment. If the muscles be the weakest part, rheumatic affections will ensue; ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... my appointment to the Naval School at Annapolis, in the early part of the year 1856, the United States navy was under the influence of one of those spasmodic awakenings which, so far as action is concerned, have been the chief characteristic of American statesmanship in the matter of naval policy up to twenty years ago. Since then there has been a more continuous practical recognition of the necessity for a sustained and consistent ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... new light to Andy, for he thought giants were too strong to get drunk. "I could ate a young child, without parsley and butther," said the drunken giant. Andy gave a faint spasmodic kick. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... after one wild roll of her eyes at him. The colour was returning to Adrianna's cheeks; her mother was drinking hot tea in spasmodic gulps. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... that her pupils were promoted and, therefore, she will retain her place on the pay roll. It were more logical to have the same teacher continue with the pupil during his entire school life of twelve years, for, in that case, her interest in him would be continuous rather than temporary and spasmodic. But the present plan of changing teachers would be even better than that if only every teacher's work could be made to project itself not only to graduation day, but to the days of mature manhood and womanhood. If ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... probably about this time, or shortly after, that the Triumph, a British battleship of nearly 12,000 tons displacement, 19-1/2 knots speed, and four 10-inch guns primary armament, joined the Japanese squadron off Tsing-tao. A spasmodic bombardment had been maintained during the preceding weeks, and seaplanes had been busy, bombing and range-finding. The wireless station, the electric-power station, and several ships in harbour were damaged by explosive missiles. Little could be done, however, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... silent. Animals of all kinds which habitually use their voices utter various noises under any strong emotion, as when enraged and preparing to fight; but this may merely be the result of nervous excitement, which leads to the spasmodic contraction of almost all the muscles of the body, as when a man grinds his teeth and clenches his fists in rage or agony. No doubt stags challenge each other to mortal combat by bellowing; but ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Winter's soliloquy was lost in the spasmodic excitement of boarding a passing omnibus, for this latest item of news must be conveyed to ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... and inexpressive murmur was heard from the men. Over the high weather rail, a topping wave flung into their eyes a handful of heavy drops that stung like hail. There were low groans of indignation. A man sighed. Another emitted a spasmodic laugh through his chattering teeth. No one moved away. The little kassab wiped his face and went on in his cracked voice, to the accompaniment of the swishing sounds made by the seas that swept regularly astern along the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... circled the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo on the cabin floor. Then he turned on his ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... licensed, and the Company of Stationers still sought, for reasons of profit, to control printers by regulating their production. The licensing agent in chief was a character of picturesque uncertainty and spasmodic action, Roger L'Estrange, half fanatic, half politician, half hack writer, in fact half in many respects and whole only in the resulting contradictions of purpose and performance. On one point he was strong—a desire to suppress unlicensed printing. So when in 1668 warrant was ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... divorce without one. The long, lonely evenings—the endless days, when time never moves off the spot, my dogs and I have sat on the floor fascinated with the greatest music in the world. I like my machine because it may be depended upon, never is nervous, and always willing to perform. Talent is so spasmodic and dependent upon moods, while the little hard rubber discs tirelessly and ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... caking with dust, slithering in the slippery, impalpable powder of the road, groggily staggering in a red dusty dream, coughing, snorting, head-tossing; becoming suddenly dejected, with slouching haunch and limp legs on easy slopes, or wildly spasmodic and agile on sharp acclivities, Blue Lightning began to have ideas and recollections! Ah! she was a devil for a lark—this lightly-clinging, caressing, blarneying, cooing creature—up there! He remembered her now. Ha! very ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Maenad. I was entertained by Judith's fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of reserve. Carlotta said, "Oh, ye-es" or "No-o" to everything. It was not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... powerful horse slowly to and fro along their front, talking to them in his calm, passionless manner. Strained muscles and tense nerves relaxed; breath came more regularly and naturally; men ventured to look about them more freely, to loosen the spasmodic grip on curb and snaffle, to speak to comrades in low tones, inquiring what damage other troops ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... thy declining state? Is thy walk less with God, thy frame less heavenly? Hast thou less conscious nearness to the mercy-seat,—diminished communion with thy Saviour? Is prayer less a privilege than it has been?—the pulsations of spiritual life more languid, and fitful, and spasmodic?—the bread of life less relished?—the seen, and the temporal, and the tangible, displacing the unseen and eternal? Art thou sinking down into this state of drowsy self-contentment, this conformity-life with the world, forfeiting all the happiness ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... no reply. He closed his mouth with a spasmodic snap, and sat ruminating—the very picture of wretchedness. He was, indeed, to be pitied! For no patience, no kindness, no wooing could win from his bride one smile. That very afternoon, under the combined goadings of exasperated self-love ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... these councils were regular meetings held in the modern parliamentary way; nor that they had anything like the powers of the British Parliament or of the American Congress. These councils of Japan were called into spasmodic life simply by the necessity of the time. They were held either at the court of Kioto or that of Yedo, or at other places appointed for the purpose. The Kuges or Daimios assembled rather in an informal way, measured by modern parliamentary procedure, but in accordance with ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... not naturally expert in the water know well the feelings of horror that overwhelm them, when in it, at the bare idea of being held down even for a few seconds—that spasmodic, involuntary recoil from compulsory immersion which has no connection whatever with cowardice; and they will understand the amount of resolution that it required in Peterkin to allow himself to be dragged ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... water will care for spasmodic colic, and I have, in one instance, relieved strangulated hernia by the same method, and at another time the same result was accomplished by a large injection of warm linseed oil. I have often applied a cloth wet with cold water upon the throats of children ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... short and chubby fingers a stout sea-grass line was running out to the accumulated driftwood in the eddy below the wharf-boat. Suddenly there came a spasmodic jerk ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... spasmodic movement of the victim, and immediately above the middle of his forehead a black hole marred the whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report, and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the captain had felt the wind of it along his cheek. A third ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of laughter, succeeded by the same abrupt silence. Would all our conversation, I wondered, be conducted on this spasmodic system? He certainly didn't second my efforts at small-talk. Was what he had to ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... thought of opening them. It was only towards the end of it that his eyes were attracted by a great red mark round an article. He read that his Lieder were like the roaring of a wild beast; that his symphonies seemed to have come from a madhouse; that his art was hysterical, his harmony spasmodic, as a change from the dryness of his heart and the emptiness of his thought. The critic, who was well known, ended with ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... accomplished by J. Curle under the auspices of the London Economist. Such work should, of course, cover all incorporated mining companies, not merely a few hundred of the more prominent gold mines; and it should be continuous and not spasmodic. Such a plan is of course Utopian, but I feel that anything less would be likely to do little good. Even Curle's opinions began to lose their value within a month or two after they were written, and are of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong who think that this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... antidote was revivifying. The evolutionary gestures on the screen held me more raptly than a "movie" plot. My companion (here in the role of villain) thrust a sharp instrument through a part of the fern; pain was indicated by spasmodic flutters. When he passed a razor partially through the stem, the shadow was violently agitated, then stilled itself with the final ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda |
