"Premonitory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translate it into terms of reason, he found nothing upon which his wits could fasten—and he came ever to conclude that it was his very happiness by its excessiveness that was oppressing him, giving him at times that sense of premonitory weight about the heart as if to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... was still tarrying in the unwholesome (p. 305) heats of Washington, he had some symptoms which he thought premonitory, and he speaks of the next session of Congress as probably the last which he should ever attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful sketch of himself. Physical disability, he says, must soon put a stop to his Diary. That morning he had risen "at four, and with smarting, bloodshot ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... problem worried Taylor still more when the old man, with an uncomplimentary allusion to the sagacity of the owner of Taylor's Folly, continued his way. But time was kind, and he grew more learned when premonitory symptoms of the approach of a light from another world were manifest, and peace lay on his wife's tongue and ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... won the summit of the Asmai ridge when the fortune of the day was suddenly overcast; indeed while he was still engaged in the attainment of that object premonitory indications of serious mischief were unexpectedly presenting themselves. A vast host of Afghans described as numbering from 15,000 to 20,000, debouched into the Chardeh valley from the direction of Indikee, and were moving ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... his friend by his presence of mind. Without a moment's pause he stopped and indulged in a prolonged fit of coughing, while the little congregation, which had been startled by the groan, attributed the noise to a premonitory symptom of the attack, and thought no more ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... from the tragic event foreboded. Is this because of the impossibility of a complete understanding, or a despondent unwillingness to decipher those orders that are sealed letters to us, or a lively faith that one will pass through the peril once more? Always, in spite of the premonitory signs and the prophecies that seem to be coming true, we fall back automatically upon the cares of the moment and absorb ourselves in them—hunger, thirst, the lice whose crushing ensanguines all our nails, the great weariness ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... through some hideous nightmare, she began to scoop up the gems from her lap and allow them to trickle back through her fingers. They flashed and scintillated brilliantly, even in the meager light. They seemed alive with some premonitory, baleful fire. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... portrayed; some added words, however, betray the origin of the Cardinal's idea. "The earth also," he says, "would appear as a shining star to any one outside the fiery element." It was, in fact, an extension to the sun of the ancient elemental doctrine; but an extension remarkable at that period, as premonitory of the tendency, so powerfully developed by subsequent discoveries, to assimilate the orbs of heaven to the model of our insignificant planet, and to extend the brotherhood of our system and our species to the farthest limit of the visible ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... severe and mild respectively. In writing to Dr. Reed that night of the incident, I remarked jokingly that if there was anything in the mosquito theory, I should have a good dose. And so it happened. After having slight premonitory symptoms for two days, I was taken sick on August 31, and on September 1, I was carried to the yellow fever camp. My life was in the balance for three days, and my chart shows that on the fifth, sixth and ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... dictating I was reading, and during my confinement I re-read the whole of the Waverley novels. It was when I was once more enjoying the romantic adventures of "Ivanhoe" that I was seized, one afternoon, with the premonitory symptoms which my doctors had told me would indicate the approach of death. At my urgent request they had enlightened me upon this point, and I had learned that death from the accidental stoppage of the heart would be without pain, and would simply be preceded by a feeling ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... still standing on the roof, at the edge, out of the smoke, and both fired at the same time. The fugitives did not turn; they kept on running, and they had nearly reached the other side of the field, when suddenly, without any premonitory gesture, the elder Skillett dropped flat on his face. The Cross-Roaders stood by each other that day, for four or five men ran out of the nearest shanty into the open, lifted the prostrate figure ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... sacrifices. But at St. Jean de Luz, if Riette would consent to reside there, Lord Fleetwood's absence and the neighbourhood of the war were reckoned on to preserve his yokefellow from any fit of the abominated softness which she had felt in one premonitory tremor during their late interview, and deemed it vile compared with the life of action and service beside, almost beside, her brother, sharing his dangers at least. She would have had Chillon speak peremptorily to his wife regarding ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There had already been heavy skirmishing far away on the right where Hooker had forded the creek and taken position on the opposite hills; and the air was dark and thick with fog and exhalations, with the smoke of camp-fires and premonitory death. There was little sleep that night, and as the morning sun rose bright and beautiful over the Blue Ridge and dipped down into the Valley, the firing on the right was resumed. Reinforcements soon began to move along the rear to Hooker's support. Thinking the place of danger was the place ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... then they both paused, and finally flung themselves down upon the sand to witness a repetition of the eruption, the premonitory signs of which at that moment made their appearance. Then, when it was over, finding themselves very comfortable—and very hungry—they concluded to take luncheon before again moving; and, this being followed by a pipe, it was ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... surely he would come on the Sunday! She had been quite sure that the offer was about to be made when that odious old harridan had come in and disturbed everything. Indeed, the offer had been all but made. She had felt the premonitory flutter, had asked herself the important question,—and had answered it. She had told herself that the thing would do. Frank was not the exact hero that her fancy had painted,—but he was sufficiently heroic. Everybody said that he would work his way up to the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... inscrutable judgments—yet even these bitter plants of which our own hands have sowed the seed, spring by His merciful will, and are to be regarded as His loving, fatherly chastisements—sent before to warn us by a premonitory experience that 'the wages of sin is death.' As a rule, God does not interpose to pick a man out of the mud into which he has been plunged by his own faults and follies, until he has learned the lessons which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Highness; who gave some vague order, not thinking it of consequence. Here, however, is the Fact come to hand in a most urgent and undeniable manner! Serene Highness gets on horseback; but what can that help? One cannon (has nothing but light cannon) he does plant on the Bridge; but see, here come premonitory bomb-shells one and another, terrifying to the mind;—and a single Hessian dragoon, plunging forward on the one unready cannon, and in the air making horrid circles,—the gunners leave said cannon to him, take to their heels; and the Bridge is open. The rest of the affair ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... always preceded by a premonitory diarrhoea, which lasts from one or two to three or four or more days before urgent and characteristic symptoms show themselves. Of 6,213 cases, no less than 5,786 had preceding diarrhoea. The sufferers from this sow the germs of the disease ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... upon London like the premonitory echo of an approaching storm. The path of the triumphant Muscovites was now completely open to the forts of the Belgian Quadrilateral, under the walls of which they would form a junction, which nothing could now prevent, with the beleaguering forces of France. Would the Belgian strongholds ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... which the possession of riches is attended. Sensuality, disguised under the veil of elegance, refinement, and accomplishment, is making rapid strides amongst us. It does so in all old, wealthy, and long-established communities; it is the well-known and oft-described premonitory symptom of national decline. We can scarce venture to hope, we should find in the British empire at this period the enthusiasm which manned the ramparts of Sarragossa, the patriotism which fired the torches of Moscow. We should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... what the home letter had to say. It was from Margaret's father, and as he seldom wrote to her, leaving, as many men do, the bulk of correspondence with absent members of the family to be the care of his wife and children, she felt a premonitory thrill. ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... strange premonitory noises had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... he waited and debated with himself, not at all certain now that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cut which had adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, even while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom—pride in the contemplation of his ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... after a cool handshake with the master of the house, and a close embrace with the mistress, who stood pouring out last words with spectacles too dim for seeing. Fat Ben swung up the trunk, slammed the door, mounted his perch, and the ancient vehicle swayed with premonitory symptoms ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... the Onas who was afflicted thus from time to time. The actual outburst in this case was sudden, although it is difficult to tell how long it might have been coming on in the form of brooding, which seems to be a premonitory ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... this resembled it. But some look in his eye, some pallor, whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to die upon my lips. We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were close below the lighted house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle, there burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth and set the echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff. A pillar of amber flame leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... about old Bill's "little wee girl at Newbury-port" waiting for her stupid old dad to come back to her, and I have an idea that the others were thinking much the same thoughts. But soon Blodgett stirred restlessly, and the cook, the cleaver on his knees, cleared his throat and after a premonitory grunt or ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... dissolved and she heard the stir of the sparrows in the ivy. There was the passing rumble of an early electric car on the paved aged street, the blurred hurried shuffle of a workman's clumsy shoes. The brightening morning was cool with a premonitory touch of frost; at the window she saw a vanishing silver sheen on the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... project. Adj. predicting &c v.; predictive, prophetic; fatidic^, fatidical^; vaticinal, oracular, fatiloquent^, haruspical, Sibylline; weatherwise^. ominous, portentous, augurous^, augurial, augural; auspicial^, auspicious; prescious^, monitory, extispicious^, premonitory, significant of, pregnant with, bit with the fate of. Phr. coming events cast their shadows before [Campbell]; dicamus bona verba [Lat.]; there buds the promise of celestial worth [Young]. [Divination: list] by oracles, Theomancy^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seen at present; though the gentlemen took the thing coolly, and Mr. Randolph and the two Sandfords looked as usual. But now the delayed storm drew near. The thunder notified with every burst the fact that it was coming speedily; the lightning became vivid and constant. A premonitory sweep of the wind—and the clouds gave out their treasures of rain and hail with tremendous fury. The lightning was terrible now, and the darkness of the intervals between so great that the company could scarcely ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the concussion of a heavy sea, then another, and another, which soon convinced me that the ship was ashore. This was certainly unpleasant, as I had no doubt but that we were at that time twenty miles from land, and the idea of a coral reef in that position, was premonitory of a salt-water bath. Before the call of "All hands save ship," was given, I was upon deck, and found that she had grounded upon a bank on the northern coast of the island of Formosa, having been swept ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... petit-bleu, while he was dressing for dinner, to cure Lanyard of an attack of premonitory shivers brought on by recollection of the awful truth that one is never really safe in trifling with an Englishman's sense of humour. "Dear monsieur Martin:—It is too sweet of you to remember your promise ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... anguishes of the process he was mute, exceeding the pathos of the stricken calf in the shambles; but a student of eyes might have perceived in his soul the premonitory symptoms of a sinister uprising. At a rehearsal (in citizens' clothes) attended by mothers and grown-up sisters, Mrs. Lora Rewbush had announced that she wished the costuming to be "as medieval and artistic as possible." Otherwise, and as to details, she said, she would leave ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... warmth he was compelled to drink between the stages as well. They were approaching Swindon. The coach was travelling at a dizzy speed—six miles in the last half-hour—when, without having manifested the slightest premonitory symptom of unsteadiness, Sir Ferdinando suddenly toppled sideways off his seat and fell, head foremost, into the road. An unpleasant jolt awakened the slumbering passengers. The coach was brought to a standstill; the guard ran back with a light. He found Sir Ferdinando still alive, but unconscious; ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... journal. Besides these, they send thousands of circulars, through the mails, to persons in various parts of the country, setting forth the horrors of certain diseases, and offering to cure them for a fixed sum. The circular contains an elaborate description of the symptoms or premonitory signs of these diseases. A very large number of persons, reading these descriptions, really come to the conclusion that they are affected in the manner stated by the quack. So great is the power of the imagination in these cases, that sound healthy men are, sometimes, absolutely led to fancy themselves ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... leaves, and began indolently to study diseases generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... unscientific that a single occasion on which a dream does seem to correspond in a curious manner with subsequent events outweighs a thousand occasions on which no such correspondence is traceable. Yet nothing but a long series of premonitory dreams could suffice for the basis of a ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Age and the Aged.—In advancing years when less exercise is, as a rule, taken, a restriction in the amount of food consumed is highly desirable. The increasing corpulence, which often begins to show itself from 30 to 40, is far from being a healthy sign; indeed, is often the premonitory symptom of serious disease. It should be remembered that a lessening quantity of food is required from middle life on. This applies to all the elements of food. It is noticeable that a fat person seldom lives to old age, most octogenarians being ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Mr. Goodnight gave a premonitory cough, and taking his hands out of his pockets let his coat-tails drop. This also ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... now establish their second line near Fairview. The Confederates' progress is arrested for the nonce. It is somewhat after eight A.M. A lull, premonitory only of a still fiercer ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... struck by apoplexy on the 4th of November, 1859, without any premonitory symptoms to forewarn her of her danger; and, without recovering consciousness, she breathed her last at four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. Her companions were plunged into the deepest sorrow, for the Sister was a general favorite; but they resigned ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... digested—his dinner, his political project, the valentine—his hopes in general—found that soggy cabbage to be a particularly tough proposition. He was not sufficiently imaginative to view his punishment by the intractable cabbage as a premonitory hint that he was destined to suffer as much in his pride as he did in his stomach. His pangs took his mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... dues, Uncle Jaw prepared forthwith to go and compare notes. Therefore, one evening, as Deacon Enos was sitting quietly by the fire, musing and reading with his big Bible open before him, he heard the premonitory symptoms of a visitation from Uncle Jaw on his door scraper; and soon the man made his appearance. After seating himself directly in front of the fire, with his elbows on his knees, and his hands spread out over the coals, he looked up in Deacon Enos's mild face with his ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sat down, drew his bow across the strings with a full, quivering, premonitory touch, and, straightway, the fiddle began to talk to him as though they two were friends alone together in the room. How it played for him,—the fiddle—as though it were morning. How it shouted, laughed, ran with him in a world ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... This supposition would be at least uncharitable, and contradicts probability. It was rather a trial of her sincerity in religion, and an evidence of her determination to use no compulsory measures, not even maternal influence, to coerce her conscience. Her language was, besides, premonitory and warning, similar to the permission given to Balaam, who though apparently admonished to go and curse Israel, was ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to move his feet, gave a pull at one arm and then at the other, and when he found he was bound hard and fast, his face turned as red as fire and he opened his mouth, whether to swear or yell I know not. I had already closed the door, and before the man had uttered more than a premonitory sound, David had clapped the end of his bludgeon ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... Symptoms.—The premonitory signs are those of exhaustion—dullness, panting, frothing at the mouth, tongue hanging out, irregular gait, uneasiness, palpitation—when, if the circumstances which tend to the prostration are not mitigated, the animal staggers ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... and tended it, and soon the child Would not be parted from her arms, but throve And fattened, and she kept it night and day. And always at her side with sleepless care Hovered the young Felicitas—a slight And spiritual figure—every touch and tone Charged with premonitory tenderness, Herself so near to her own motherhood. Thus lightened and relieved, Perpetua Recovered from her silent fit. Her eyes Regained their former deep serenity, Her tongue its gentle daring; for she knew Her life should not be taken till her babe Had strengthened and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... a marriage in literary circles—so the newspapers described the alliance—had a bride been so handsomely dowered. I began with due promptness to look for the fruit of their union—that fruit, I mean, of which the premonitory symptoms would be peculiarly visible in the husband. Taking for granted the splendour of the lady's nuptial gift, I expected to see him make a show commensurate with his increase of means. I knew what his means had been—his article on "The Right of Way" had distinctly ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... o'clock now, an hour since the Rat and Muggy Ladd had left Foo Sen's. Again Jimmie Dale told himself that it was still early, that the Rat would wait for a much later hour—but at the same time he acknowledged to himself a sense of growing and premonitory uneasiness. Certainly, in any case, he had no time to lose. He turned quickly and hurried along the block that separated him from the Bowery—he had a fair idea of the haunts usually frequented in the evening by the men he sought, and, even failing ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... all Corrie's ardent young passion without his impulsive faults, and whose warmth of nature had drawn him as a fireside draws a wanderer. He would not doubt her for such slight cause, he would wait for morning and her further answer, but he felt a premonitory dread and discouragement. He had expected so much more than he would now admit to himself. He even had thought vaguely, unreasoningly eager as a wistful boy, that she might come to him with Corrie that evening, that he ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... is lazy. The only exercise he ever takes is to occasionally produce a Revolution. When his feet begin to swell and there are premonitory symptoms of gout, he "revolushes" a spell, and then serenely returns to his cigarette ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... produced by such causes as lead to debilitation of the system; propagated by contagion, generally through an abrasion or sore, but sometimes by simple contact with a sound surface; marked by an ill-defined period of incubation, followed by certain premonitory symptoms referable to the general system, then by the evolution of successive crops of a characteristic eruption, which pass on in weakly subjects into unhealthy and spreading ulcers whose cicatrices are very prone to contraction; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... lastly there was Carlyle, half scornful of FitzGerald's "ultra modesty and innocent far-niente life," his own superhuman activity regarded meanwhile by FitzGerald with a gentle half-pitying wonder, of which one catches a premonitory echo in this extract from a long letter {87} of Sir Frederick Pollock's to W. H. Thompson. It bears date 14th February 1840, two years before Carlyle and ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... of their approach, while others do, the usual premonitory symptoms being a kind of bouncing or leaping of the train. It is well to know that the bottom of the carriage is the safest place, and, therefore, when a person has reason to anticipate a concussion, he should, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... been a quiet, sedate feast in the nature of a Sunday. We left just as the premonitory signs of the rainy season ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... all at once and without the slightest premonitory warning, the young lady broke out crying hysterically, and to do it the better laid her face on Mr. Ingelow's shoulder. And, that bold buccaneer of modern society gathered the little girl close to his heart, like the presumptuous scoundrel he was, and let her cry her fill; ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the other ear, gently agitated his mortified tail, as premonitory symptoms of departure, and never stirred a hoof, being well aware that it always took three ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... be dismissed in very few words as a consummate charmer and heart-breaker. The usual elements that go to the making of a small boy were all there, but mixed with white magic. It is painful to think of the dozens of girl babies in long clothes who must have been feeling premonitory pangs when Peter was four, to think they couldn't all marry him when ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were, but also utterances of alarm,—alarm excited by the signing of those new treaties, bringing all aliens under Japanese jurisdiction,—and fear, not unfounded, of another anti-foreign agitation with the formidable new sense of national power behind it. Premonitory symptoms of such agitation were really apparent in a general tendency to insult or jeer at foreigners, and in some rare but exemplary acts of violence. The government again found it necessary to issue proclamations and warnings against such demonstrations of national anger; and they ceased almost ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... is thoroughly evil when one single thought conies to take entire possession of the mind. It shows the brain is going. It is no wonder, my friendly reader, that so many men are mentally screws! There is something perfectly awful in reading what are the premonitory symptoms of true insanity. Read this, my friend, and be afraid of yourself. Here are what Dr. Winslow says indicates that insanity is drawing near. Have you never seen it? Have you ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... humor. Besides, the fun outside was increasing; he could hear the roars of laughter, the whiz of the flying snow-balls, and the gleeful crows of the conquering heroes. He was the only one in the school-room. Presently there was a hush, a sort of premonitory symptom of more mischief brewing outside, which provoked his curiosity to ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and Ludmillo had spent at the Princess' favorite country-place, the tiny estate of Maidonovo, near Klin. Here, in the spot where she had fewest memories of the man whose name she bore, Sophia found that she could, for a few weeks, rally from the weakness, the premonitory pain and its accompanying dread which had lately found definite place in her life. Here the summer skies were of Italian blue; the bells rang through air liquidly golden, perfumed, rich with the murmur of insect life. And here the three, mother, son, and their quiet companion, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... prevented him from taking any immediate revenge. A few evenings afterwards, however, he contrived to escape from the back-yard, and immediately made his way to the cabin of the cur's master. Finding the door open, more Hibernicorum, he entered without even a premonitory growl, to the dismay of the humble inmates, who were eating their supper of potatoes and milk, seized the offender, and ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... such as these, thoughts that had been with her now almost since the first day she had come to Needley—this disquiet, this self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and, mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad, half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might be true that she was not what she really was—but what all those around her held her to be—what Mrs. Thornton had ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... in a voice that was resonant and slow. 'Twas not like the outburst of a moment's impulse—the sudden jangling of a harpstring rudely touched; it was rather with the fateful emphasis of a clock striking the hour, heralded by a premonitory quiver—a gathering together of inward forces that had waited through long moments for ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... went down the common stair, and in the grey of the spring morning, with the streets lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on into the daylight in diminished lustre, and the birds beginning to sound premonitory notes from the groves of the town gardens, went each his own way with ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hands threw the rope-ladder out the window and started up the hollow toward home. The air was sultry and oppressive, the moon had been engulfed, and the first thunder-cloud of the spring was pushing itself up toward the zenith, while the boughs of the trees were quivering with a premonitory shudder. But August did not hasten. The real storm was within. Andrew's story had raised doubts. When he went down the ravine the love of Julia Anderson shone upon his heart as benignly as the moon upon the waters. Now the light was gone, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... climate is a well known specific for pulmonary troubles, and thousands of people come down there in all stages of consumption from the first premonitory cough to the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Suppose that Lord John Russell, aware of some evil, some calamity or disease, impending over the established Church of England—sure of this evil, but absolutely unable to describe it by rational remarks or premonitory symptom, had cast about for a channel by which he might draw attention to the evil, and, by exposing, make an end of it. But who could have dreamed that he would have chosen the means he has chosen? What propriety was there in Lord John's addressing himself upon such a subject to the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... organization on the part of the slaves, we conceive there is a certain state of degradation and misery to which they may be reduced, a certain point of desperation to which the human mind may be brought, and beyond which it cannot be driven.—If then the premonitory signs of this crisis have appeared, if a recurrence of the desperate feelings which gave birth to the design is to be so awfully dreaded, ought not the attention of every humane mind to be exerted in devising adequate means ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... a momentary pause—owing, I suppose, to some slight loss of insulation in the wires—then came the premonitory shock, then the rumble, the smoke, and the sparks; and a great bloated mass of flesh and blood rose to the surface of the water. Hall called out to us to drag it ashore, and see whether we could get any trace of poor Sidhoo. We tried by means of a bamboo pole to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... 1832. First published in P. W. 1834. These lines were enclosed in a letter to J. H. Green, dated July 26, 1832, with the following introduction: 'Address premonitory to the Sovereign People, or the Cholera cured before-hand, promulgated gratis for the use of the useful classes, specially of those resident in St. Giles, Bethnal Green, Saffron Hill, etc., by their Majesties', i. e. the People's, loyal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of most of my moral and mental diagnoses, I had better communicate to you a new and disturbing element. You remember what I said to you about Miss B——, that I did not care for her. A fancied immunity is often a premonitory symptom of disease: the system is excited into an instantaneous glow by the first contact of ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... studied over the unwelcome possibilities shrouded in the gathering gloom of the distance, and regretted that he had not, before crossing the Ohio, called the Surgeon's attention to some premonitory symptoms of rheumatism, which he felt he might desire to develop into an acute attack in the event of danger assuming an ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... of Pitt and Grenville; for there were no premonitory symptoms of infection, but much the reverse. Londoners showed the utmost joy at the first news of the escape of the King and Queen from Paris, and were equally depressed by the news from Varennes. As we shall presently see, it was with shouts ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... at him pitifully. Her courage almost failed. She thought of the boys and the stolen fruit in the Pilgrim's Progress, and she almost felt premonitory cramps. ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... trees was in sight, and they were making for it, when sounds of angry voices were heard, and Spring, bristling up the mane on his neck, and giving a few premonitory fierce growls like thunder, bounded forward as though he had been seven years younger. Stephen darted after him, Ambrose rushed after Stephen, and breaking through the trees, they beheld the dog at the throat ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... However, in time matters settled down in a measure; and beyond vituperative language and sanguinary threats against the successful applicants, the rejected candidates, male and female, behaved very nicely. But I was slumbering on a latent volcano of fresh troubles, and the premonitory upheaval came about a month after our head nurse, Hakala, had been fined five dollars for using English Seafaring' language to another woman who had called her a pig. As Hakala could not pay the fine—being already in debt to me ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... extreme velocity. It is known as a snow stream. The water is always cold, and generally of a milky colour, containing much fine white sand. No sooner does it leave its rocky bed than it tears through the flat country by numerous channels. It is subject to very sudden rises. A premonitory warning of these is generally given. The water becomes of a turbid, almost blood-like colour. Sometimes I have seen the river rise over thirty feet in twenty-four hours. The melting of the snow often ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Roman, on Delancey Street. Thus, at six, Max Merech was an assistant cutter; and, indeed, until after he ate his supper he still bore the outward appearance of an assistant cutter, though inwardly he felt a premonitory glow. After half-past seven, however, he buttoned on a low, turned-down collar with its concomitant broad Windsor tie, and therewith he assumed his real character—that ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... violent, and it came with so opposite a rapidity upon the heels of Fosbrook's words that it thrilled and startled him. There was something very timely in the circumstances of night and storm and that premonitory clapping at the door. Sir Charles looked towards the door in a glow of anticipation. He had time to notice, however, how deeply Resilda herself was stirred; her left hand which had lain loose upon the table-cloth was now tightly clenched, and she had a difficulty in breathing. The one strange ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... varicella twenty-four hours after birth, and passed through the regular coarse of chicken-pox of ten days' duration. The mother had no signs of the disease, but the children all about her were infected. Ordinarily the period of incubation is from three to four days, with a premonitory fever of from twenty-four to seventy-two hours' duration, when the rash appears; this case must therefore have been infected in utero. Lomer of Hamburg tells of the case of a woman, twenty-two years, unmarried, pregnant, who had measles in the eighth month, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... disturbed that he fancied he had none but enemies around him. A cloudy melancholy seemed to invade his brain; he was seized with a sudden fear that he was about to have an attack of persecution-phobia, and began to feel his pulse and interrogate his sensations to see whether he could detect any of the premonitory symptoms. ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... move from place to place, spreading the baseless alarm, and then came the time for action, else over the plain in mere fruitless frenzy would go the whole frantic band, lashed to madness by their own fears, trampling each other, heedless of any obstacle, in pitiable, deadly rout. Waite knew the premonitory signs well, and at the first warning bellow he was on his feet, alert and determined, his energy nerved for a struggle ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... had been driven—in self-defence, to be sure— into saying things at the bare thought of which he felt a premonitory tingling in the rearward part of his person. But somehow the feel of the coin in his hand seemed to enfranchise him. He had at once a sense of manly solidity, and of having been floated off into a giddy atmosphere in which nothing succeeded like success and the law of gravity had lost ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... The premonitory signs of the great religious war in Germany were not to be mistaken. In truth, the great conflict had already opened in the duchies, although few men as yet comprehended the full extent of that movement. The superficial imagined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... certain stigma which marked him as one lost and disintegrated: this was laziness, incapacity to persist in work. Directly an honest and well-behaved man begins to suffer from brain-disease, before he shows any violent impulses, disorder in conduct, or signs of delirium, he has a premonitory symptom: he can no longer apply himself to work. Among the masses, it is justly thought that a girl will make a good wife when she is industrious, and a man is said to be an honest fellow and one who can offer ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... wan pools and marshes, whence a greenish mist steamed up, and seemed to poison the sunlight streaming through it. It is possible that this semblance of an unwholesome mist was not so much the fault of the marshes as a condition of the atmosphere, premonitory of the fierce electric storms and the earthquake which visited the city that same night. The greenish light beat full on the sunken doorway, so that only the lowermost steps remained in shadow. However unattractive the temporary ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... my head between her thighs, my cock not far from her mouth, and indulging her in the luxury; for it was much the idea of pleasing her that made me do it. She played with my cock and wriggled as my tongue played over her clotoris, then grasped my prick hard, which gave me a premonitory throb of pleasure. "Do to me what I am doing to you," said I, "put it in your mouth," scarcely knowing what I said and without any ulterior intention. She with her pleasure getting intense, impelled by curiosity, or by the fascination of the cock, or by impulse, the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... St. Paul, Mr. McLaughlin," he said—and Perkins, recognizing the premonitory symptoms, crossed to the window and stood with his back to his partner and "the cage man"—"Mr. McLaughlin," Skinner repeated after a pause, "I've been thinking that the most valuable man to any concern is the one that gets the business ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... life and political association, the few boys with active minds mimicked the strife of parliament in their debating society, and copied the arts of journalism in the Eton Miscellany. In both fields the young Gladstone took a leading part. The debating society was afflicted with 'the premonitory lethargy of death,' but the assiduous energy of Gaskell, seconded by the gifts of Gladstone, Hallam, and Doyle, soon sent a new pulse beating through it. The politics of the hour, that is to say ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... termination, for he was full of vigour and eagerness for the attack, and never in his most youthful hours did he display a greater readiness to meet all assaults half-way. Those who are accustomed to the Old Man are in the habit of noting a few premonitory signs which will always pretty well forecast the kind of speech he will make. If he starts up flurried and excited, it is ten chances to one that the speech will not remain vigorous to the end; that there will be a break of voice and a weakening of strength, and that ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the first premonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in his white linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day was young and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow, like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... One's so-called education is hammered into one with rulers and with canes. Each fresh grammar or musical instrument, each new historical period or quaint arithmetical rule, is impressed on one by some painful physical prelude. Why does Time, the biggest Schoolmaster, alone neglect premonitory raps, at each stage of his curriculum, on our knuckles ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... a murderer," Jack thought. "Uncle Paul, and Dick, and Hal would have to die, and little Flossie, whom I like so much, be left alone, before all this could be;" then, with a premonitory cough, he knocked lightly ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Jimmy's prediction was fulfilled. Without the slightest warning the jam "pulled." Usually certain premonitory cracks, certain sinkings down, groanings forward, grumblings, shruggings, and sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs give opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after inexplicably hanging ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... introduced the lighted taper into the receiver of respired air, by which it was immediately extinguished. Several persons present then received a quantity of respired air into their lungs, whereupon the premonitory symptoms of apoplexy, as already given, ensued. The experiment was conducted with great care, and several times repeated in the presence of respectable members of the medical profession, a professor ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... I believe in, it is fresh air. I like to keep my window open at night, or better still to sleep under the stars. And I was glad to learn from the doctors that this is good for us. But the other day I started on a railway journey with premonitory signs of catching cold. An icy blast blew upon me. I closed the car window. A lady instantly opened it. I looked to see what manner of person she was. Was she one who could be touched by an illogical appeal? or was she wholly ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... warmth in certain parts of the body and a tendency to the so-called attacks of "hysterics." These characteristics, which are closely allied, if not precisely similar to those of epilepsy, are preceded by a number of premonitory symptoms—hallucinations, sudden change of character, contractions, laryngeal spasms, strabismus, frequent spitting, inordinate laughter or yawning, cardiac palpitations, loss of strength, trembling, anaesthesia and (just before the attack,) pains in some ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Vague, premonitory fear that fluttered by in momentary clear intervals, seemed to tell him that his changed behavior toward his wife must hasten this change. At such times he suddenly became doubly pleasant and jovial with her; but even this joviality bore something of the nature of the sultry ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... but they were not in the quarter from whence our usual heavy rain comes; and besides, in New Zealand clouds are more frequently a sign of high wind than of rain. However, about midnight F—— felt so ill that he went in to bed, and we had scarcely got under shelter when, after a very few premonitory drops, the rain came down literally in sheets. Almost from the first F—— spoke of the peculiar and different sound on the roof, but as he had a great deal of fever that night, I was too anxious to ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker |
