"Harrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a rule, brief and discreet enough; but, after the Restoration, epilogues acquired greater length and much more impudence, to say the least of it, while they clearly had gained importance in the consideration of the audience. And now it became the custom to follow up a harrowing tragedy with a most broadly comic epilogue. The heroine of the night—for the delivering of epilogues now devolved frequently upon the actresses—who, but a few moments before, had fallen a most miserable victim to the dagger or the bowl, as the case might ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was it uncommon for young and even pretty women to offer and accept a pinch in public. After the gentle sex had to a great extent given up the habit, some strong minded females were to be found who retained it. Mrs. Siddons, when she came off the stage after dying hard, as Desdemona, or harrowing the hearts of her audience by her representation of Jane Shore, could composedly ask those around for a pinch of the precious restorative. When we consider the beneficial influence which snuff has exerted over mankind generally, we cannot ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of Polly's harrowing performances, it was a delightful visit; yet, as often happens with delightful things, it brought to Sara a new worry and a great temptation. There were several of the young people present one evening; and Miss Prue, enjoying the moonlighted ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... from a concealed battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction. The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... was looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,—the geese especially. One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... but worth considering, such as the shape of your garden plot, for instance. The more nearly rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the more easily kept clean and neat. Have it large enough, or at least open on two ends, so that a horse can be used in plowing and harrowing. And if by any means you can have it within reach of an adequate supply of water, that will be a tremendous help in seasons of protracted drought. Then again, if you have ground enough, lay off two plots so that you can take advantage ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... say, "I wonder if somebody would help me with this harrow?" he would receive a dozen eager responses, the men never suspecting that Mr. Wharton had given this little chap authority to order them to aid with the harrowing of the field. Instead each workman thought his cooperation a free-will ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... omit to mention that black-eye business. That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literary inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carry wood while I recited passages of poem out of that book ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... fearfully harrowing story going the rounds of the papers headed "Ten Days in Love." It must have been dreadful, with no Sunday, no day of rest, no holiday, just nothing but love, for ten long days. By the way, did the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... well on towards morning, and I was beginning to suffer from the languor natural after so many harrowing excitements, when the door opened behind me, and the electric thrill shooting through all my members, testified as to whose step it was that entered. At the same moment the young man at my side arose, and with ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... standing afar On the summit place where the wind-torn pine At the battle front of the timberline Knows never an end of the harrowing war Of Life on Death!—and there arrayed In the trappings of battle and unafraid, Painted and feathered in hostile design, Indian chief on ...
— In the Great Steep's Garden • Elizabeth Madox Roberts
... freedom had experienced the soul rending shock of returning from a day's hunting in the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones brutally murdered and scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage under circumstances too harrowing for description, the bare thought of which turns our blood cold, even at this distance. Now the opportunity had arrived for a stroke of retaliation. The ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... six in a condition to carry out the orders of the officer on the bridge, and these unfortunates themselves dropped from sheer exhaustion and fatigue. Between decks, the sick men lay about, and the air was filled with their groans. A picture more harrowing never presented itself to the imagination. The general consternation added to the horror of it. We had nearly reached the point of being unable to control the movements of the ship amidst the fury of the waves; parts of the rigging were ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... a troop-ship, laden to the gunwales with the finest and the best of Canada's young patriots and many of the most stalwart youth of the States, landed on the welcoming shore of France. In England evidences of the great war had been marked, abundant and harrowing. But here, in the country whose soil had been invaded, the grim and stirring actualities of the mighty conflict were brought home to the onlooker with startling distinctness. At the railroad station, where the troops entrained for the front, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... the time of death that the spirit is disturbed by outside conditions, for instance the din and turmoil of a battle, the harrowing conditions of an accident or the hysterical wailings of relatives, the distraction prevents it from realizing an appropriate depth in the etching upon the desire body. Consequently its post-mortem existence becomes vague ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages of religious persecution." This list might be considerably augmented, but it is unnecessary. However, that Protestant persecution and tyranny should never reach the enormous extent of the Romanists before them is proved by the fact ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... speak more feelingly upon this subject than our author. He had been in deep waters—in soul-harrowing fear, while his heart—hard by nature—was under the hammer of the Word.—'My soul was like a broken vessel. O, the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are affected by a thorough application of guilt, yielded to desperation!' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it's a good thing all the same. Now you've got to go for a walk in a place where you've nothing earthly to do. I've been accustomed all my life to walk a great deal, but then it was doing something, ploughing or harrowing, spreading manure or cutting corn, and there I'd no occupation whatever. While walking you are expected to drink ever so many tumblers of water, ever so many. Some of the people were exactly like sieves, they were always at it, and they used to gasp out 'What splendid water it is!' ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... organized lazarets at Scutari the sick and wounded died by scores for lack of proper medical attendance. Shameful frauds were perpetrated in filling the contracts for preserved meats. With grim humor "Punch" exclaimed: "One man's preserved meat is another man's poison." After the harrowing misery that prevailed in camp had been pictured in the London newspapers, something like system was finally established in the hospitals by the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... realized the full immensity of Clithering's fatuousness until he uttered that mangled quotation from Macbeth in the tone of an old-fashioned tragedian. I believe the man actually revelled in harrowing emotion. It would not have surprised me to hear him assure me that the "multitudinous seas" would not wash out the blood-stains from his hands. He might very well have asked for "some sweet oblivious antidote." If ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes happened, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... shut up and let me think, can't you? I know you're all right, Jack, but my head aches terribly, and this muss nearly drives me mad. Why can't you be sympathetic and advise me, instead of harrowing me up so mercilessly." ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... actually endured his first worry when he stood outside the door the day the child came. Not much—he was too self-sufficient, too resourceful; and yet he worried, conjuring up thoughts of death and the end of their present state. Then word came, after certain piercing, harrowing cries, that all was well, and he was permitted to look at the new arrival. The experience broadened his conception of things, made him more solid in his judgment of life. That old conviction of tragedy underlying the surface of things, like wood under its veneer, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... he, beginning to swell; "don't call me Harchibald, Morgiana. Think what a position you might have held if you'd chose: when, when—you MIGHT have called me Harchibald. Now it's no use," added he, with harrowing pathos; "but, though I've been wronged, I can't bear to see women in tears—tell me what I ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aspects. Between scenes of heart-rending, abject poverty, injustice, and wrong, and the torments of mental pathology, he managed almost to exhaust the whole range of human woe. And he analysed this misery with an intensity of feeling and a painstaking regard for the most harrowing details that are quite upsetting to normally constituted nerves. Yet all the horrors must be forgiven him because of the motive inspiring them—an overpowering love and the desire to induce an equal love in others. It ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... exact repetition of their plaint. Harrowing as it was, the sounds were almost like a recitation of the alphabet. A woman who had adopted me as her nephew said they called it the "Ue haaneinei" That, literally, is "to make a weeping on the side." The etiquette ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... them out into the fields for the afternoon. And the little party set out in good spirits, Bobby and Billy tramping sturdily along, under the firm conviction that they were going to meet with wild beasts, and go through the most harrowing adventures. ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... is harrowing enough; but that it should be also our near and dear relations! Elsie, I am thinking of my young brothers: they are not Christians; nor is my poor old father. How can they bear the trials just at hand? How unfit they are ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... meeting-house on the Sabbath and on Lecture days were sometimes painfully varied, though scarcely interrupted, by a very distressing and harrowing custom of public abasement and self-abnegation, which prevailed for many years in the nervously religious colonies. It was not an enforced punishment, but a voluntary one. Men and women who had committed crimes or misdemeanors, and who had sincerely ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... yelling like fiends, while a perfect rain of arrows swept our camp. With the river below us full of holes and quicksands, our enemies had only to hold the natural defense on either side while they drove us in a harrowing wedge back to the water. If our ponies and mules should break from the corral they would rush for the river or be lost in the widening space back from the deeper draw, where a well-trained corps ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... never once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled neatly on two chairs,—a boy's velvet ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... itself. "We beheld," says Capt. Dempsey, "the brig reeling ere she took the farewell plunge—witnessed the cool intrepidity of the sailors, even at such a moment—and listened, with feelings the most harrowing, to the piercing shrieks of the ill-fated passengers. The crew of the Kingston flung their best boat into the boiling Atlantic, but every exertion was vain—the angry ocean soon made her its prey. The Albion went down with ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... tortured, harrowing hour in which he fought sleep desperately with all the limited resources at his command. In spite of his determination to keep his eyes open at any cost, his lids drooped and lifted, drooped and lifted, drooped and were dragged open by sheer will-power. Each time it was more difficult. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... alike the just and the unjust, and the loving sympathetic slave boy witnessed the suffering and death of his little white friend. Then grief took possession of the little slave, he could not bear the sight of little Dick's toys nor books not [TR: nor?] clothing. He recalls one harrowing experience after the death of little Dick Buckner. George's grandmother was a housekeeper and kitchen maid for the white family. She was in the kitchen one late afternoon preparing the evening meal. The master had taken his family for a visit in the neighborhood and the mulatto child ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... weeks he was busy harrowing, disking and rolling the old race-track; he repainted the weather-beaten poles and reshingled the judge's stand; he repaired the fence and installed an Australian starting-gate, dug a pit for the barbecue and brought forth, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... life's sad course I have lived, a breathing corse, I have moved, a skeleton; And though I address or see Never but one man alone, Who my sorrows all hath known, And through whom have come to me Notions of earth, sky, and sea; And though harrowing thee again, Since thou'lt call me in this den, Monster fit for bestial feasts, I'm a man among wild beasts, And a wild beast amongst men. But though round me has been wrought All this woe, from beasts ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... "beast Butler himself, for the latter is only charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form, did not exist in Virginia. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... and blaspheming in a weak, cracked treble, like Capulet and Montague? Hot rooms and cold draughts are dangerous, but not so fatal as the Aqua Tofana, and other pleasant beverages more revolting and rapid in their effects. Could any thing be more harrowing to a well regulated mind than to see, in the midst of a neatly-turned compliment, one's partner literally look black at one, and expire ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the courthouse was reached and I had taken my seat in such a condition of helpless terror that I could not tell one person from another. Friends and foes were as one, and vainly did I try to distinguish them. My long confinement, burdened with harrowing anxiety, the sleepless night I had just spent, the unaccountable absence of my mother, had brought me to an indescribable condition. I felt dazed, as if I were no longer myself. I seemed to be another ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... woman, young and kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-eyed. She touched him with warm elbow and plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave his order. To that he looked forward from meal to meal, though he never ceased harrowing over what ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... 'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of their secret, give tremendous accounts of the sufferings of those years; but I question whether a woman whose existence has been burdened with an unrequited love, will not have to unfold in the next world a more harrowing tale than either ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... of my writing (the day of the signing of the peace) I am thinking that in agriculture and in education as well, we must again turn our thoughts to the virtues of thoroughness and patience—the virtues of the fallow, that is, to ploughing and harrowing and tilling, not for the immediate crop, but for the enrichment of the soil and of the mind, according as our thought is of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and harrowing stories are told of women, about to become mothers, being compelled to pay the tax on the chance of the infant being a male. Such things may have occurred some years ago, but the spirit of cruelty appears to have died out, or is at all events kept ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... foliage, stared into that shady place through door and window; and Herrick, pacing to and fro on the coral floor, sometimes paused and laved his face and neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long arrears of suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and the harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point when pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and death and life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a caged brute; his mind whirling through the universe of thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a premature death, the advantage must be purchased of rendering her figure as unlike as possible to all the models of female beauty, universally admitted to be such, because they are chiselled after nature itself. I have seen pictures, and I have read harrowing descriptions, of the murderous consequences of thus flying in the face of the Creator's skill, and presuming to mend, to improve, his perfect work; but my own experience is worth a thousand treatises and ten thousand illustrations, in bringing conviction ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... but gone no further. Yet, perhaps, under the harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and politic one, her rival being now but a corpse. All the feeling she had been betrayed ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of crushed men. We all went in dire dread of him, the fear of being the victim of such brutality cowing us far more effectively than any other punishment we had encountered. Those who had undergone the torture recited such harrowing stories of their sufferings that we were extremely anxious not to incur the wrath of the devilish ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... from the earth, Of friendly salutations see there is no dearth. Red phantom figures of the furious fire, For kindly greeting change your usual ire. Grey, grizzly googies from the woods and dells, To gentle whisperings change your harrowing yells. Flagae, Devas, Mara Rupas,[19] hie to the Plane, the Astral Plane, And to these three poor fools, explain, explain The secrets that they wish ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... was time to consult Biddick. He was sitting at his desk staring at a blank sheet of paper. His fingers were harrowing his hair and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... bounds," said he, "'tis so with all throughout the empire; and who is he that can alter the state of things? And you are a follower of a learned man who withdraws from his chief; had you not better be a follower of such as have forsaken the world?" And he went on with his harrowing, without stopping. ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... again the trials and the tortures of my unhappiest years—which was of course necessary in ploughing and harrowing a memory happily retentive—the completion of this first draft left me exhausted. But after a trip to New York, whither I went to convince my employers that I should be granted a further leave-of-absence, I resumed work. The ground for this added favor was that my manuscript ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... have found something, my dear Snooks, which I think will suit your book. You are bringing, I see, your admirable novel, 'The Mysteries of May Fair,' to an end—(by the way, the scene, in the 200th number, between the Duke, his Grandmother, and the Jesuit Butler, is one of the most harrowing and exciting I ever read)—and, of course, you must turn your real genius to some other channel; and we may expect that your ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Don't say anything like that. I feel bad enough about it now, goodness knows, without your harrowing up my feelings, talking of the way ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... all these forms of misery; but never had they seemed to him so depressing, so harrowing as ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination he found no scar or wound. The condition he was in was frequently the result of concussion of the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain or harrowing mental shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet and entire freedom from excitement would do more for such a condition than anything else. If he was afraid of strangers, by all means keep them from him. Tembarom had been quite right in letting him think ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... feeling. If any one spoke, it was in whispers. Afterward, in the drawing room, this same mental state was the prevailing one; there was little denunciation of Germany and practically no discussion as to the consequences of the crime; everyone's thought was engrossed by the harrowing and unbelievable facts which the Ambassador was reading from the little yellow slips that were periodically brought in. An irresistible fascination evidently kept everybody in the room; the guests stayed late, eager for every new item. When they finally left, one after ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... that the people of Otaheite who have the bread tree, the fruit of which serves them for bread, laughed heartily when they were informed of the tedious process necessary with us to have bread;—plowing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... parchment binding. This work was begun before his imprisonment, and it was not finished until the year after his liberation; but the greater part of it was composed in the wretchedness of his cell at Ferrara. The story upon which it is founded is a very harrowing one, a king of the Ostrogoths marrying his own sister, mistaking her for a foreign princess; but it is treated with very inadequate tragic power, and, like the Aminta, displays no real action. Its beauty chiefly consists in its choral odes on the vanity of all earthly things, which are exquisitely ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... harrowing experience for Zeke after reaching the Southern Railway's terminal on the pier at Pinner's Point, in Virginia, for here he was hurried aboard the ferry-boat, and was immediately appalled by the warning blast of the whistle. Few ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... infernally sorry, and we'll consider that matter settled for all time. Sure you're all right? There's some wine, over in that closet. No? Well, then I'd like to suggest that your hat is rampantly askew. Harrowing scenes aren't good for millinery. Yes, that's straight. Now do haul up a chair, and we'll proceed to talk this thing out to the bitter end. There's no denying that I've made a mess of life by my own recklessness; but apparently I've ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... with caution as it makes the barley rich in albumen, and highly albuminous barley keeps badly and easily loses its germinating capacity. Farm-yard manure should also be avoided. After-cultivation may comprise rolling, harrowing (to preserve the fineness of the tilth) and in some districts hoeing. Barley is cut, either with scythe or machine, when it is quite ripe with the ears bending over. The crop is often allowed to lie loose for a day ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten'd eye, Upon your journey of so many days, Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; And so we sate, within the low sun's rays, You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, Your harrowing praise. Well, it was well, To hear you such things speak, And I could tell What made your eyes a growing gloom of love, As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove. And it was like your great and gracious ways To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear, Lifting the ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... plowed when the last crop was laid by were plainly revealed to Hiram's observing eye. Where corn had grown once, it should grow again; and the pine timber would more than pay for being cut, for blowing out the big stumps with dynamite, and tam-harrowing the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... her days we may not dwell long. The scene is too pitiful, too harrowing. In vain she implores an interview with Catherine, who blazes into anger at the request. "The impudence of the wretch," she exclaims, "is beyond all bounds! She must be mad. Tell her if she wishes any improvement in her lot to cease the comedy she is playing." ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... general caption, "Why I am a teacher." It reminded me of the spirited discussion that one of the Sunday papers started some years since on the world-old query, "Is marriage a failure?" And some of the articles were fully as sickening in their harrowing details as were some of the whining matrimonial confessions of the latter series. But the point that I wish to make is this: your true craftsman in education never stops to ask himself such questions. There are some men to whom schoolcraft is a mistress. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... asking about irrigation, I would state that in the first place we grade the land, after first plowing and harrowing it. We do not like to do too much grading. If the land is very uneven, we make the rows conform to it, bringing the water on the highest portions, and cutting escape ditches through the low parts, so that the water ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... from reality, unlike the conventional village and villager of opera comique, and the pleasing sentiment that runs through the tale, were found refreshing by audiences upon whom the sensational incidents and harrowing emotions of their modern drama were already beginning to pall. The result was a little stage triumph for Madame Sand. It helped to draw to her pastoral tales the attention they deserved, but had not instantly won in all quarters. Theophile Gautier writes ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... seeming already to overflow them. But our eyes and ears are violently monopolized by the two batteries between which we are passing; they are firing into the infinity of the attackers, and each shot plunges into life. Never have I been so affected by the harrowing sight of artillery fire. The tubes bark and scream in crashes that can hardly be borne; they go and come on their brakes in starts of fantastic distinctness ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... this appalling strife, With its reckless waste of human life, Its riving of highest, holiest ties, Its tears of anguish and harrowing sighs, Its ruined homes from which hope has fled, Its broken hearts and ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... carelessness. Gladding insisted on being landed in order to prevent, by exercise, taking cold, threatening in his turn the constable, that if his clothes were spoiled he should come upon him for the damage. Poor Basset, quite confounded by these harrowing events, had not a word to answer, and replied only by shrugging and twisting his shoulders with pain. The departure of Tom made it necessary for him to assist the negro in rowing back the boat, which he did with a handkerchief ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... her O good brown earth, Make merry! 'Tis bard on Spring; Make merry; my love is doubly worth All worship your fields can bring! Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth At the early harrowing." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... trampled into dust, and which no earthly beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble, telling of the vanity ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... anxiety, and harrowing chagrin that I had been left here forgotten, waxed to a fever that drove me all day restlessly from field to field, from house to barn, and back to the tavern, to sit watching the road for sign of a messenger to set me free of this ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... poor men have at home an aged mother perhaps dependent on them, or children, or 'a nearer one yet and a dearer,' and that when they 'darkling face the billow' the possibility of disaster to themselves assumes a more harrowing shape, when they think of loved ones left helpless and destitute behind them. Riches cannot remove the pang of bereavement, but alas! for 'the comfortless troubles of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... any case, that by harlotry, licentiousness and prostitution the grandest intellects are overturned and the most harrowing discords produced in society. As long as society tolerates conditions of ignorance in regard to sexuality, and fosters or permits establishments having for their avowed purpose the excitement of ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... experienced married women of how discouraging it is to wear your good clothes for unappreciative men, they beg me not to be guilty of the heresy of wishing things different. If they have married one of the noticing kind, they tell me harrowing tales of gorgeous costumes having been cast aside because these critical men made fun of, or were prejudiced against them, and "made remarks." And they point with envy to Mrs. So-and-So, whose husband never knows what she has on, but who thinks she looks lovely in everything, so that she is at ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... torrent of words was spilled upon the dramatic critic. He held the attention closely, in an impassioned plea for thoughtful drama, not necessarily didactic, but the serious handling of vital problems in comedy, if necessary, or even in farce. It need not be such harrowing work as Brieux makes it, but if the man who had things to say could and would conquer the technique of dramatic writing, he would reach the biggest audiences that could be provided, which ought to pay him for the ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... the glory of Most Christian King irradiating him. Very diligent for the first six months, till September or October next, which we may call his SEED-TIME; and by no means resting after nine or twelve months, while the harrowing and hoeing went on. In January, 1742, he had the great satisfaction to see a Bavarian Kaiser got, instead of an Austrian; and everywhere the fruit of his diligent husbandry begin to BEARD fairly above ground, into a crop of facts (like armed men from dragon's teeth), and "the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... domain! The loved and the redeemed are there, why lure me back again? The cadences of gladness to your hearts may yet be dear; They have no melody for mine, all, all is desert here. The sunshine still is bright to you, the moonlight and the flowers; To me they tell a harrowing tale of dear ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... that he was making no progress with Alexina. Subtly it was conveyed to him on one of those unseen currents that travel directly to the sensitive mind, that these amiable people knew his story; and, no doubt, in all its harrowing details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a natural gayety and light chaff that had come ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... moment the next agonizing perilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;—ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back and back to contain them,—a harrowing painful process, as we may read on his busts... As to the proscriptions, Dio, a writer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, "never willing to allow a good quality to one of the Caesars, or to put their conduct in other than an unfavorable light," says ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Lord Bromley was relieved from the most harrowing anxiety. Yet his brow did not relax as he turned gravely to his nephew. "What was your motive, Harry, in concealing ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... as well as darkness, an awful sense of being entombed, an isolation that appalled him added to the torture that racked. With an acuteness of consciousness more harrowing than delirium, he faced this thing that had come upon him, grabbing all his courage to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... ten, a Canadian. I want to make the firm of Marshall & Company stand for something big in the commercial interests of Canada. Isn't that as honourable an ambition as trying to make black seem white in a court of law, or discovering some new disease with a harrowing name to torment poor creatures who might otherwise die peacefully in blissful ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... labour for next to nothing—and thus we have the appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now the cry is, "Go back to the Land—the Land for the Nation!" Matters have reached a strange pass when such a political watchword should be chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... families lingered on in hope till all had been expended; then shut their doors, took poison and died all together, rather than expose their misery, and submit to the degradation of begging. All these things I have myself known and seen; and, in the midst of these and a hundred other harrowing scenes which present themselves on such occasions, the European cannot fail to remark the patient resignation with which the poor people submit to their fate; and the absence of almost all those ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... weak submission to the dictation of his wife, not the result of any change in his own feelings. They regarded his wild words as only the incoherent utterances of a mind bewildered by horror, and were anxious to put an end to the harrowing scene, and remove the stricken man as soon as possible from the observation of a mixed crowd that was now rapidly assembling from all directions, many of whom knew Captain Wilde only in his unpopular capacity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... painful conflict, I sent Mr. C. on the next day, a friendly letter, declining his request in the kindest manner I could, but enclosing a five pound note. It happened that my letter to Mr. Coleridge passed on the road, another letter from him to myself, far more harrowing than the first. This was the last letter ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... this message, he turned his face to the wall, and, without awaiting a reply, coolly went to sleep, or appeared to do so, while Ujarak went off, with a storm of very mingled feelings harrowing his ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... man, but I could not help saying these few words to you; and I know that no persons unconnected by blood with your family, and enjoying such brief personal acquaintance with your son as myself; and mother and sisters, can be more sincerely or deeply moved at the harrowing record of his untimely fate. Indeed, it has cast a gloom over every one; and the hardest heart could not but be affected by such a noble spectacle as the last days of his ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... At this harrowing juncture came the order to No. 548 to go forth to Ring 3 to be judged, and further details were reserved. But Fanny ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... eyes, as he replied, in a broken voice, "She's dead! Only think, Ellis, she died within a stone's throw of me, and I searching for her all the while. I never speak of it unless compelled; it is too harrowing. It was a great trial to me; it almost broke my heart to think that she perished miserably so near me, whilst I was in the enjoyment of every luxury. Oh, if she could only have lived to see me as I am now!" continued he; "but He ordered it otherwise, and we must bow. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and turned away to hide the rising tear, as he listened to this harrowing but false account. He, however, fully believed it; and felt that, henceforth, it would be vain to cherish any hope concerning his son, except that blessed hope which is the privilege of the Christian—the sure and certain hope of meeting hereafter, in the presence of ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... off and left me once more a prey to harrowing despair. There were only three nights before the calamity took place, and I had terrible nightmares on two of them. In one I attended the wedding in a bowler hat and pyjamas, with carpet slippers and spats. In the other my top-hat was on my head and my vest-slip was all right, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... reach just the proper state, for the last story related to pork-packers, and pork-packing is not a setting favourable to sentimental regrets. It was just like the newspaper business not even to allow one a little sentimental harrowing over one's exodus from it. But the time for gentle melancholy came later on, when she was sorting her things at her desk just before leaving, and was wondering what girl would have that old desk—if they cared to risk another girl, and whether the other poor ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... ordinary ambition. Several friends were opposed to my accepting it, and even persuaded me, or rather attempted to persuade me, to give up the idea altogether. I was inexorable. I had set my mind upon West Point, and no amount of persuasion, and no number of harrowing narratives of bad treatment, could have induced me to relinquish the object I had in view. But I was right. The work I chose, and from which I could not flinch without dishonor, proved far more important than either my friends or myself at first ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... and becomes the nucleus of a pearl of romance. Mr. Marion Crawford, in a recent work, describes his hero, who is a novelist, at work. This young gentleman, by a series of faults or misfortunes, has himself become a centre of harrowing emotion. Two young ladies, to each of whom he has been betrothed, are weeping out their eyes for him, or are kneeling to heaven with despairing cries, or are hardening their hearts to marry men for whom they "do not care a bawbee." The hero's aunt has committed a crime; everybody, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... ultimately wrung her salvation by self-sacrifice from Divine Justice. Here and there are passages that we could have wished modified, but surely such a terrific fantasy was never before penned! It is as harrowing as The Ancient Mariner, and appeals to one more forcibly than Coleridge's "Rime," because it seems actual truth. Other volumes, containing impassioned ballads, lyrics, narrative poems and sonnets, came from Mr. Payne's pen. His poems have the rush and bound of a Scotch waterfall. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... old trail again! And with very mixed feelings, but some determination. I am off to Val-cartier to-night. I was really afraid to go home, for I feared it would only be harrowing for Mater, and I think she agrees. We can hope for happier times. Everyone most kind and helpful: my going does not seem to surprise anyone. I know you will understand it is hard to go home, and perhaps easier ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... garrison were executed. The details of this are best unwritten. Through a shocking blunder, the firing party discharged their carbines when fifty yards distant, instead of advancing to within eight yards of the victims. The harrowing scene rent Brock's heart. That the men who had fought so bravely under him at Egmont and laughed at the carnage at Copenhagen should end their lives in this manner was inexpressibly sad. After reading the account of the execution ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... downward to a stretch of undulating farms. Patches of green meadowland were interspersed with the broad, red fields in which as yet nothing had begun to grow. Had it not been Sunday the farmers would have been at work, plowing, sowing, harrowing. As it was, the landscape enjoyed a rich Sabbath peace, broken only by the swooping of birds, out of the invisible, across the line of sight, and on into the invisible again. It was all beauty and ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... young seemed to enjoy the balmy evening. Few remained indoors. Among these were Zashue and his wife. The woman leaned against him, and often looked up to his face with a smile. She felt happy by the side of her husband, and however harrowing the thought of her future seemed to be, the present was blissful ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising eerie from the space between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing "Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting, deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was hit I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then intense ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... slowly from the room. In a curiously stunned sort of way she reached the street, and for a few blocks walked along scarcely conscious of the direction she was taking. Her mind was in turmoil. The night seemed to have been one of harrowing hallucination; it seemed as though it were utterly unreal, like one dreaming that one is dreaming. And then, suddenly, she looked at her watch, and the straight little shoulders squared resolutely back. The hallucination, if she chose to call it that, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... astuteness he had not suspected himself of possessing, which was probably the result of the harrowing experiences he had lately undergone, he hit upon a plan of action. "I'll go to a shop," he thought, "and change this sovereign, and ask to look at a timetable—then, if I find I can catch a train at once, I'll run for it; if one ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Mike, wiping the sweat off his forehead. This was one of the most harrowing interviews he had ever ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... forehead, as though to shade her eyes from the sun. But where she was standing there was no sun, and John could not help guessing why she was shading her eyes. She was crying at leaving the place in that quiet and harrowing way which some women indulge in; that is to say, a few big tears were rolling down her face. John felt a lump rise in his own throat at the sight, and not unnaturally relieved his ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... which he probably bought somewhere in the neighborhood,—but how much it cost we could never get him to say. Then he brought in a man with a plough, who broke up the ground, turning the manure thoroughly in, and then harrowing it until the surface was as finely pulverized as if done with a rake. Then we spread out the runners again, and he showed me how to fasten them by letting them down into the soft earth with the point of my hoe. I told him I never should have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... meets people who take a delight in describing with a wealth of detail the disorders with which they or their friends are afflicted. A sensitive person is condemned by social usage to listen to a harrowing account of some grave malady. As detail succeeds detail the listener feels a chilly discomfort stealing over him. He turns pale, breaks into a cold perspiration, and is aware of an unpleasant sensation at the pit of the stomach. Sometimes, ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... unexpected violence. News of the rioting and disorder came to the Assembly from every province and filled its members with the liveliest apprehension. A long report, submitted by a special investigating committee on 4 August, 1789, gave such harrowing details of the popular uprising that every one was convinced that something ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... to fill the house. Thus, we find that "The late Terrible Calamity which befell BANGMAN DONELEY and Family" was advertised as the current attraction in the "West ——th Street United Presbyterian Church," a Sunday or two since. A fine theme! Full of nicely harrowing details. It must have drawn well. We are not informed whether the reverend sensationist had a "real house" made with which to illustrate the overwhelming incident; and some "real people," including children, to be (apparently) crushed when it got blown ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... Government are probably quite convinced that it is situate between the Devil and the Deep Sea. Two Special Commissions are to be set up to inquire into the Mesopotamian and Dardanelles Expeditions. Public opinion has been painfully stirred by the harrowing details which have come to light of the preventible sufferings endured by British troops. From their point of view the supply of their medical needs, now guaranteed, is worth a wilderness of Special Commissions. But ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... became impossible as I watched myself handing out platitudes with the gesture of the salesman offering something to a purchaser "equally good." The worst of it was that Merrick—Merrick, who had once felt everything!—didn't seem to feel the lack of spontaneity in my remarks, but hung on' them with a harrowing faith in the resuscitating power of our past. It was as if he hugged the empty vessel of our friendship without perceiving that the last drop ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... everlasting interests,-so much to any innate or constitutional cruelty of the master, as to that gigantic inconsistency, that inherited habit among slaveholders, of expecting a willing and intelligent obedience from the slave, because he is a MAN-at the same time every thing belonging to the soul-harrowing system does its best to crush the last vestige of a man within him; and when it is crushed, and often before, he is denied the comforts of life, on the plea that he knows neither the want nor the use of them, and because he is considered to be ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... Baxter was dead. His violent outbreak of the previous afternoon had hastened the end that the doctor had prophesied. There was no harrowing death scene. The weather-beaten old face grew calmer, and, the sleep sounder, until the tide went out—that was all. It was like a peaceful coming into port after a rough voyage. No one of the watchers about the bed could wish him ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... repertoire after all, for whether the piece be melodrama, farce, genteel comedy, or harrowing tragedy, it has to be played by ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... trembled so much that for a moment she could not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on her knee. It might mean so many things—she could read into it so many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual feelings, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Ride like the wind!" Then turning again to the jhampanis, big with harrowing detail, added: "The devil who did this thing, hath ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... name. This house was the woman's, for he had given it to her the day he died. But that she could live there with all the old associations, with memories that, however bitter, however shaming, had a sort of sacredness, struck into his soul with a harrowing pain. There she was whom he had spared—himself; whose happiness had lain in his hands, and he had given it to her. Yet her very existence robbed himself of happiness, and made sorrowful a life dearer than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Take heed, and do not accept them, for they may be content to give you fifty!—No person can with a mattock scrape off the clay from the face of a hard rock in so grating a manner as thy harsh voice is harrowing up my soul." ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Hugh!" declared the happy Bud, whose face was rosy from his recent tremendous exertions and from the glow of satisfied ambition. "I am convinced that I haven't been wasting my time, even if I'm only harrowing in a field some other fellow may have ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... from the garden, his companions of the Sangrail covering their retreat. But, returned to Montsalvat, the unhappy king awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of the sacred spear, and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an incurable ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... a little, the poor Highlanders of Sutherland to the sea-coast. It would be easy dwelling on the terrors of their expulsion, and multiplying facts of horror; but had there been no permanent deterioration effected in their condition, these, all harrowing and repulsive as they were, would have mattered less. Sutherland would have soon recovered the burning up of a few hundred hamlets, or the loss of a few bedridden old people, who would have died as certainly under cover, though perhaps ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... humbugging; there's wives enough on my place, and a parson can have his choice out of fifty," returns M'Fadden, dragging him along by the arm. The scene that here ensues is harrowing in the extreme. The cries and sobs of children,—the solicitude and affection of his poor wife, as she throws her arms about her husband's neck,—his falling tears of sorrow, as one by one he snatches up his children and kisses them,—are ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... facts about the poor without making any effort to use these facts for their good has been compared to harrowing the ground without sowing the seed. The facts should be made the basis of a well-considered plan. It may be necessary to modify our plans often, as circumstances change or new facts are discovered; but a plan of treatment {190} is as indispensable ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... part, however, it is not merely the thing produced, but the earth's own force and natural productiveness that delight me. For received in its bosom the seed scattered broadcast upon it, softened and broken up, she first keeps it concealed therein (hence the harrowing which accomplishes this gets its name from a word meaning "to hide"); next, when it has been warmed by her heat and close pressure, she splits it open and draws from it the greenery of the blade. This, supported by the fibres of the root, little by little grows up, and ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... reveled in scenes of mourning. I speculated as to who would be the first to depart, Marguerite or I. Either alternative caused me harrowing grief, and tears rose to my eyes at the thought of our shattered lives. At the happiest periods of my existence I often became a prey to grim dejection such as nobody could understand but which was caused by the thought of impending nihility. When I ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... wantonly made in their retreat to the Hindenburg line. Nothing could have been more dismal than our slow progress in the steady rain, through the deserted streets of this town. Home after home had been blasted—their intimate yet harrowing interiors were revealed. The shops and cafes, which had been thoroughly looted, had their walls blown out, but in many cases the signs of the vanished and homeless proprietors still hung above the doors. I wondered how we should feel in New England if ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
