"Sweltering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sisters had to endure about as much as I did. In the harvest dog-days and dog-nights and dog-mornings, when we arose from our clammy beds, our cotton shirts clung to our backs as wet with sweat as the bathing-suits of swimmers, and remained so all the long, sweltering days. In mowing and cradling, the most exhausting of all the farm work, I made matters worse by foolish ambition in keeping ahead of the hired men. Never a warning word was spoken of the dangers of over-work. ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... November. There are two particular conditions of the weather, in which the stranger receives the most unfavourable impressions of the climate that has been much and unjustly abused, but which two particular conditions warrant all the evil that has been said of it. One is a sweltering day in summer, and the other an autumnal day, in which the dry north wind scarce seems to leave any marrow ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mr. Logan lay down his clumsy hoe. I half pitied his condition as we came out of the hot sun into the shelter of a trellis which ran along the side of the house, over which a dozen grape-vines were hanging so thickly as to exclude even the noonday glare. It was a sweltering day for a gentleman to work among the weeds in a strawberry-field, in coat and cravat. But he made very light of it, and declared that he would come the next morning and see us through the job, and even another, if we thought there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... made clear! I have seen innocent women die in the tortures of the damned—while their drunken husbands have lived to carouse over their coffins. Children,—mere babes—are afflicted with diseases for which often no cause can be assigned and no cure discovered—while over the whole sweltering mass of human helplessness and ignorance, Death stalks triumphant,—and God, though called upon for rescue with prayers and tears, withdraws Himself in clouds of impenetrable silence. It is all hopeless, useless, irremediable! That is why my thoughts turn to Rome—I say, let me believe in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... out the blocks to air'. The effigies are made of hard and heavy wood, and I remember once in Concepcion de Paraguay assisting on a sweltering day to carry a Madonna ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... to the north rises Monte Rosa, her dark head coifed with tantalizing snows as with a peasant's white linen kerchief. And I am walking out upon that fuming plain as far as to the Arco della Pace, on which the bronze horses may melt any minute; or I am sweltering through the city's noonday streets, in search of Sant' Ambrogio, or the Cenacolo of Da Vinci, or what know I? Coming back to our hotel, "Alla Bella Venezia," and greeted on entering by the immense fresco which covers one whole side of the court, it appeared to my friend and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... We touch once more at Plymouth, which greets us with its usual entertainment of murderous fleas, death-dealing watermelons and chain-lightning whiskey. Our ten minute touch here lengthened into three horrid sweltering hours owing to the fact, that the intelligent contrabands were paid by the hour for 'toting' the cargo; but off we are at last, thank heaven, and at length we enter the great canal leading to the North River ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... derives the greatest enjoyment from this annual carnival among the trout who has been tied to London all through May, sweltering in a stuffy office and longing for the country. Though his sympathies are bound up heart and soul in country pursuits, he has elected to "live laborious days" in the busy haunts of men. He does it, though he hates it; for he ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... only carry out his word by visiting Squercum. The trouble to him was very great, but he began to feel that he almost liked it. The excitement was nearly as good as that of loo. Of course it was a 'horrid bore,'—this having to go about in cabs under the sweltering sun of a London July day. Of course it was a 'horrid bore,'—this doubt about his money. And it went altogether against the grain with him that he should be engaged in any matter respecting the family property in agreement ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... length of Broadway, were ranged booths and stands, similar to those at an English fair, and on which were displayed small plates of oysters, with a fork stuck in the board opposite to each plate; clams sweltering in the hot sun; pineapples, boiled hams, pies, puddings, barley-sugar, and many other indescribables. But what was most remarkable, Broadway being three miles long, and the booths lining each side of it, in every booth there was a roast pig, large or small, as the centre ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Murray, Junior, was struggling for a few moments to realize where he was, for his mind was in such different surroundings. In his thoughts it was June—not June sweltering in London, but June gone mad with roses in a tiny Surrey garden; and with true realism his memory chose just one rose-tree out of them all, which best implied the glory of the others. And one branch of this tree was bent down by a girl's hand; her arm, from which a cotton sleeve ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... from the head-ropes, with not even a flutter to send a welcome draught to the sweltering deck below. Everywhere was a smell of blistering paint and molten pitch, for the sun, all day blazing on our iron sides, had heated the hull like a furnace wall. Time and again we sluiced the decks, but still pitch oozed from the gaping seams to blister our naked ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Well, that sweltering day stole by. The very cabmen on their 'stands' nodded in blissful dreams. The motley colours in the Park—a stray cardinal-coloured parasol or two added to the effect—glinted behind the trees. The image of the happy tourists in the foreign streets ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... for me near the stove, and the only words they exchanged with each other were laconic demands for scissors, thread, etc.; and so they rapidly plied their needles in silence, while I, suddenly transported from the cold brightness without into this funereal, sweltering atmosphere of what looked like a Black Hole made of crape and bombazine, watched the lugubrious occupation of the women as if I was in a dream, till the distant rumbling of wheels growing more and more distinct, I took leave of my temporary ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cripple in Montenegro six months, but in the summer crawled down to the Bocche de Cattaro and on the sweltering shores of the Adriatic built himself a primitive sweat bath. In a few weeks he was better, and in a few months cured. He then went to the mines in America, for he dared not return to Macedonia. He saved L800 and returned with it to his sister's in Serbia, but was so oppressed by the ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... study-door, and announced two gentlemen to see him. Straight upon her heels came Darco in a silk hat of splendid lustre, and a nobly frogged overcoat with costly astrachan at cuffs and collar, as though, instead of being the sweltering day it was, it had been mid-winter. Behind him came Pauer, in tweeds and a white waistcoat, his face gold colour with his ancient jaundice, and his eyes a pale saffron. They were both in the best of good humours, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... emblems of Senatorial debate. Let him remember that the swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to this body. The Senator has gone on to infuse into his speech the venom which has been sweltering for months—ay, for years; and he has alleged facts that are entirely without foundation, in order to heap upon me some personal obloquy. I will not go into the details which have flowed out so naturally from ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... to raise the national flag over any ramparts for fifteen minutes. Then he grinned oldishly, and commenced to snore, with his flask in his bosom. I am certain that nobody ever felt a tithe of the pain, hunger, heat, and weariness, which agonized me, when I awoke from a half-hour's sweltering nap. My clothing was soaking with water; I was almost blind; somebody seemed to be sawing a section out of my head; my throat was hot and crackling; my stomach knew all the pangs of emptiness; I had scarcely strength to motion away the pertinacious ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... awning. Here and there a red shirt, the only outstanding 5 bit of color. At least I chose to assume that it was a shirt because I knew that down in those narrow streets, moving about like minute grains of sand guided only by the confines of the conventional walls, were people sweltering in the heat of a summer day, and they needed ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... on his old guns; but he can't afford to let me leave this hateful house," she complained to the apple tree. "He can go 'way off camping somewhere to have a good time, but he leaves me sweltering in this miserable little town all summer. I don't care if he IS supporting me. He ought to. He's my brother. Oh, I wish I were a man; ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... remembrances and suspicions belong rather to the plains, into which we are about to descend. Here we feel distinctly that we are in the tropics. The sweltering heat, tempered, indeed, by the land and sea breezes, but still sufficiently oppressive, and almost the same day and night, leaves no doubt of this fact. Vegetation, too, appears more distinctly tropical. The character of the landscape in the two regions is quite different. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... upon "A Journey due North." Forty-eight hours after sweltering in Memphis, I was shivering on the shores of Lake Michigan. I exchanged the hot, fever-laden atmosphere of that city, for the cool and healthful air of Chicago. The activity, energy, and enterprise of Chicago, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... enjoyment, and for him it would have stopped utterly. He would be in some unheard-of sun- blistered wilderness, where natives and pariah dogs and raucous- throated crows fringed round mockingly on one's loneliness, where one rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collector or police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance one had hardly two ideas in common, where female society was represented at long intervals by some climate-withered woman missionary ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... events, the story brings into sharp contrast the levy en masse, encamped round Rabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take his share of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siesta in the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of his sweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on his palace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if his heart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills that he could ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... rheumatic stiffness on rising, which has to be steamed out by the atmospheric vapour-bath of the tropical island. A long rickshaw ride to Tanjong Bungah ("Flowery Point") completes the day's cure in a sweltering heat, which on the return journey at 8 a.m. causes even the Chinese coolies to stop perpetually at wayside stalls, for the coloured syrups and sticky sweetmeats on which they perform prodigies of endurance and speed. An English planter, in his solitary cacao-garden on the edge of the sea, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... ought to have known me better than that, By the tracks we tramped far out — The sweltering scrub and the blazing flat, When the heat came down through each old felt hat In the hell-born ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... with the figures at the top of the tube, and the promised shower at night which a mendacious Weather Bureau had been prophesying as a slight mitigation of our sufferings was conspicuous wholly by its absence. I had but one comfort in the sweltering hours of the day, afternoon and evening, and that was that my family were away in the mountains, and there was no law against my sitting around all day clad only in my pajamas, and otherwise concealed from possibly intruding eyes by the wreaths of smoke that I extracted from the nineteen or twenty ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... of which I am now writing was the middle of March, the hottest and, in every respect, the worst month of the year in Singapore. Day and night the land was oppressed by the same stifling heat, a sweltering calidity possessing the characteristics of a steam-laundry, coupled with those of the stokehole of an ocean liner in the Red Sea. Morning, noon, and night, the quarter in which the Hotel of the Three Desires was situated ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... mercy. Indians vanished before his march like mist before the sun. August 5 found Bouquet south of Fort Pitt at a place known as Bushy Run. The scouts had gone ahead to prepare nooning for the army at the Run. In seven hours the men had marched seventeen miles spite of sweltering heat; but at one, just as the thirsty columns were nearing the rest place, the crack—crack—crack of rifle shots to the fore set every man's blood jumping. From quick march they broke to a run, priming guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face and wounded arm ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... West upon the prairies we go in for comfort, and don't mind so small a matter as shirt-sleeves on a sweltering August day." ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... white. Despite its veneer of brazen effrontery, the face, with its great mouth and two days' growth of beard, was haggard and weary looking. Ben mentally pictured, with a feeling of compassion, other human beings doing their idiotic "stunts" inside, sweltering in the foul air; and he wondered how, if an atom of self-respect remained in their make-up, they could fail to ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the fort? The men, stripped to the waist and with handkerchiefs bound round their heads, stand at the guns all that sweltering day, with the coolness and the courage of old soldiers. The supply of powder is scant. They take careful aim, fire slowly, and make almost every shot tell. The twenty-six-pound balls {44} splinter the masts, and make sad havoc on the decks. Crash! crash! strike the enemy's cannon balls against ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... mission Indian grunting and complaining if taken to our part of the country in the midst of a week's storm. We flee from deadly horrors of climate to be fastidiously critical. If, in midsummer, sweltering sufferers in New York or Chicago could be transported to this land they would not hurry away. The heat is rarely above eighty-five degrees, and nearly always mitigated by a refreshing breeze from the bay. I am assured that ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... glinked in the glimmering gloam, Where the buzbuz bumbled his bee— When the flimflam flitted, all flecked with foam, From the sozzling and succulent sea. "Oh, swither the swipe, with its sweltering sweep!" She swore as she swayed in a swoon, And a doleful dank dumped over the deep, To the ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... —fire everywhere! ... and the madly affrighted multitude, stunned by the abrupt shock of terror, stood for a moment paralyzed and inert, . . then, with one desperate yell of wild brute fear and ferocity, they rushed headlong in a struggling, shrieking, cursing, sweltering swarm toward the great closed portals of the central aisle. As they did so, a tremendous weight of thunder seemed to descend solidly on the roof with a thudding burst as though a thousand walls had ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mazes of the Sargasso were as irritating as flowered wall paper in a sickroom. Even Hogan's and Deschaillon's spirits sagged under the brilliant sweltering sameness. The navvies moved about half naked, and burned brown as nuts. The men fought over trifles. Caradoc became a raw mass of nerves. Once or twice Madden attempted to make things pleasanter for his former friend, but ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... hard required of him, But straightway did his duty just as if The nation's fate hung on it. I pitied Paul; Slender of form and delicate, he bore The toils and duties of the hardiest. Ill from exposure, or fatigued and worn, On picket hungered, shivering in the rain, Or sweltering in full dress, with knapsack on, Beneath the blaze of the mid-summer sun, He held his spirit—always still the same Patient and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... some moments quite still. The place was silent with the peaceful calm of a sweltering August day. Hervey's eyes moved from one vaguely outlined grave to another, and unconsciously he counted them. Thirteen graves in all were visible amongst the long grass. Then his eyes turned upon the ruined hut. The roof had fallen in, and broken rafters protruded above the still standing ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... feverishly, he led the mate to the mare off the trail, turned to the wagon with bracing shoulder, backed it clear of the prostrate animal, and swung it out of the way of future passing vehicles. It was sweltering work. When it was done, with the sun, risen to its fierce zenith, beating down upon him mercilessly, he strode off the trail, blowing and perspiring, and flung himself down in the baking sand, where, though irritated ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... breakfast was to be at Sherwood, and there were not to be many people. Indeed, the distance would keep many away, a fact for which no one of those principally concerned was at all sorry. John Harrington, sweltering in the heat of New York, and busier than he had ever been in his life, received an engraved card to the effect that Mr. Thomas Sherwood requested the pleasure of Mr. Harrington's company at the marriage of his grandniece, Miss Sybil Brandon, to Mr. Ronald Surbiton, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the long day faded itself away in the hot sweltering court, and his lordship, at about seven o'clock, declared his intention of adjourning. Of course a cause celebre such as this was not going to decide itself in one day. Alaric's guilt was clear as daylight to all concerned; but a man who had risen to be a Civil Service ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as none realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils, sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a heavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder. She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, Nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake; There no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star With fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar. Nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains By watery Eurus swept along ne'er devastate the plains, Nor are the swelling seeds burnt up within the thirsty clods, So kindly ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... orbited in space some five hundred and fifty million miles from its Sol-like parent—a little farther away from the primary than Jupiter is from Sol itself. It was cold there—terribly cold. At high noon on the equator, the temperature reached a sweltering 180 deg. absolute; it became somewhat ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... mighty power and influence of the great civilized guffaw meant. For had he not, during his diplomatic career, seen the primitive man laughed out of his cool, naked blessedness into a modern, cheap pair of sweltering pantaloons? But things were now equal, and this promised to be the most exciting diplomatic game in which he had yet engaged. The defeat of Spain and the annexation of the Philippines were trifles in comparison. And he decided then and there to make ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... had had to battle with the elements of Nature in very nearly their extremest forms and in every variety. We started in the sweltering heat of the plains of India in the hottest season. We passed the lower outer ranges of the Himalaya in the midst of torrential rain, like the heaviest thunder-shower in England, continuing all day long and day after day with scarcely a break, and penetrating through a waterproof coat as ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the wind an appalling voice, half-shriek, half-roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to a smouldering ash; And helpless now and laid in ruin huge He lieth by the narrow strait of sea, Crushed at the root of Etna's mountain-pile. High on the pinnacles whereof there sits Hephaestus, sweltering at the forge; and thence On some hereafter day shall burst and stream The lava-floods, that shall with ravening fangs Gnaw thy smooth lowlands, fertile Sicily! Such ire shall Typho from his living grave Send seething up, such jets of fiery surge, Hot and unslaked, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... holds high holiday; its Comandante, content at other times to lounge about in the luxury of a real undress uniform, now puts on his broadcloth and sash, and sustains a sweltering dignity; while all the brown girls of the place, arrayed in their gayest apparel, wage no timorous war on the hearts and pockets of too susceptible skippers. "Ah, me!" exclaimed our landlady, "is it not terrible? Excepting the Seora ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... very hot down on the buzzing race-course, almost intolerably so in the opinion of the girl who sat in Lady Bassett's elegantly-appointed carriage, and looked out with the indifference of boredom upon the sweltering crowds. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Surrounded by a guard of honour from the West Kent Regiment, with towering mountains of brown lava in the distance, and with groups of Somalis, Arabs, Hindoos and Seedees gazing at "the great lord of the seas," the Prince received an address of welcome. From here, through sweltering days and heated nights, the Royal yacht traversed the Indian Ocean until Ceylon—"the pearl set in sapphires and crowned with ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... lightning the last faint breathing of the wind died away altogether, leaving us and the Spaniard to box the compass in the midst of a glassy calm, the sweltering heat of which was but partially relieved by the flapping of our big mainsail as the schooner heaved languidly upon the low swell that came creeping down upon us from the north-east. The night seemed preternaturally still, the silence which enveloped us being so profound ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... obliged to give up the pursuit of a dapple gray he had selected. He was far out on the plains when he made the decision to turn campward. To the distant south, in the Lost Chief ranges, a snowstorm was raging; but Pard and Douglas were dripping with sweat, under a sweltering sun. Strange, thimble-shaped green hills, dotted the plains about them. Douglas drew up at the base of one of these to rest his horse. Scarcely had he done so when a tiny herd of antelope trotted casually round the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... land which is known as Nevis. Here we lay six days, and the chief men of the company went on shore for sport and to hunt, save always either Captain Martin or Captain Kendall, who remained on board to watch the poor prisoner, while he, my master, lay in his narrow bed sweltering under the great heat. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... incalescent^; candent^, ebullient, glowing, smoking; live; on fire; dazzling &c v.; in flames, blazing, in a blaze; alight, afire, ablaze; unquenched, unextinguished^; smoldering; in a heat, in a glow, in a fever, in a perspiration, in a sweat; sudorific^; sweltering, sweltered; blood hot, blood warm; warm as a toast, warm as wool. volcanic, plutonic, igneous; isothermal^, isothermic^, isotheral^. Phr. not a breath of air; whirlwinds of tempestuous fire ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... exclaimed Tom; "just as if he couldn't give a fellow time to paint up a bit and look tidy after sweltering all the pitch off her for eighteen months on the coast, and scuttling across the Atlantic as if the deuce were after us, and not a day allowed us to overhaul and make the old ship ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... this week. We've been sweltering up here under the roof. If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better. Just the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you cool. ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... ended abruptly. Hard on the heels of a sweltering autumn the winter came down. In that year the Daleland assumed very early its white cloak. The Silver Mere was soon ice-veiled; the Wastrel rolled sullenly down below Kenmuir, its creeks and quiet places tented with jagged sheets of ice; while the Scaur and Muir Pike raised hoary heads against ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... continent-crossing travel was to him the merest matter of course. Though he might Sunday-over at the Winnebasset Country Club on the North Shore, it was well within the possibilities that the following week-end might find him sweltering in New Orleans or buttoning his overcoat against the raw evening ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... miles up on Suction Creek, he confidently expected to find the Flying U wagons. The coulee wound aimlessly, with precipitous sides that he could not climb, even by leading his horse. Happy Jack, under the sweltering heat of mid-June sunlight, once more mopped his face, now more crimson than ever, and relapsed into his habitual gloom. Just when he was telling himself pessimistically that the chances were he would run slap out on a cut ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... large solemn building, in search of silence and solitude; but here again was I disappointed. Half-a-dozen squeaking fiddles fugued and flourished away in the galleries, and as many paralytic monks gabbled before the altars, while a whole posse of devotees, in long white hoods and flannels, were sweltering ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the first sweltering tent and in the throng she felt again the touch of Dick's hand at he came behind. "We mustn't lose each other," he said, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... bosom, plied their oars against the current, and slowly won their way upward, following the writhings of this watery monster through cane-brake, swamp, and fen. It was a hard and toilsome journey under the sweltering sun of August. now on the water, now knee-deep in mud, dragging their canoe through the unwholesome jungle. On the nineteenth, they passed the mouth of the Ohio; and their Indian guides made it an offering of buffalo-meat. On ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... tone revived tenderness in Bob; again he became gracious, devoted; he promised that not another glass of beer should pass his lips, and Sake Jollop, with all her like, might go to perdition. But heavens! how sweltering it was under this glass canopy How the dust rose from the trampled boards! Come, let's have tea. The programme says there'll be a military band playing presently, and we shall ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... 27.—Returned to Edinburgh late last night, and had a most sweltering night of it. This day also cruel hot. However, I made a task or nearly so, and read a good deal about the Egyptian Expedition. Had comfortable accounts of Anne, and through her of Sophia. Dr. Shaw ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... for a time, surrounded by a wall of green bulrush. They soon perceived that that would never do, and resolved to push back into the open water. Meanwhile Marengo had been sent into the sedge, and was now heard plunging and sweltering about in search of the game. Marengo was not much of a water-dog by nature, but he had been trained to almost every kind of hunting, and his experience among the swamps of Louisiana had long since relieved him ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... but he enjoyed the splendid starlight, the stillness, the shrill melancholy of the crickets, which seemed to make all the vague forms of the country pulsate around him; the whole impression was a bath of freshness after the long strain of the preceding two years and his recent sweltering weeks in New York. At the end of ten minutes (his stroll had been slow) a figure drew near him, at first indistinct, but presently defining itself as that of a woman. She was walking apparently without purpose, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... inexpressibly dreary. Compared with many others, we were quite comfortable, as our hut protected us from the actual beating of the rain upon our bodies; but we were much more miserable than under the sweltering heat of Andersonville, as we lay almost naked upon our bed of pine leaves, shivering in the raw, rasping air, and looked out over acres of wretches lying dumbly on the sodden sand, receiving the benumbing drench of the sullen skies without a groan ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... beard-moss hangs from unknown trees, as we tramp through the sweltering sap-scented gloom, we feel ourselves not in a forest ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... had been too confident in our past 'seasoning;' we had neglected such simple precautions as morning and evening fires and mosquito-bars at night; finally, we had exposed ourselves somewhat recklessly to sickly sun and sweltering swamp. Four days on the burning hill-side completed the work. My companion was prostrated by a bilious attack, I by ague ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Canadian War Records Office. The first morning I rang the chime of bells for the early (p. 185) service, our A.D.M.S. avowed that he, mistaking the character of the sound, and supposing that it was a warning of a gas attack, sat up in his bed in the sweltering heat and put on ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... labored among are still packing chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing "family," beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming sheets and ticketing pillow cases. In the basement of the hotel some pantry girl, sweltering between the toaster and the egg boiler, is watching the clock to see if rush ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... wife of one of their neighbors had long coveted the two great feather-beds between which Ann Mary lay sweltering. Hannah went to her, and said that she could have them if she would loan her son, a sturdy boy of fourteen, and two horses, for the trip to Heath Falls. The neighbor-woman hesitated; but when Hannah threw in the two pewter candlesticks, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... were entirely unclothed, and a more ludicrous combination than the civilized coats and the bare brown legs I had never seen. The two in military coats were evidently chiefs, and were followed by a long line of braves sweltering under heavy Mackinac blankets, each armed with a scarlet umbrella in one hand and a palm-leaf fan in the other, to protect them from the sun. Apparently they did not glance in our direction, but each one as he passed Mr. Chouteau saluted him with a guttural ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... floating, so that he is equally at home in the air and on the water; how cleverly he adapts himself to his environment, keeping warm among the ice-floes in winter and cool when all the rest of the folks at the summer watering-places are sweltering in the heat; how well he holds his own against the encroachments of that grasping animal, man, who has driven so many other wild creatures to the wall, and over it into extinction; how prudently he accepts and utilizes all the devices of civilization which suit him, (such as steamship-lanes across ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... found that Roberts had been busy during the whole of his watch getting the studding-sails set; and, in short, it proved that we had now caught the trades, which ran us to within a degree and a half of the Line, and then left us in a glassy calm, sweltering under the scorching ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... execration and gratified hate on that hot August morning in front of the Church of the Carmine little more than one hundred years ago. His body was left on the gallows to be insulted by the mob throughout the long sweltering day, and then, stripped of all its clothing, was finally flung with other corpses of noble men and women into a charnel-house at Sant' Alessio al Lavinaio. Who it was that placed this quaint little memorial to the murdered ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... man who plays the three-card trick on the top of an open umbrella, or for the man with the tape and pencil, and even the beggars who prayed by the roadside for your success were few. There was simply a crush—an enormous, sweltering, and appallingly silent crush. Even the bookmakers seemed to be awed by it. They stood on their stands beside blackboards full of horses' names and mystical figures, but they did not yell at you hoarsely, bullyingly, as bookmakers ought to do. If, having looked at the elephantine portrait ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... thou'st writ; Hot-hasting succours of light cannonry Lately come up, relieve the English stress; Kellermann's cuirassiers, both man and horse All plated over with the brass of war, Are rolling on the highway. More brigades Of British, soiled and sweltering, now are nigh, Who plunge within the boscage of Bossu; Where in the hidden shades and sinuous creeps Life-struggles can be heard, seen but in peeps. Therewith the foe's accessions harass Ney, Racked that no needful d'Erlon ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and I sat still while we went down through the upper bay, which seemed wrapped in waterproofs too, and into the lower bay, which heaved and rolled as if it was half-choked up with sweltering wet blankets. Then we came in sight of the ships, and saw the flags a-battling with the storm; but no one on board seemed to care a continental cent whether New York sent out her creme on creme or not. This silence made ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... out;" bang, bang the sledges go; Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low— A hailing fount of fire is struck at every quashing blow; The leathern mail rebounds the hail, the rattling cinders strow The ground around: at every bound the sweltering fountains flow And thick and loud the swinking crowd ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... book out of all that line from which I have had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained copy of Macaulay's "Essays." It seems entwined into my whole life as I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... folks," said Mrs. Hobbs, tucking the warm bed clothes more warmly about the sweltering girl. "But, you see—well, this room—we don't always open ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... had left the low country and plunged into the magnificent recesses of the great Andes, the metaphor was still applicable, though not, perhaps, equally appropriate, for, whereas the valleys they had quitted were sweltering in tropical heat, the mountains they had now ascended were ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... closed in by an inner court. There was no window, only a narrow grille over the door. The floor was of earth and overrun by vermin. Of the four canvas cots two were blood-stained, and all hideously dirty. They were locked in at 6 o'clock—one of them ill with dysentery—and there they remained sweltering and gasping through the tropical night until six of the morning. For two weeks they remained in this cell. Meanwhile, I knew nothing of my husband's plight, being mercifully deceived by both him and our friends, ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... curdled cloud lay low upon the hills, wrapping in its hot blanket the sweltering breathless town; and rolled off sullenly when the sun rose high, to let him pour down his glare, and quicken into evil life all evil things. For Baalzebub is a sunny fiend; and loves not storm and tempest, thunder, and lashing rains; but the broad bright ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... and slipped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. The deadly finality of the smooth steel against his skin froze Johnny into a semblance of calm. He stood white and very still until the deputy took him away down a corridor into another building and up a steep flight of dirty stairs to a barren, sweltering little ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... housekeeper and facing a situation before which many a stouter heart would have quailed. Tom did his best, but the sick man became possessed of a whim that no one should wait upon him but poor, tired Tabitha, and day and night found her ministering to him in the sweltering heat that seemed fairly to cook ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... A sweltering summer's afternoon. A heat that curled and withered the very weeds. The corn-blades drooping, sulking still. Mother and Sal ironing, mopping their faces with a towel and telling each other how hot it was. The ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... artistic seats ran here and there, and each was occupied by jaded immigrants, worn out by their journey in the sweltering Colonist cars. Piles of dilapidated baggage surrounded them, and among it exhausted children lay asleep. Drowsy, dusty women, with careworn faces, were huddled beside them; men bearing the stamp of ill-paid toil sat in dejected apathy; and all ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... foundation, especially at the corners thereof, obscurely prompted by dreams of striking upon some old, earthen-worn memorial of that by-gone day, when, into all this gloom, the light of heaven entered, as the masons laid the foundation-stones, peradventure sweltering under an August sun, or pelted by a March storm. Plying my blunted spade, how vexed was I by that ungracious interruption of a neighbor who, calling to see me upon some business, and being informed that I ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... months; drifting, in the hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave was over he would return to his swampy, sour-green, under-manned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native Doctor, the native Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-kempt City, and the undisguised insolence of the Municipality that babbled away the lives of men. Life was cheap, however. The soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the fecundity of the next. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... knew it from my knowledge of human nature," said the hunter, humorously. "Trout are very much like other folks, only a great deal more sensitive to heat. Now, you don't see men, who are well fixed under a cool shade in a sweltering hot day, very anxious to run out bare-headed in the sun, when there is no call for it; much less, then, the trout, that can't bear the sun and heat at all. Though there are, probably, a ton of them within ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... openly declared that he had called them to his rest. Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty tableland of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... stout old lady, bustling through the park on a sweltering hot day, became aware that she was being closely followed by ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... doubt, their party is approached by the tipsy man who has been making the excursion so merry for the other passengers, in spite of the fact that there is very much to make one sad in him. He is an old man, sweltering in rusty black, a two days' gray beard, and a narrow-brimmed, livid silk hat, set well back upon the nape of his neck. He explains to our friends, as he does to every one whose acquaintance he makes, that he was ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... impossible to open the hatch over the shaft. We are not out of the wood, but hope dawns, as indeed it should for me, when I find myself so wonderfully served. Officers and men are singing chanties over their arduous work. Williams is working in sweltering heat behind the boiler to get the door made in the bulkhead. Not a single one has lost his good spirits. A dog was drowned last night, one pony is dead and two others in a bad condition—probably they ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... shiny white shirt-front, and mother looking lovely in her grey evening dress, that changes into pink and green when she moves. Robert pretended that he was too cold to take off his great-coat, and so sat sweltering through what would otherwise have been a most thrilling meal. He felt that he was a blot on the smart beauty of the family, and he hoped the Phoenix knew what he was suffering for its sake. Of course, we are all pleased to suffer for the sake of others, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... has usually been recommended as the best material for under-clothing in sweltering weather, such as that of the present summer. An ingenious gentleman of this city, however, has discovered that a full under-suit of blotting-paper is by far more efficacious than flannel, and he has taken out a patent for the idea. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... At night he lay in his bed and heard Butsey steal out to a midnight spread behind closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic in the none ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... disqualifications, tarried behind as home-guard substitute for her warlike sister. Ignorant of the change, I secured my passage, paid for my ticket, sent down my trunks, and presented myself at the gangway one sweltering afternoon in the latter part of June, a few minutes before the hour set for sailing. There was nothing in the aspect of things to indicate a speedy departure. On the contrary, the tardy craft had just arrived, and was intensely busy in letting off steam and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... up the butte in order to get branches of available size. These he cut and threw down. After having procured what he thought would be all he could carry the lad scrambled down, and, dropping on his knees began tying them into bundles. The heat was sweltering, and occasionally be paused to wipe away ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... space from cover, and looking at the same place when sweltering in the direct rays of a tropical sun, are kindred operations strangely diverse in achievement. Iris could not reconcile the physical sensitiveness of the hour with the careless hardihood of the preceding days. Her eyes ached somewhat, for she had tilted her sou'wester to the back ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the sacred emblem, but none dared approach. The little Moro boys, in whose care the branch had been left, squatted in silent patience. No butterfly was suffered to light on the delicate petals, no droning bee allowed to gather the honey of its cups. On dragged the sweltering afternoon. Piang and the dato were the only ones allowed to know that the branch was still fresh, but only Piang knew that its flowers had been dipped into a cool stream before it came to the tribe to foretell its victories ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... traced to Porter's lines, then far to the left, where Nick had been told to wait. Nick was among the sweltering mass at Castle Winder, but he could trace the missing no farther. He told of Jack's persistent valor to the last, and the dreadful moment, when he, Jack, had been separated. Dick he had not seen at all. Olympia made intercession for Nick's ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... respects the parallel may hold good; but there is no question that Vancouver has more steady fine weather, is far less changeable, and is on the whole milder. Two marked differences I remarked—the heat was never sweltering, as is sometimes the case in England, and the wind never stings, as it too often does in the mother country. The climate ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... after the conversation narrated in the last chapter, I was standing on the quarter-deck of the schooner watching the gambols of a shoal of porpoises that swam round us. It was a dead calm. One of those still, hot, sweltering days, so common in the Pacific, when Nature seems to have gone to sleep, and the only thing in water or in air that proves her still alive, is her long, deep breathing, in the swell of the mighty sea. No cloud floated in ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Below the balcony the sweltering city growled and buzzed in the July night. Inside the Hotel Lotus the tempered, cool shadows reigned, and the solicitous waiter single-footed near the low windows, ready at a nod to serve Madame and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... came near to knowing what Fear was, and indeed only a fervent trust in the most High Gods, and a firm belief that my life was always under Their fostering care, prevented me from gaining that horrid knowledge. For long enough, till I learned somewhat of the ways of this steaming, sweltering land, I was in as miserable a case as even Phorenice could have wished to see me. My clothes rotted from my back with the constant wetness, till I went as naked as a savage from Europe; my limbs were racked with agues, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... and beyond the labyrinth of vehicles there was a line of betting men in outer garments of blue silk and green alpaca, standing on stools under huge umbrellas and calling the odds to motley crowds of sweltering people on foot. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... to stand abreast, August fell heavily. So heavily that occasionally a cloak-model, her lot to show next December's conceit in theater wraps, fainted on the show-dais; or a cloth-of-gold evening gown, donned for the twentieth time that sweltering day, would suddenly, with its model, crumple, a glittering ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... large water oaks in Jasper's yard was a welcome sight when the interviewer completed the long walk to the old Negro's place in the sweltering heat of a sunny July afternoon. The old house appeared to be in good condition and the yard was clean and tidy. Jasper's wife, Lula, came around the side of the house in answer to the call for Jasper. A large checked apron almost covered her blue dress and a clean white ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... be taken never ceased in the rebel camp, and they hung around with sweltering venom, cultivating grievances, like a horde of wolves and panthers, hungry ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... as it was, with famine, homesickness, disgust. The rough ramparts and rude buildings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river, the eternal silence of the wild monotony around them, oppressed the senses and the spirits. Did they feel themselves the pioneers of religious freedom, the advance-guard of civilization? Not at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... been trifling in any other climate, but was exhausting in the sweltering heat of the day, and he was not sorry when the sun sank, and he could take off his khaki tunic and go down to the river ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... a sweltering afternoon, after the doctor's visit that, as the Twins, bent on an aimless ride, were lazily wheeling their bicycles out of the cats' home, a sudden gleam came into the eyes of the Terror; ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... a fourteen days' spell we had of rolling about in the sweltering calms of the Doldrums; and then, when we at last managed to drift cross the Line, we had another fortnight's stagnation before we met the south-east trades, only a couple of degrees or so ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the most frequented and amusing resort in summer of the English colony and contingent from the broiling plains of the Punjab. Here the happy fugitive from the sweltering heat of the lower regions will find a climate as glorious as the scenery. He can enjoy the best of polo and golf, and, if he be not a misogynist, he will vary the 'daily round' with picnics and scrambles on foot or on horseback, in exploring the endless beauty ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... life; but the species have generally been crossed one with another. Most of the members of the pig family breed readily in our menageries: even the Red River hog (Potamochoerus penicillatus), from the sweltering plains of West Africa, has bred twice in the Zoological Gardens. Here also the Peccary (Dicotyles torquatus) has bred several times; but another species, the D. labiatus, though rendered so tame as to be half-domesticated, breeds so rarely in its native country of Paraguay, that according to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... stamped with His proper sign, Has right divine To the sweat, and the blood and the bended knee Of such, my gossips, as ye and me. Who cares? Not I Only let King and Hidalgo buy, With the red pistoles They wring from our sweltering bodies and souls, Treasures as full Of the worth of gold ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... was sleeping at my feet, a gendarme was sweltering under his three-cornered hat, and two soldiers had unfastened their knapsacks and used them as pillows. Near the bowsprit stood a cabin-boy looking into the stay-sail and whistling for wind, while the skipper remained aft and managed the tiller. Still no wind arose. Orders ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... the shade. Men fell dead in their ranks without a wound, smitten by sunstroke, and the sight of them filled their comrades with dismay. Molly Pitcher, regardless of everything save the anguish of the sweltering, thirsty troops, carried buckets of water from a neighbouring spring, and passed them along the line. Back and forward she trudged, this strong, brave, patient young woman, while the sweat poured down her freckled face, and her bare arms blistered in the sun. She was a long time in reaching ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... about; but in lieu of this article he carried, knotted over his broad shoulders, a little red handkerchief. Daily did I ask myself for a whole week "Will it walk again?" and, so surely as the shadeless hour of noon arrived, did my Dutch fire-king arrive with it, steering his waggon through the sweltering mass with a composure—coolness I could not ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold! The two great streets through which the two great rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... inclined to smile at his ridiculous situation, all alone there on the rock; but as the wind died away, and the sun poured his burning rays right down upon him, and he panted and sweat under its sweltering influences, he began to feel a little more serious. Hours glided away, and the sun crept slowly along down the heavens, but still no ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... pent torrent in uneasy rest Under the griping rocks, doth ever keep A monstrous working as it lies asleep In the round hollow of some mountain's breast, Till where it hideth in its sweltering nest Some earthquake finds it, and its waters leap Forth to the sunshine down the mighty steep, So in thee once was anguished forth the quest Whereby man sought for life-power as he lay Under his own proud ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... package for Kennedy safely in my pocket I hurried out again into the sweltering heat beneath the glass of the big studio, and to the side of Kennedy and Mackay in ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... porches—the mother with the sleeping babe at her breast, the grandfather smoking a peaceful pipe, while father and the boys take a turn tending the garden. Theirs is not paradise. It is a little world full of hard work, but a world in which the work has ceased to be a curse. Ludlow Street, with its sweltering tenements, is but a few hours' journey away. For these, at all events, the problem of life has ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... sweltering July day a long and ungainly shadow, stretching thirty feet upon the ground, crept noiselessly up an avenue leading to a fashionable hotel at a great summer resort. The sun was setting, and its slanting rays caused ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... a failure. I went on watch sleepy and remained miserable, sleepy, and wretched, straight along through the four hours. I can still see myself sitting by that bed in the melancholy stillness of the sweltering night, mechanically waving a palm-leaf fan over the drawn, white face of the patient. I can still recall my noddings, my fleeting unconsciousness, when the fan would come to a standstill in my hand, and I woke up with a start and a hideous shock. During ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the old man; and the scouts agreed with him. The heat was, indeed, sweltering. It was one of those days of early summer which seem borrowed from the dog-days, and the scouts, tough as they were, were dripping with sweat as they marched along with shirt-sleeves rolled nearly to their shoulders, their shoes and stockings thickly powdered ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Dinwiddie whether Gabriel Pendleton, who was admitted to have been born a saint, had achieved greater distinction as a fighter or a clergyman; though he himself had accepted the opposite vocations with equal humility. Only in the dead of sweltering summer nights did he sometimes arouse his wife with a groan and the halting words, "Lucy, I can't sleep for thinking of those men I killed in the war." But with the earliest breeze of dawn, his remorse usually left him, and he would rise and go about his parochial duties ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... was terrible for the old-clo' woman. The last prop against decay and collapse seemed removed. But the next day a joyous postcard came from Daisy, which the greengrocer downstairs read to Natalya, and she was able to take up her sack again and go forth into the sweltering streets. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... known a day so close and stifling and humid. I then reflected upon the comparative poverty of the French language, which I was told had only that one word for the condition we could call by half a dozen different names, as humid, moist, damp, sticky, reeking, sweltering, and so on. I supposed that a book of synonyms would give even more English adjectives; I thought of looking, but my book of synonyms was at the back of my table, and I would have to rise for it. Then I questioned whether the French language was so destitute of ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... now past noon on that sweltering midsummer day; and there was a welcome lull for the rallying Confederates while the Federals were coming down the Matthews Hill, struggling across the swamps and thickets of Young's Branch, and climbing the Henry Hill. Within another hour the opposing forces were ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... him, and what he had been to him in sorrow and blindness, before I knew it, I was crying like a baby—me that had my eyesight, and health—and never thanked the Lord for them. When I got my eyes wiped I took a look around, and there sot Dan'el a blowing his nose, and mopping his face, as if it was a sweltering day in August; and then when I looked further, there was nothing much to be seen but pocket-handkerchiefs. That was the beginning of the revival; and if you hadn't got Mr. Bowen out to meeting, there mightn't have been any. So, after the Lord, I lay ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... It was a sweltering evening in mid-August, during that unprecedented heat wave which broke Weather Bureau records in 2011. New York City had simmered under a blazing sun for more than three weeks, and all who were able had deserted the city for spots of lesser torridity. But ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... Not where the pale-faced multitude meet In the sweltering lane and the dun-visaged street, But here where bright ocean, thick sown with green isles, Feeds the glad eye with a harvest of ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... them giving the bounce to McGuffey," said Captain Scraggs musingly. Mr. Gibney had a swift mental picture of such a proceeding and chuckled happily. Had he been permitted a glance at McGuffey at that moment he might have observed that worthy sweltering in the heat of the forward hold of the Maggie II, for he was busy getting his guns on deck. From which it will readily be deduced that B. McGuffey, Esquire, was following the advice of his paternal ancestor and getting an ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Square was filled by the torrid sun, and the trees and grass drooped like the people on its walks. In the surrounding city, men worked in sweltering offices and the streets rumbled with the never-ceasing tide of business—but Washington ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said her uncle. "Hard to realize how sweltering hot it is down there in the street, isn't it? Betty, what's your Safety work going to be when ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... got out and manned, and the ship warped three or four miles round the corner of the island, and up the narrow passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of the boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering, and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as loud ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shining in the sun or glistening in the rain, according as the fickle sky may smile or weep; and babies are drawn about in the open air, two, and sometimes three of them, crowded into a small carriage and sweltering under a feather bed which covers them to their chins, and yet with their bald pates exposed to all the winds that blow. The ignorant recklessness with which the changes of temperature are met is well exemplified in the attire of little girls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... they took an electric car, which was crowded with officers and deputies bound for the stock yards. The long thoroughfare lined with rotting wooden houses and squalid brick saloons was alive with people that swarmed over the roadbed like insects. A sweltering, fetid air veiled the distances. Like a filthy kettle, the place stewed in its heat and dirt. Here lived the men who had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with a more thorough calm!" exclaimed my brother Harry, not for the first time that morning, as he and I, in spite of the sweltering heat, paced the deck of our tight little schooner the Dainty, then floating motionless on the smooth bosom of the broad Pacific. The empty sails hung idly from the yards. The dog-vanes imitated their example. ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... soup," said Hallett, "have been really splendid. I believe I have gained seven or eight pounds in weight, in spite of this sweltering heat." ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... be very innocent,' Tom replied, with a laugh, 'not to know that Gov. is one's respected sire: the old man, some call him, but I am more respectful. My gracious, though! isn't it sweltering? I'm nearly baked, you make me walk so fast!' and he wiped the great drops of ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... rose from the gleaming, oily sea, and the little island lay sweltering and gasping under a sky of brass and a savagely blazing sun. Along the edges of the curving lines of yellow beach the drought-smitten plumes of the fast-withering coco-palms drooped straight, brown and motionless; and Wallis, the trader at Avamua village, as he paced to and fro upon the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the mesa, sweltering among the rocks in Bear Canon, Luck Lindsay panted and sweated and cussed the heat and painstakingly directed his scenes, and never dreamed that a likeness of his voice had beguiled the cashier of the Bernalillo County Bank into consenting to be robbed ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... can't breathe as freely as he wishes, gives him a hunch; or suppose Betty, during a temporary fit of fretfulness, induced by long setting in one posture, or overcome with the heat of a midsummer afternoon, or the sweltering temperature of a room where an old-fashioned box stove has been converted into a furnace; suppose Betty gives her seat-mate a sly pinch to make her move to a more tolerable distance, shall the teacher utter his rebuke in tones which might ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... behind them. But preparation was ever going forward. The army improved in efficiency, and the constant warfare began to produce, even among the fellahin infantry, experienced soldiers. The officers, sweltering at weary Wady Halfa and Suakin, looked at the gathering resources of Egypt and out into the deserts of the declining Dervish Empire and knew that some day their turn would come. The sword of re-conquest which ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... neglected, as he was to find out on his return; but meanwhile the state of affairs was not reassuring to a man whose dearest hopes were bound up in the reception he could win for these and similar researches. Altogether, it was with no little joy that he turned his back on the sweltering heat of Torres Straits, on the great mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley range, which had remained hidden from D'Urville in the "Astrolabe" to be discovered by the explorers on the "Rattlesnake," and the far stretching archipelago of the Louisiades, one ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... summer was followed by a September so dry and dusty that the town lay parched in the sweltering heat. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... horses in a little flat, just under a steep wall of reddish cliff. Here he and Chuck Evans unhitched and here the horses were tethered. Helen looked about her curiously, and at first her heart sank. There was nothing to greet her but rock and sweltering patches of sand and gravelly soil, and sparse, harsh brush. She turned and looked back toward the sweep of Desert Valley; there she saw green fields, trees, grazing stock. It was like the Promised Land compared with this bleak desolate spot her father had chosen. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... prevailed universally. Riots were of daily, almost hourly, occurrence, but they were repressed with an iron hand, and the rioters were shot down in the streets without mercy; for, though siege and famine were bad enough, anarchy breaking out amidst that vast sweltering mass of human beings would have been a thousand times worse, and so the King, who, assisted by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Council, had assumed the control of the whole city, had directed that order was to be maintained at ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... shallow sheets of stagnant water overlying a treacherous bottom of semi-fluid mud, which rose above the surface here and there in moist, sweltering banks, mottled over with occasional patches of unhealthy vegetation. Great purple and yellow fungi had broken out in a dense eruption, as though Nature were afflicted with a foul disease, which manifested itself by ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted attackers. The sun beat down with unpitying heat. The wounded lay sweltering in their agony whilst the battle roared over them. Mardonius never stopped to count his dead. Then at last came nightfall. Man could do no more. As the shadows from OEta grew long over the close scene of combat, even the proudest Persians ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... languidly raised her head. The coolness was grateful, the silken cushions she reclined amidst luxurious, but the girl's eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed with humanity ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... throngs, by the blind, the lame, the halt, the paralyzed and the leper-derelicts of humanity—borne thither on a surging tide of life in which every wave is an accent of pain; they are driven and piled up in great, quivering heaps against a door which is partly shut, as in self-defence, by the sweltering ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... mile or two the hot dusty road runs through level fields, till it reaches yonder shoulder of the downs, already golden three-parts up with ripening corn. Thitherwards lies my inevitable way; and now that home is almost in sight it seems hard that the last part of the long day's sweltering and delightful tramp must needs be haunted by that hateful speck, black on the effulgence of the slope. Did I not know he was only a scarecrow, the thing might be in a way companionable: a pleasant suggestive ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible quantities by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sakai camp. These poor wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to 'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... schoolmaster, just as he has used those advantages to win the girl's heart. Whereupon, after being goaded to heart's desire for a considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly as possible beats out Wrayburn's life, and commits suicide. Wrayburn is rescued by Lizzie as he lies by the river bank sweltering in blood, and tended by her, and they are married ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's always in ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "I can take you this minute straight over there to his grave in Saint John's Churchyard. How are you, Ben, glad to see you up," he observed in an absent-minded manner. "Have you got a palm-leaf fan around, Sally? I can't get through these sweltering afternoons without a fan. What do you think Theophilus is arguing about now? He is trying to prove to me that it was Robert Carrington, not Bushrod, who lived in that big house at the top of the hill. Why, I tell ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the axe, please," repeated Jarvis. "There's no reason why you should chop down trees for us on a sweltering night like this." ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... of the rain, which began to fill more violently, he went out into the open air, of which the sweltering oppressiveness had helped to fetter his feeble volition, and called to the dogs, with whose help he proposed seeking the Emperor; but just then he heard the bark of Argus, and soon after Hadrian and Mastor stepped out of the darkness ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
