"Suffocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broken a bone, or plucked out an eye, and been silent; but they never grappled iron and whalebone into the very nerves and life-blood of their system. They might possibly have passed a dagger too deeply info the heart, and died; but they never drew a ligature of suffocation around it, and expected to live! They never tied up the mouths of the millions of air-vessels in the lungs, and then taxed them to the full measure of action and respiration. Even Pharaoh only demanded bricks without straw for ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he could not walk nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the children of men." And ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... earsplitting. Not a sound arose from that devastated land. Birds and beasts must lie dead by the thousand; not a horseman ventured abroad; not a whisper came from the cellar, where two hundred Africans might be dead from fright or suffocation. Mrs. Mitchell had lit the candles, and there was something sinister and ironical in the steady flames. How long before they would leap and add the final horror to what must be a night of horrors? It was ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... it was to mount the hill, climbing with weary steps and slow upon the brown turf by the wayside, slippery, hot, and hard as a rock! And then if we happened to meet a carriage coming along the middle of the road,—the bottomless middle,—what a sandy whirlwind it was! What choking! what suffocation! No state could be more pitiable, except indeed that of the travellers who carried this misery about with them. I shall never forget the plight in which we met the coach one evening in last August, full an hour after its time, steeds and driver, carriage and passengers, all one dust. The outsides, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... accompany them in a waggonette. The crunching of wheels and throb of the engine at the gate told her it was stopping. Then the Ralstons had altered their plans, unless—Something suddenly leapt up within her. She was conscious of a curious constriction at the throat, a sense of suffocation. The fuss and worry of the engine died down into silence, and in a moment there came the sound of a man's feet entering the compound. Standing motionless, with hands clenched against her sides, she gazed forth. A tall, straight figure ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... human sympathies. Vanity and illusions were our idols; lies and deception poisoned our lives; lust and avarice dictated our actions; a hell of immorality and misery, corroding every institution, heated the atmosphere to suffocation, until black clouds gathered, a storm of the nations raged about us, and purifying streaks of lightning darted down upon the barricades and into the streets. Through the storm-wind, I saw chariots of fire and horses of fire ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... article was that relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case was entrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished declamation lasted two days; but the hall was crowded to suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a slight occasional difficulty of breathing, which at that time was not thought worth attention. Soon after, in November, he had one or two singular attacks of catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the lungs, which commenced with a sense of suffocation, succeeded by cough and an expectoration of cream coloured mucus, to the quantity of a quart in an hour, with coldness of the extremities, lividity of the countenance, and a deathlike moisture over the whole body. These attacks lasted ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... fifty days through the great desert called Sahara, to the land of Zawilah, which is Havilah in the land of Gana[179]. In this desert there are mountains of sand, and when the wind rises, it covers the caravans with the sand, and many die from suffocation. Those that escape bring back with them copper, wheat, fruit, all manner of lentils, and salt. And from thence they bring gold, and all kinds of jewels. This is in the land of Cush which is called ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... great entrance portal, under the triforium of the organ, they had a feeling of deliverance as they raised their eyes towards the high, Gothic windows of the nave, which shot up so gracefully above the heavy Romanesque coursed work. But they continued by the southern side-aisle, and the feeling of suffocation returned again. At the cross of the transept four enormous pillars made the four corners, and rose to a great height, then struck off to support the roof. There was still to be found a delicate purple-tinted ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... hate; he spat at Ryder as he spoke, and then, with the swiftness and the strength that had marked them in health, the outlaw's fingers fastened upon his hairy throat. The long, thin hands clamped themselves upon his neck, and for a moment Monkey Mack was helpless in the agonies of suffocation. Then his left hand pointed the revolver at Ryder's ear; there was a sharp report, and the outlaw fell limply, and rolled back upon the flat water-worn rock, his shattered head to the stone, his arms out thrown, his lifeless face turned up to ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... glimpse of Aunt Polly's unparalleled cap through a window, and the next moment she stood on the steps, wringing her hands and crying for joy. An involuntary dread of another squeezing came over me, which had scarce time to be idealized ere it was realized almost to suffocation. My father's more graduated look of pleasure, called from Aunt Polly an out-bursting—"Forgive me, forgive me! It's my only brother in the world! It's my dear little puss all over again! Forgive me, forgive me!" But during these ejaculations I was confirmed in a discovery ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and always that you are Americans and members of the United States Navy," continued their commanding officer. "We have air supply in the reserve tanks sufficient to stay here for many hours yet without danger of suffocation; and in the meantime quite a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... to avoid suffocation it is obliged to breathe atmospheric air immediately, for its blood becomes dark by saturation with carbonic acid, which irritates the respiratory nerve centers. The first independent act of the new-born child is, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the suffocation ceased, the panorama sank, the scene shifted, the curtain parted, the drama proceeded and she found herself staring at Paliser, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... in we got into the centre seat. "What is this all round?" "Thick drugget, sir; they nail it round in winter to keep the cold out."—Thank Heaven, it is only nailed at the bottom. Suffocation began; down goes my window. Presently a sixteen-stone kind of overgrown Pickwickian "Fat Boy," sitting opposite me, exclaims aloud, with a polar shudder, "Ugh! it's very cold!" and finding I was inattentive, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... started by stage coach for Bolton, a hundred and fifty miles away. I travelled all night, and all next day, outside the coach. It was winter, and the weather was very cold. About six in the evening I reached Bolton. At half past seven I began my lecture, in a place crowded almost to suffocation. After the lecture, I had an hour and a half's debate. Between eleven and twelve I went to bed. I spent next day mostly in writing. At half past seven I began my second lecture, with a congregation more closely packed than the night before. The lecture was followed with a somewhat longer ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... that other Australian specialty, the Botanical Gardens. We cannot have these paradises. The best we could do would be to cover a vast acreage under glass and apply steam heat. But it would be inadequate, the lacks would still be so great: the confined sense, the sense of suffocation, the atmospheric dimness, the sweaty heat—these would all be there, in place of the Australian openness to the sky, the sunshine and the breeze. Whatever will grow under glass with us will flourish rampantly out of doors in Australia.—[The greatest heat in Victoria, that there is an authoritative ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ejaculates Nussler, when the job is over. Still worse with Privy-Councillor Klinggraf: his house, the next to Nussler's, is worth mere nothing to him when built; a soap-boiler offers him 800 thalers (120 pounds) for it; and Nussler, to avoid suffocation, purchases it himself of Klinggraf for that sum. Derschau, with his slow screw-machinery, is very formidable;—and Busching knows it for a fact, "that respectable Berlin persons used to run out of the way of Burgermeister Koch and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the veil, To which she hath been heretofore inclined; And for my master, he will take again To alchemy—a pastime well enough, For aught I know, and honest Christian work. Still it was strange how my poor mistress died, Found, as she was, within her husband's study. The rumor went she died of suffocation; Some cursed crucible which had been left, By Giacomo, aburning, filled the room, And when the lady entered took her breath. He found her there, and since that day the place Has been a home for darkness and for dust. I hear him coming; by his hurried ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... had overwhelmed Melissa began now to subside, as the waves of the ocean gradually cease their tumultuous commotion, after the turbulent winds are laid asleep. Deep sobs and long drawn sighs succeeded to a suffocation of tears. The irritation of her feelings had caused a more than usual glow upon her cheek, which faded away as she became composed, until a livid paleness spread itself over her features. Alonzo feared that the delicacy of her constitution ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... difficulty—it was equally ineffectual in awakening sympathy. Seats are once again to be had in any part of our parish church, and the chapel-of-ease is going to be enlarged, as it is crowded to suffocation every Sunday! ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... brightly, and Hatteraick hung his bronzed visage and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it, with an avidity resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food is exposed. The light showed his savage and stern features, and the smoke, which in his agony of cold he seemed to endure almost to suffocation, after circling round his head, rose to the dim and rugged roof of the cave, through which it escaped by some secret rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless that afforded air to the cavern when the tide was ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... will have him perjure himself, however; I will insist on the ordeal. How I shall laugh to hear his clumsy fingers hiss, as he grasps the red-hot globe of iron! Ay, or his huge mouth riven, and his gullet swelling to suffocation, as he endeavours ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... hands upon riverside benches, merry-makers rowing in skiffs or crossing the river in crowded ferries; the electric cars, following either side of the stream as far down as Pittsburg, crowded to suffocation with gayly-attired folk. They look little like rioters; yet it seems but the other day when Homestead men and women and children were hysterically reveling in atrocities akin to ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... vertically hanging jet, or carried them along the bust, but nowhere attached themselves to the living creature, who, according as the architecture of their fripperies drew them towards or away from her own, found herself either strait-laced to suffocation or else completely buried. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... creatures stood on their hind legs and, joining paws and wings with the chicken, went through a solemn Alice-in-Wonderland-like dance. This was always terminated abruptly by some animal or another's being overcome by mirth or suffocation, and rushing unceremoniously back into the cage to recuperate. When the Happy Family was again reunited, Mary announced that they could also sing, and, each in a different key, the creatures burst ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... again; and the court was crowded to suffocation. All eyes were bent on the prisoner. She rose, calm and quiet, and begged leave to say a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... human cargoes on their transportation defies description. The chaining, the branding, the mutilation, the close quarters, the deaths by suffocation and disease, are a sterling example of man's inhumanity to man when his conscience is relieved by finding support of his inhumane actions sanctioned in that most holy of holies, the Bible. Exclusive of the slaves who died before leaving Africa, not more than fifty out of a ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... utter it, but this act of devotion did not soothe her into slumber, or banish the phantom that flitted round her couch. Finding it impossible to breathe under the bed-cover any longer, and fearing to die of suffocation, she slowly emerged from her burying-clothes till her mouth came in contact with the cool, fresh air. She kept her eyes tightly closed, that she might not see the darkness. She remembered hearing her brother, who prided himself upon being a great mathematician, say that if one counted ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... after a long silence, looking at me with red eyes that gleamed with tears. "You are very well educated and very well bred, very honest, just, and high-principled, but in you the effect of all that is that wherever you go you bring suffocation, oppression, something insulting and humiliating to the utmost degree. You have a straightforward way of looking at things, and so you hate the whole world. You hate those who have faith, because faith is an expression of ignorance and lack of culture, and at the ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... affect your previous conclusions?" I asked. "Before you tell me what you think brought on this suffocation I should like to hear why you give up ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... scorching up, burning alive internally, in an agony of fire and suffocation, and I wanted air. I madly wanted air. My efforts to raise a window were vain, for all the windows in the car were screwed down. Nelson had seen drink-crazed men, and thought I wanted to throw myself out. He tried to restrain me, but I fought on. I seized some man's torch and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... me only once more. The reason is, that I was looking at your cousin over there, and calculating the chances of her surviving suffocation." ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... gently pull child's head down toward the bed. There is no danger of hurting the perineum now since the head has passed the soft parts. At this time the danger is suffocation of child. Never draw child too far away from mother's birth place by force, as you may tear navel string from the child and cause it to bleed to death. If you value the life of the child, then you must be careful not to place the navel end of the string in any danger of being ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... same story. London is too full of interest, and when I thought how I could have gone over as much ground in New York without anything to distract me from what I had in view, I felt the pressure of those thick London facts almost to suffocation. Nothing but my denser ignorance saved me from their density, as I hurried with my friend through air that any ignorance less dense would have found impassable ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of the disease. Since as the fever progresses the patient will perspire, heavy stones are placed on the quilt, that it may not be thrown off, and the sick person take cold. Many an unfortunate sufferer has through this strange practice died from suffocation. After a time the relatives will return to see what course the disease has taken. This fever seems to yield to quinine, for Mr. John Li has seen several persons recover to whom he had administered this drug. When a man dies, his ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... upon and obstruct the bronchi, H H*; the thoracic duct, L; the oesophagus, I; the superior vena cava, H, Plate 26, or wholly obliterate either of the vagi nerves. The aneurism of the arch of the aorta may cause suffocation in two ways—viz., either by pressing directly on the tracheal tube, or by compressing and irritating the vagus nerve, whose recurrent branch will convey the stimulus to the laryngeal muscles, and cause spasmodic closure of the glottis. This anatomical fact also fully accounts ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit resented the funereal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to a large, low-ceilinged hall that was jammed to suffocation. A score of gayly trimmed booths wherein were displayed various articles of feminine fallals and cheap bric-a-brac, each presided over by a lady house-smith. "Or should it be house-smithess?" asked Indiman. "Hullo! ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... bloodthirsty, now the rebellion was broken utterly,—and some sixteen hundred of them were sentenced to be transported to the colony of Virginia, which had long been a dumping ground for convicts and felons and political scapegoats. Hither, then, they came, in ships crowded to suffocation, and many dead upon the way and thrown to the sharks for burial, but for some reason only one of the ships stopped here, while the others went on to Barbados to discharge their living freight. I more than suspect that Cromwell's ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... down and, with a new exuberance, threw himself back in his seat. It was a moment of bravado that reckoned not at all with circumstance; his gesture was imperiously reckless, the space about him was crowded to suffocation; by a natural sequence of events his head came into sharp contact with the waving plumes of a hat at the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... hundred years old. It is too lofty for its width—but has a grand effect, and is justly much celebrated. Yet the situation of this fine old Gothic church is among the most wretched of those in Paris. It is preserved from suffocation, only by holding it head so high. Next in importance to St. Gervais, is the Gothic church of St. EUSTACHE: a perfect specimen, throughout, of that adulterated style of Gothic architecture (called its restoration!) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... leading the horses, to keep himself and them alike from freezing; a man was to come on the coach-box with the driver, to take them back to Boston. On looking round I found myself in a miserable little low room, heated almost to suffocation by an iron stove, and stifling with the peculiar smell of black dye-stuffs. Here, by the light of two wretched bits of candle, two women were working with the utmost dispatch at mourning-garments for a funeral which was to take place that day, in a few hours. They did not ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... through the flat country. The boy felt that he could scarcely breathe. Even tourists, coming down from these mountains to the valley below, struggle with a sense of suffocation and oppression; how must it have been then with this half-wild creature, born and bred ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... The speaker groaned. "It wasn't so bad as long as I felt sure I was going to die, anyhow, but when I discovered I was getting well—" Branch raised a pair of tragic eyes, his tone changed. "I'll tell you what cured me. I SCARED myself well! Those bugs in my lungs died from suffocation, for I never breathed as long as there was a Spaniard in the same county with me. One day I found that I couldn't cough if I tried. I got strong. I slept well. And EAT? Huh! I gobbled my share of food and whined for more. I stole what belonged ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a brighter flash, a deeper crash, and it seemed for the moment that the house was immersed in a lurid glare of light. Annie, screaming, started to her feet, then fell back, fainting, and black in the face with suffocation. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... called a Spirit. This idea of the spirit and the soul has come from the fact that spirit and wind in some languages are the same word; also, that when a man dies, he is said to give up the ghost or spirit; also, that life returns, after suffocation or swooning, when the spirit or breath of the lungs comes back. Because in these cases nothing but the breath or air is perceived, it is concluded from the eye and bodily sense that the spirit and soul of man after death is not the man. From ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... confusion; no staff existed competent to arrange their affairs, and to husband the poor means at their disposal. Food was wasted by some, while hundreds were starving. Some houses in the town were nearly empty, while others were crowded almost to suffocation. There was very much to be done, yet every ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... will grasp her throat; I will do her business in an instant; she shall not have time so much as to groan." What wonder that I was petrified by sounds so dreadful! Murderers lurked in my closet. They were planning the means of my destruction. One resolved to shoot, and the other menaced suffocation. Their means being chosen, they would forthwith break the door. Flight instantly suggested itself as most eligible in circumstances so perilous. I deliberated not a moment; but, fear adding wings to my speed, I leaped out of bed, and, scantily robed as I was, rushed out of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... show you his neck vertebrae presently if you like. Kept 'em as a curiosity. An absolute break of the bone itself. People talk about pain, strangulation, suffocation and all that. Nothing of the sort. Literally breaks the neck. Not mere separation of the vertebrae you know. I'll show you the vertebra ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... in the darkened sitting-room—all, indeed, save Harriet, who sat in solitary state in the chamber above, her face pale and her heart beating almost to suffocation. It had been arranged that she was not to be seen until some sort of explanation ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... I'm the lad that's to lowse the neckcloths." Here, then, was a family, where, on drinking occasions, it was the appointed duty of one of the household to attend, and, when the guests where becoming helpless, to untie their cravats in fear of apoplexy or suffocation[32]. We ought certainly to be grateful for the change which has taken place from such a system; for this change has made a great revolution in Scottish social life. The charm and the romance long attached in the minds of some of our countrymen to the whole system and concerns of ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... labour succeeded. Tremendous snow-storms, accompanied by hurricanes of wind, often filled the atmosphere to suffocation, so that no human being could move a ship's length without perishing; while, did any of their number venture forth, as the tempest subsided, it was often to find himself almost in the arms of a polar bear before the dangerous snow-white form could ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in about two months' time. The Green Turtle often strays into northern waters. The flesh of this turtle is prized by epicures. It will die if not placed on its back, the under shell being pressed by the weight of the upper shell against its lungs, causing suffocation. The Hawksbill Turtle is distinguished by the hawk-like appearance of its head. It is the smallest of the sea turtles and the one from which is obtained ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... Nisida herself plunged into the river with the wild hope of aiding her lover to conquer his foe, or to rescue him from the grasp which the bandit maintained upon him with the tenacity that was strengthened rather than impaired by the agony of suffocation. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... and spoke with such vehemence as produced a violent headache, which obliged him to retire. He underwent proper evacuations, and seemed to recover; but next day, in the evening, became lethargic, and being seized with a suffocation, instantly expired. The king deeply regretted the death of this favourite minister, which was the more unfortunate as it happened at such a critical conjuncture; and he appointed lord Town-shend to fill his place of secretary. Earl Stanhope ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... perished in Germany, being stifled under professor Bopp and Sanscrit, Professor Semler and Scepticism, Professor Jahn and Jacobinism, and the whole vast feather-bed suffocation of Professor Kotzebue and Comedy. But in England it was endeared to us by associations "deep in every truly British heart," as the chairmen of our tavern parties say over their third bottle. We had seen it for ages gallantly climbing the slippery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... valuable bag, the property of Sir Benjimen Brandysnap, had been stolen and the said Puddin'-owners invited to look at a present inside it. The said bag was then pulled over their heads, compellin' the Puddin'-owners aforesaid to endure agonies of partial suffocation, let alone walkin' on each others corns for several hours. Had not Sir Benjimen, the noble owner, appeared like a guardian angel and undone the bag, it is doubtful if Sir Samuel Sawnoff's corns could have stood the strain much longer, his groans bein' such as would have brought ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... of the country, and on the day that the court was convened, the town was filled with people from all the surrounding districts, who came to witness the important proceedings. Long before the hour fixed for the commencement of the trial, the court-room was crowded to suffocation by the eager multitude, who had come from far and near, for the purpose of being present at this unusual judicial investigation. Many were actuated only by the promptings of idle curiosity, and regarded the trial somewhat in the light of a diverting exhibition, for ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Mr. Browne has succumbed to secret but disgraceful mirth. A good three-quarters of a full-sized handkerchief is already in his mouth—a little more of the cambric and "death through suffocation" will adorn the columns of the Times in the morning. Sir George, too, what is the matter with him? He is speechless—from ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... time little alteration appeared in the countenances of either of the suicide-rivals; but they had now drunk to that final point of excess at which wine either acts as its own antidote, or overwhelms in fatal suffocation the pulses of life. The crisis in the strife was approaching for both, and the first to experience it was Marcus. Vetranio, as he watched him, observed a dark purple flush overspreading his face, hitherto pale, almost colourless. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... into protesting lungs, in spite of every effort to evade it, while Old Andy on the engine seat twisted and writhed with the agony of fading breath, at last to reel from his position and stumble about in the throes of suffocation. At last, from ahead, came the welcome signal, the three long-drawn-out blasts, and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... sent another boat to know what the vessel was. I desired the surgeon to be sent on board, as some of the men and many of the poor slaves were wounded by our shot. Of all the miserable objects, I know of none to be compared to the poor devils of slaves on board of a slave vessel: the state of suffocation between decks—the dreadful stench arising from their filth, which is hardly ever cleared away—the sick lying without help, and looked upon by those who are stronger with the utmost indifference—men, women, and children, all huddled and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... indications of a struggle having taken place between deceased and some other person or persons; that the man had been thrown, or had fallen down violently; and that death had ultimately been caused by strangling and suffocation. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was a dull splash, and with the weight always upon me I seemed to part the waters and go down, down, down, into the deep black depths, which appeared to have no bottom. There was a growing sensation of suffocation; my boots hurt my feet, and the blister I had made upon my heel smarted, and all at once the pony, as it stood at the half-way house door, kicked out at me, just as I was beginning to suffocate; and this broke the rope, and I shot ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... silent, looking inquiry, mistrusting speech. Aunt M'riar used a touch on his arm, and a nod towards the door of the little parlour, to get safe out of the children's hearing before risking speech, with that suffocation in her throat. Then when the door ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Leroy went through the airlock out to the grey plain. The thin air, still scarcely warmed by the rising sun, bit flesh and lung like needles, and they gasped with a sense of suffocation. They dropped to a sitting posture, waiting for their bodies, trained by months in acclimatization chambers back on earth, to accommodate themselves to the tenuous air. Leroy's face, as always, turned a smothered blue, and Jarvis heard his own breath rasping and rattling ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... in quick alarm. From overhead had come a premonitory clang! Somewhere a tackle whined and, with a sense of suffocation, both men realised that now the bars of their prison were beginning to creep up into a long slit ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... later Freddy-boy, half asleep, but wholly cheerful, was borne on Thorndyke's shoulders into the private sitting-room of the Black Horse Hotel. A shriek of joy saluted his entrance, and a shower of maternal kisses brought him to the verge of suffocation. Finally, the impulsive Mrs. Haldean, turning suddenly to Thorndyke, seized both his hands, and for a moment I hoped that she was going to kiss him, too. But he was spared, and I have not ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... a flurried, heated suffocation around his heart and a joyous lightness in his feet. Of the first man he met he demanded, "Who was the beautiful girl in the rain-coat?" And when the man told him, Carter left him without speaking. For she was quite the richest girl in America. But the next day that fault seemed to distress her ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... infanticide was really based on the recommendation of Sati, literally the "method of purity" which the Hindoo shastras require when they recommend the bereaved wife to burn with her husband. Surely, reasoned the Rajpoots, we may destroy a daughter by abortion, starvation, suffocation, strangulation, or neglect, of whose marriage in the line of caste and dignity of family there is little prospect, if a widow may be burned ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... brain ceased to work, and her body became a huge, stertorous machine, demanding every ounce of vitality to force it an inch farther up the hill. Always she had to fight for wind on climbing a hill, but lately a pain like a knife in her heart had accompanied the suffocation, robbing her of all power of locomotion. The doctor had said that her heart was weak, but, judging by the rest of her body, that was nonsense, and a sniff at the medicine before she threw it away had convinced her that he was ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... coast, where they sometimes strand and are killed in considerable numbers. A tandhval, killer or sword-fish (Orca gladiator Desm.) was even captured some years ago in the harbour of Tromsoe. This whale was already dying of suffocation, caused by an attempt to swallow an eider which entered the gullet, not, as the proper way is, with the head, but with the tail foremost. When the mouthful should have slidden down, it was prevented by the stiff feathers sticking out, and the bird stuck in the whale's throat, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... and white, sorrowfully gazed upon the face of the illustrious dead. The funeral services were held on the 20th of February, and his obsequies were the largest Washington had ever seen, except those of the late Abraham Lincoln. The church was crowded to suffocation, and the streets for many squares were filled with solemn mourners. Thus a great man had fallen. The officers of the Freedman's Bank passed the following resolutions, which were forwarded with the accompanying letter from ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... abound in laminae of silvery mica. When walking between the hours of one and three in the afternoon, at Carichana, Atures, or Maypures, among those blocks of stone destitute of vegetable mould, and piled up to great heights, one feels a sensation of suffocation, as if standing before the opening of a furnace. The winds, if ever felt in those woody regions, far from bringing coolness, appear more heated when they have passed over beds of stone, and heaps of rounded blocks of granite. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... drunk feverishly of the very doubtful water against which Emile had so often cautioned her. When it was nearly dawn she gave in, and lay huddled up on the bed, half-delirious with the pain and feeling of suffocation. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... the "Faery Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties. It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,—with tender winds blowing over it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from its lifted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... October while suffering under temporary insanity brought about by fear of eviction.' The following is the verdict which the coroner's jury actually arrived at:—'We find that Andrew Kelly's death was caused by suffocation; that he was found dead in the townland of Clooncriur, on the 24th day of October, 1889.' This is the way in which sensational news is manufactured for the purpose of promoting an anti-landlord crusade and prejudicing the owners of property in the ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... to twenty men, it presented outside much the appearance of a fox-earth, and was not known to half-a-dozen people in the country. It was, however, damp and dark; and we found that we could not venture on lighting a fire in it without danger of suffocation. It was pronounced excellent, however, as a temporary place of concealment, were the search for us to become very hot. The other cavern was wide and open; but it was a wild, ghostly-looking place, scarcely once visited from one twelvemonth's end to another: its floor was green with mould, and its ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... of an uncomfortable constriction which I fondly believed would ease as I grew accustomed to it. On the contrary, my heart began to thump and my lungs seemed unable to draw sufficient air for my blood. This sense of suffocation was terrorizing, and every thump of the heart threatened to burst my already ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... of suffocation overwhelmed Peggy, and she could not speak. He was so young, so noble, so manly in meeting his untoward fate, and yet he must suffer this ignominious death without the comfort of a friend's face near him. As she found her way blindly out of the room a passionate prayer rose insistently ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... 13, 1914, Embourg was stricken into ruin. On the same day the electric lighting apparatus of Fort Boncelles having been destroyed, the few living men of its garrison fought through the following night in darkness, and in momentary danger of suffocation from gases emitted by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... is suicide committed without poison, suffocation, the knife, or firearms. About forty years ago one of my neighbours was told by his doctor that, unless he gave up the bottle, it would send him into another world. He called his servant and ordered wine, saying, I had rather ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the hours between four and six, when wheel traffic was suspended in the Calle Florida and throughout the shopping-district, the narrow streets of which are congested to the point of suffocation at ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... I wrote, yet to-night I fly again in spirit to you, since my burning heart must pour itself out to some other heart that can beat with mine. It is midnight. All day I have suffered, and now I fain would lose myself in sleep. But no! My eyes are propped open, my heart throbs to suffocation, I enrage, I tear myself—how should sleep come to such as I? O Marguerite, there in your cool retreat, with that best of men, my uncle,—yours also,—a Paladin, but one whose blood flows, or rests, quietly, as yours, can you feel for me, for your Rita, who burns, who ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... the history of the church had such a crowd been in attendance. The lecture rooms on either side of the auditorium had been thrown open, and these, as well as the galleries, were crowded almost to suffocation. Women stood about the edges of the room, and seats on window sills were at a premium. Outside in the vestibules of the church women elbowed one another for points of vantage on the gallery stairs, where an occasional glimpse might be caught of the handsome, dark-eyed, gray-haired ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... thing so near to Cleggett that it seemed as if he could touch the contorted faces; he could see the tall man's neck muscles work as if that person were panting; he could see the signs of suffocation in Heinrich's countenance. The fact that he saw so plainly and yet could hear no sound of the struggle somehow added ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... themselves. In many cases life was solely preserved by opening the temporal artery. This sudden difficulty of respiration is supposed to be caused by occasional exhalations of metalliferous vapour, which, being inhaled into the lungs, causes a strong feeling of suffocation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... a second discharge from the same wall-piece that had killed Cranstoun passed through his throat. "Forward," he again but more faintly shouted, with the gurgling tone of suffocation peculiar to a wound in that region, then, falling headlong into the ditch, was in the next instant trodden under by the advance of the column who rushed forward, though fruitlessly, to avenge the deaths of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... time—a matter of preconcerted importance, as the suspicion was entertained that slaves were concealed below, and that soon the danger of impending suffocation would reveal the fact. Our chief took up a position near the main hatchway, and listened anxiously for the slightest indication. Various manoeuvres were tried to get him away without success. The Brazilians were beginning to appear impatient; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... packed as close as the dates sent to Rome in boxes," muttered the gardener, as he went to call Rufinus. "Poor souls, their saints may save them from suffocation; and as for me, on my faith, if it were not that Dame Joanna was the very best creature on two legs, and if I had not promised her to stick to the master, I would jump into the water and try the hospitality of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Lord Luxellian, 'we were driving by a furrier's window this afternoon, and the sight filled us all with such a sense of suffocation that we were glad to get away. Ha-ha!' He turned to Elfride. 'Miss Swancourt, I have hardly seen or spoken to you since your literary feat was made public. I had no idea a chiel was taking notes down at quiet Endelstow, or I should certainly have put myself and friends upon our ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... his devoted admirers, more particularly the chapel, which with numerous lighted candles purchased by the visitors, was heated almost to suffocation. The whole is covered over by a brick building to preserve it from ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... the court assembled, she was at the court-house, waiting to know the fate of one, who now, in his fearful extremity, seemed dearer to her than ever. Slowly passed the lingering minutes, and at length ten o'clock came. The court-room was filled to suffocation, but through the dense crowd she made her way, and took her place beside her anxious husband. The court opened, and the foreman of the jury came forward to read the verdict. Many an eye sought with eager ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... various quarters of mismanagement, want, and suffering in the Crimea; and after the battles of Balaclava and Inkermann, and the fearful storm of the 14th of November, the worst anticipations were realized. Then we knew that the hospitals were full to suffocation, that scarcity and exposure were the fate of all in the camp, and that the brave fellows for whom any of us at home would have split our last shilling, and shared our last meal, were dying thousands of miles away from the active sympathy of their fellow-countrymen. Fast ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... is cardiac weakness or some general disturbance. There is also cardiac weakness if there is a tendency to yawn or to take long breaths after slight exertions or during exertion, or if there is a feeling of suffocation and the person suddenly wants the windows open, or cannot work, even for a few minutes, in a closed room. If these disturbances are purely functional, exercise not only may be endured, but will relieve some nervous heart disturbances, while it will aggravate ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... all. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered. It has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so soft that nobody could hear. The pedals played for thunder, the flutes languished and coquetted, and the swell died away in delicious suffocation, like one singing a sweet song under the bed-clothes. Now it leads down a stupendous waltz with full brass, sounding very much as if, in summer, a thunderstorm should play, 'Come, Haste to the Wedding,' or 'Moneymusk.' Then come marches, galops, and hornpipes. An organ playing hornpipes ought ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... got better (and, after all, I was not much damaged, as soon as I had got over the effects of the suffocation and terror of that awful night) I heard more about the fire. Permission was given me to see one friend a day for ten minutes at a time, and the reader may imagine the wild excitement of ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... carefully, and filling it with clear sea-water, we will place in it twelve silver-shrimps (bait shrimps). At the end of two days they are dead, and you ask why did they die when they had so much water to live in. They died of suffocation, after they had breathed all the air contained in the water. We will take out the dead shrimps, and in the same water place a good handful of ulva (sea-lettuce, sea-salad), one of the most common of ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Tuscany, with their partisans, fell on Pope John X., who was staying in the Lateran Palace, murdered his brother Pietro before his eyes, and dragged him through the streets of Rome to the castle. The unfortunate Pope lingered awhile in a dark dungeon, and was ultimately killed by suffocation. Marozia, perhaps to dispel the suspicions of a violent death, allowed him to be buried with due honors near the middle door of the Lateran, at the foot of the nave. His gravestone was seen and described by Johannes Diaconus, but has long since disappeared. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... 1832 a hiding-place in an old French house was put to practical use by the Duchesse de Berry after the failure of her enterprise to raise the populace in favour of her son the Duc de Bordeaux. She had, however, to reveal herself in preference to suffocation, a fire, either intentionally or accidentally, having been ignited close to where she was hidden, recalling the terrible experiences of Father ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... also ordered sage tea and Vinegar to be mixed for a Gargle. This the General used as often as desired; but when he held back his head to let it run down, it put him into great distress and almost produced suffocation. When the mixture came out of his mouth some phlegm followed it, and he would attempt to cough, which the Doctor encouraged him to do as much as he could; but without effect—he ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... from it, and, stopping quite still in the middle of the road, threw his head back and applied the tube to his nose. Surely the fellow was not trying to blow his brains out with the powder-flask! Two or three times he repeated this strange proceeding, snorting all the time as if in the agonies of suffocation. The gravity of his countenance was extraordinary. I could not believe ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Froggy with the skin. But of course he refrained from trying. Only he did look so sleek! "What much wiser people we are than the swells!" Kavanagh thought. "We enjoy ourselves without being ashamed of it, and we endure crowding and semi-suffocation without ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the Readilit for a cigarette, then his hand stopped. His face was contorted with pain; he gave a gasp of suffocation. ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... induced to read it. He underwent a new sensation, and, in the exuberance of his delight, summoned the author to a grand feast. When the Antique heard of this, she swallowed her chopsticks in a fit of rage and spite, and died of suffocation. Mien-yaun was then satisfied. He went to the dinner. The noble and the mighty again lavished their attentions upon him, but he turned from them with disgust. He saw through the flimsy tissue of flattery they would fain cast over his eyes. The most appetizing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... eye avoided everyone but Florence), and gave one last parting hug to her young mistress, and received her parting embrace in return. Poor Susan's face at this crisis, in the intensity of her feelings and the determined suffocation of her sobs, lest one should become audible and be a triumph to Mrs Pipchin, presented a series of the most extraordinary physiognomical phenomena ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... apprehensions I had on the score of suffocation, I perceived the necessity of action; and closing both mouth and eyes, I scrambled as fast as I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... side, it seemed to her that Blossom's startled face looked back at her from the long, hot road, from the waste of broomsedge, from the cloudless sky, so bright that it hurt her eyes. It was always there wherever she turned: she could not escape it. A sense of suffocation in the midst of space choked back the words she would have spoken, and she felt that the burning dust, which hung low over the road, had drifted into her brain and obscured her thoughts as it obscured the objects ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... troubled dreams it was with a sense of suffocation. She had stirred in her sleep and the thongs had cut more deeply into the flesh at her knees, causing her pain. Below the knees she was numb from the constant pressure, but she moved her toes up and down and her limbs tingled painfully as the constricted blood flowed into ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... as though the blood receded from her face and gathered all about a heart which beat to suffocation. For a wild moment she had an impulse to denounce Buckheath and her stepfather. But almost instantly she realized that she would weaken her cause and lose all chance of assistance by doing so. Her standing in the mill was excellent, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... each pit. Vainly did those who were near enough to understand their danger call to the ranks behind to stop. They could not or would not comprehend, and had no room to extend their front. Forward surged the human torrent, thrusting all in front of it to death by wounds or suffocation in those deadly holes, till one by one they were filled level with the ground by struggling men and horses, over whom the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... which they were, on their approach to land, in the hot weather of August, shut up in a small cabin; the windows of which were spiked down and no air admitted, insomuch that they were all in danger of suffocation ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... the streets of San Jose and finally reached the station, the people thronged the streets. They heartily cheered and welcomed us. Upon learning that an "inquiry bureau" had been established right there, we soon packed it almost to suffocation, and oh! bless the Lord! I was one of the few to receive news. I got three unstamped, torn-out-of-note-book letters from my dear son, stating that the fire had not reached beyond Van Ness Avenue. He lived a little beyond. He was ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... of this when the sense of suffocation had impelled her to seek the air, to rush where it might blow over her and through her, lift her hair about her throbbing temples and help her to forget. Oh God—Omnipotent and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... mistaken. If, on the other hand, we adopt that hypothesis to which alone the study of physiology lends any support—that hypothesis which, having struggled beyond the reach of those fatal supporters, the Telliameds and Vestigiarians, who so nearly caused its suffocation by wind in early infancy, is now winning at least the provisional assent of all the best thinkers of the day—the hypothesis that the forms or species of living beings, as we know them, have been produced by the gradual modification of pre-existing species—then ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... ten hours, with the cold at 27 and even at 28 degrees, thousands of soldiers who fancied themselves in safety, died either from cold or suffocation, just as had happened at the gates of Smolensk, and at the bridges across the Berezina. Sixty thousand men had crossed that river, and twenty thousand recruits had since joined them; of these eighty thousand, half had already perished, the greater part within the last four ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... sensation of suffocation, as though I were at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... quickly closed; and by the time the church bells begin to ring, all appearance of traffic has ceased. And then, what are the signs of immorality that meet the eye? Churches are well filled, and Dissenters' chapels are crowded to suffocation. There is no preaching to empty benches, while the drunken and dissolute populace run riot in ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... before the stream recovered its wonted tranquillity. For nearly half an hour the struggles of the great saurian continued, its tail lashing the water into foam, as through its gagged jaws a stream rushed constantly down its throat, causing suffocation. But, in spite of its amphibious nature, drowning was inevitable; and soon after became an accomplished fact—the huge reptilian carcass drifting down stream, towards the all-absorbing ocean, to become ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... her companions, and was very glad that Gigetto had not been at her elbow with his city notions of propriety, which he applied to her, but made as elastic as he pleased for himself. She had been to high mass in the village church, crowded to suffocation, she had walked up and down the main street half the afternoon, arm in arm with the other girls, giggling and showing off her handsome costume to the poorer natives of the little place, and smiling wickedly at the handsome ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... on. More than once this gallant petty officer had to be pulled up choking and exhausted. He risked instant death from the explosion of the gas from the leaking and overheated pipes and engines, as well as suffocation from the fumes, but he stuck to his post, returning again and ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... wife of the illustrious prisoner, his faithful and constant visitor, proposed the plan of his escape, to which he gave a ready and, all hazards considered, a courageous assent. Shut up in this trunk for two hours, and with all the risk of suffocation, and of injury from the rude handling of the soldiers who carried it out of the fort, Grotius was brought clear off by the very agents of his persecutors, and safely delivered to the care of his devoted and discreet female servant, who knew the secret ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... carrying drawn swords. The sharp, naked weapons alarmed the crowds in the streets, and without distinction of sect or class men rushed for the church, everybody trying to outstrip his neighbour in the race to get there first. Soon all the approaches to the building were packed to suffocation; no one stirred backwards or forwards, and the prefect's chariot was unable to advance. What seemed a hostile barricade of human beings welded together obstructed his path. In vain did the soldiers brandish their swords in the hope of frightening the crowd ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... the effect your disqualifying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. Rees and Dr. Kippis;[41] crowded the congregation of the Old Jewry[42] to suffocation; and enabled every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, and semipelagian, clergyman to build himself a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant resemblance to the state of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... exclaimed the old gentleman, aghast, as well he might be, at the proposal, since none of the furniture in question had been subjected to such a process for years, and immediate suffocation, with intolerable confusion of papers, must have been the result. "If you want to go and see your aunt, my girl, go, in heaven's name. I can spare you as long as you like. But you mustn't tidy up here. No; that would never do. And, Dorothea, if you should hear anything, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... brave attitude he perished. The family of Diomed had assembled in his cellar, where seventeen victims, women, children, and the young girl whose throat was found moulded in the ashes, were buried alive, clinging closely to each other, destroyed there by suffocation, or, perhaps, by hunger. Arrius Diomed had tried to escape alone, abandoning his house and taking with him only one slave, who carried his money-wallet. He fell, struck down by the stifling gases, in front ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... went out of the church quietly and hastily; I felt that to stay there one moment longer would be suffocation.... Poor woman! so this is how she sought consolation, in religion! Well, there are different ways for different persons—and for me—what is there left for me? Oh, many things, no doubt, many things. Still, for once and for the last time, let me set myself down as a dreary fraud. I never ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... bravely to the enemy's deliberate fire of musketry and field-pieces. As he sallied out to a spring in the Valle Seco, two of his men were killed by the French party and the levies of Havana and Cuba, whilst a third died of suffocation whilst scaling the heights. At the same time Lieutenant-Colonel Don Juan Creagh, commanding the Infantry Battalion, accompanied by a volunteer, Don Vicente Siera, Lieutenant of the local corps (fixo) of Cuba, led thirty of his men and fifty Rozadores [Footnote: The insular ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Ruth discovered him. She was about to rush to his side, when she saw his clenched hands rise and fall upon the sand repeatedly. Her heart swelled to suffocation. To go to him, to console him! But she stirred not from her hiding place. Instinctively she knew—some human recollection she had inherited—that she must not disturb him in this man-agony. She could not go to him ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... performance of a Christmas piece, is an impressive portion of the spectacle, although it is withheld from the contemplation of the audience. There have been "supers" who have approached very near to death by suffocation, from the hurtful nature of their attire, rather than fail in the discharge of their duties. For there ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... arrived at the chapel, all the pews were filled to suffocation with the crowd that the rumor of the approaching marriage had drawn together. And the bridal party were the cynosure of many hundred eyes as they passed up the aisle ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... enclosed by a stockade, was, at times, the scene of almost {40} endless merry-making. Now it was a big feast; now a game of chance played by two large parties matched against each other, while the lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now a dance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony to propitiate the spirits who were supposed to rule the weather, the crops, the hunting, and all the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... caught the flames, that seemed to leap fifty feet into the air, which, in an instant, became so filled with heat and smoke, that suffocation seemed inevitable. We could scarcely see or breathe; and the wind was driving the flames directly ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... train was caught behind it and delayed. For this reason another rainy afternoon was drawing to its close when I had my first glimpse of Kansas City, high-perched on its hills from my glimpsing view-point on the opposite bank of the Missouri River, but low-lying and crowded to suffocation with railroad yards in that part of it where the train ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common surfeit-suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth for the most part to water-practice; for the convenience of which, he hath ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Petkoff said. "Go and reduce your orders to shreds and stuff them up your nostrils and die of suffocation! My orders say—" ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... s'ouvre a ta voix," a babel of voices rose about Clare and Peter on every side, every one was flung against every one; heat and scent, the crackle and rustle of clothes, the soft voices of the men and sharp strident voices of the women gave one the sensation of imminent suffocation; people with hot red faces, unable to move at all, flung agonised glances at the door as though the entrance of one more person must ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me, My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'T is twelve o'clock, and Thurtell [1] is just now coming out upon the new drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality; yet cannot I elicit a groan ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the floor, Rob passed away from the vicinity of the open window. The smoke was pouring from the aperture now, as though it were in the nature of a funnel. This turned out to be of considerable help to the boy, for the draught served to thin the smoke that had filled the room to suffocation. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... name of Mdlle. de Cardoville, the benefactress of his son, the soldier turned round suddenly, and loosened his hold on Rodin. The latter, crimson with rage and suffocation, set about adjusting his collar and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... should be different. Binding the limbs consumed a few moments, and the reading, referred to, still more. But probably after the cap was on and the noose fitted over it, the criminal exhausted all the oxygen available to him in three or four breaths, and was forced to suffer the process of suffocation during that occupied time. How near death he was when the drop fell, I can not say, but he appeared to be suffering greatly before the binding was completed. That could all be remedied by having an orifice in the cap ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... abnormal, unnatural, accompanied by a scorching heat, with an atmosphere so close as to threaten suffocation. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... is affected in so far as the spasms of the respiratory muscles produce dyspnoea, and a feeling of impending suffocation which adds to the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... New York] and eastward over to New Hampshire and westward into New York and the Jerseys were all on fire for a week before this Darkness and the smoke in the wilderness almost to suffocation. No rain since last fall, the woods excessively dry.... Such a profusion of settlers pushing back into the wilderness were everywhere clearing land and burning brush. This set the forests afire ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... his head far out between the rungs of his chair-back, and affects to be unable to withdraw it again, making movements of simulated suffocation. The Brat is stealthily walking on his knees across the space that intervenes between them to Barbara, with intent, as I too well know, of unseemly pinchings. If father unbutton his eyes, or move his head one barley-corn, we are all dead men. I hold my breath in a nervous ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the masts and sails; and before the boats could be backed astern to take them out, those who had been left were forced to leap into the sea to save themselves from the devouring element. The pirates had themselves set fire to the vessel. Most of them remained below, submitting to suffocation with sullen indifference. Some few, in the agony of combustion; were perceived, through the smoke, to leap overboard, and seek in preference a less painful death. The boats laid upon their oars, and witnessed the scene ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to suffocation, and his heart was pounding in uncomfortable fashion. The idea of stripping and plunging into ice-cold water began to make a delicious appeal to him. Nothing surpassed such a plunge after a broken night. But ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the constitution. Through carelessness Michel had left the tap full on. Nicholl made haste to turn off this flow of oxygen with which the atmosphere was saturated, and which would have caused the death of the travellers, not by suffocation, but by combustion. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... to the French-window, he said, with the intention of enjoying a quiet smoke, and no sooner had he seated himself and leaned back than an indescribable feeling of suffocation had crept upon him, and at the same time he had been aware of a curious loss of control over his jaws, so that he had been unable to prevent his mouth opening to its widest extent. When he had tried to rise to his feet an invisible force had seemed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... this, however, from the point of view of the Slavs of Bulgaria and Serbia, Turkish rule was synonymous with suffocation. If the Turks were all that their greatest admirers think them the history of the Balkan peninsula in the nineteenth century would have been very different from what it has been, namely, one perpetual series ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... time did this serve much more than to make darkness visible; at present the blind man would have fared as well in that retreat as he who had eyes, and the marvel was how those who lived there escaped suffocation. In the Gardens themselves volumes of dense smoke every now and then came driven along by the cold gusts; the air had a stifling smell and a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... contrary, their included portion grow excessively turgid, the heart becoming so beyond measure, assuming a dark-red color, even to lividity, and at length so overloaded with blood as to seem in danger of suffocation; but when the obstruction is removed it returns to its normal condition, in size, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... distance to the king of a certain country which is called Kurga, to be disposed of there. The King of Kurga put him into a sack, sewed up the mouth of it, and then laid him across the wooden image of an ass, and left him there to die of hunger and suffocation. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... a feeling of suffocation. The pulses in her ears were beating like hammers, the floor seemed to rock to and fro beneath her feet, and the doctor's voice sounded from an ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... likely to find it. In this way the Captain put out to sea. After some fifteen hours he deemed it safe to bring his passengers up on deck where they could inhale pure air which was greatly needed, as they had been next-door to suffocation and death. The change of air had such an effect on one of the passengers (Scott) that, in his excitement, he refused to conform to the orders required; for prudential reasons the Captain, threatened to throw him over-board. Whereupon ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... in Indian file, I being second, and my shoulders brushed the sides of what was apparently a stonework tube. There was not a glimmer of light, and the foul air threatened suffocation at every yard. I could breathe only with great difficulty, my throat seemed choked, I was bathed in perspiration, while loathsome creatures crawled or scampered ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... convert, it has never been proved that converts who show them are more persevering or fertile in good fruits than those whose change of heart has had less violent accompaniments. On the whole, unconsciousness, convulsions, visions, involuntary vocal utterances, and suffocation, must be simply ascribed to the subject's having a large subliminal region, involving nervous instability. This is often the subject's own view of the matter afterwards. One of Starbuck's correspondents writes, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... though strength was ebbing fast; she must remain as she was till death by fire or suffocation was the alternative to flight—flight which was synonymous with death, for, as her other foot came down and she stepped off the snake, in that instant it would strike—if it had ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... indescribable plunder, and countless stratifications of coagulated, glutinous, or pulverized mud. To the credit of human nature it must be said, that the sufferers kept the peace with each other, though vigorously denouncing the unknown author of all their woes. After an age of suffocation and fusion, there came a stir which was a relief because it was a stir. Nobody seemed to know the cause or consequence, but everybody moved; so I moved, and bobbing, fumbling, groping through Egyptian darkness, stumbling over the beams, crawling under the boilers, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... regards deeds of horror, and that beneath the oppressor there was the garbage-picker. It was the case of a swindler stealing Cesar's mantle. This man was little, it is true, but terrifying. Paris consented to this terror, renounced the right to have the last word, went to bed and simulated death. Suffocation had its share in the matter. This crime resembled, too, no previous achievements. Even after centuries have passed, and though he should be an Aeschylus or a Tacitus, any one raising the cover would ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the Museum, that this, the appointed meeting-place of the section, had to be abandoned for the long west room, since cut in two by a partition for the purposes of the library. It was not term time, nor were the general public admitted; nevertheless the room was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared on the scene, 700 persons or more managing to find places. The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley |
