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More "Convulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or reapers of plains for the warrior's guile Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office mercantile. And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble reduced to nought. Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive, all writhen caught? Arterial blood of an army's heart outpoured the Grey Observer sees: A forest of France in thunder comes, like a landslide hurled off her Pyrenees. Torrent and forest ramp, roll, sling on for a charge against iron, reason, Fate; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to consciousness, after some convulsive plunges he again gets on his feet, and is led by a further relay of Gauchos to a post, where he is saddled and bridled in spite of his struggles. Regaining his strength, he plunges, kicks, and bites in all ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... subsided; the figure on the floor slowly ceased its convulsive movements; and again a deep silence enveloped the room. Out on the brown-green slope the sun's rays were slanting low, the shadow of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... convulsive, shrill gasp of laughter, which would have instantly developed into an hysterical roar, had not the young Prince, with quick, tactful disregard of British convention, sprung to his feet, and with ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to an abrupt termination. A convulsive movement of Meekins', an expression of blank amazement on the part of Doctor Sarson, had suddenly checked the words upon his lips. He turned his head quickly in the direction towards which they had been gazing, towards which ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bitter tone, with a smile that frequently gave way to slight outbreaks of convulsive laughter almost as if she were attacked with a fit of coughing. From time to time, she blew away a cloud of smoke that escaped from her lips, for she had resumed her cigarette, or with the tip of her nail struck her papelito, knocking the ashes on ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... A convulsive spasm distorted the livid face; the eye-balls rolled, the death-rattle sounded. With a smothered cry of terror Lady Kingsland lifted the agonized head in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... anything be more easy? One would think not—but if you take notice next time you empty a gallon with a friend, you will see that, sixteen to one, he makes the most convulsive efforts to do with ease what a person would naturally suppose was the easiest thing in the world. Do you see, in the first place, how hard he grasps the decanter, leaving the misty marks of five hot fingers on the glittering crystal, which ought to be pure as Cornelia's fame? Then remark at what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... he would go through the most extreme contortions and the wildest gesticulations in a vain attempt to finally get all of the word out, finally pacing up and down the room like one truly insane. This tendency to believe that the stutterer is insane because of the convulsive or spasmodic effort accompanying his efforts to speak, is a mistaken one, although there can be little doubt of the tendency of this condition finally to lead to insanity if ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... struggled up to her knees, and grasped me feebly, as though to assist me. Then she started to her feet The horror of sudden death had done this, and had given her a convulsive energy of recoil from a hideous fate. Thus she sprang forward, and ran for some distance. I hastened after her, and, seizing her arm, drew it in mine. But at that moment her short-lived strength failed her, and she sank once more. I looked all around—the shore was only ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... rule the universe should be shrouded in the blackness of despair, and God be thought of with a convulsive shudder. Such a "probation" would be only like that on which the Inquisitors put their victims who were studiously kept ignorant in their dungeons, waiting for the rack and the flame to be made ready. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... made a convulsive leap as he caught sight of the dog, and his intention was to alight upon the frame-work of one of the large grindstones close by his side—one that had just been set in motion, but though he jumped high enough he did not allow for the lowness of the ceiling, against which ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... as he saw a convulsive shudder pass through Wabigoon. In another moment the Indian youth had opened his eyes, and as he looked up into Rod's eager face he smiled feebly. He tried to speak, but words failed him, and his eyes closed again. There was a look of terror in Roderick's face as he turned to the courier, who ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... breastwork and escaped; but this was not necessary, for with devilish yells the Crow warriors came dropping in quick succession over the rock among their enemies. The main body of the Crows, too, answered the cry from the front and rushed up simultaneously. The convulsive struggle within the breastwork was frightful; for an instant the Blackfeet fought and yelled like pent-up tigers; but the butchery was soon complete, and the mangled bodies lay piled up together under the precipice. Not a Blackfoot made ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... it dropped off. It did not fall to the ground, though. It had no design of gratifying its cruel destroyer to that extent. No; it merely dropped to the end of its tail, which, lapped over the branch, held it suspended. A few convulsive vibrations followed, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... convulsively in rapid succession, her face gradually assumed a suppressed crying expression, tears came to her eyes, they soon flowed freely and rolled down her cheeks; she sobbed, and, through her tears, she uttered, almost inarticulately, the one word, "Yes." A convulsive, inspiratory grunt, a bashful, receding, turning away of the head and body, a raising of the hands to cover her face and hide her tears, and hasty, running steps to get away, while murmuring audibly "Let me go away," ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... all the Governor, his party, and the troops. And in this order the procession passed along. And some time before it had gone far, Medland bled to death inwardly; his strength failed him and he gave a convulsive shiver, opened his eyes for the last time to the sky, and then lay still under the rough coat that Big ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... regions the most remote from each other, primitive, secondary, and volcanic rocks, share equally in the convulsive movements of the globe; we cannot but admit also that within a space of little extent, certain classes of rocks oppose themselves to the propagation of the shocks. At Cumana, for instance, before the great catastrophe of 1797, the earthquakes were felt only along the southern ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... right in and let's have look at it," begged Jack, heartily. Some convulsive sobs sounded ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... continuance in the ministry. As he read this, and glanced at much more which he did not read, he gained resolution for himself, and felt as if he too could be brave and firm in doing what he believed to be right; but as he ceased he heard Margaret's low convulsive sob; and his courage sank down under the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... tremors affect the limbs; each step is short, jerky, and convulsive; the respirations and pulse are almost immediately greatly quickened, and the lower lip is hung pendulous, and moved almost unconsciously up and down with a flapping noise against the upper. A patchy perspiration ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... sharp and clear on the intense silence of the night, and in another second the great brute had landed on his head within four feet of us, and rolling over and over towards us, was sending the bushes which composed our little fence flying with convulsive strokes of his great paws. We sprang out of the other side of the 'skerm,' and he rolled on to it and into it and then right through the fire. Next he raised himself and sat upon his haunches like a great dog, and began to roar. Heavens! how he roared! ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... still conceived that he was not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He said the thought was new to him, and that he would make ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Convulsive sobs took all nerve out of her utterance. She checked them, and continued to look in his face for the ray of hope that was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... so far seen or to be seen, tremendous rounded masses. One of these had been split through the middle by a recent earthquake: the right half, as we looked at it, dropping down eight or ten feet below the other, a splendid example of convulsive power. Across the stream and nearly at the top of the climb that followed we halted for chow and sleep under some tall pines. Two hours later we were off again, through a country from which all visible suggestion of ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... could'st learn to serve that God who disposes of us all at his holy pleasure!" murmured Ghita, tears forcing themselves to her eyes, and a convulsive effort alone suppressing the deep emotion with which she uttered the words: "but we thank thee again and again, Raoul, as the instrument of his mercy in the affair of the Algerine, and are willing to trust to thee now and always. It will be ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... emerging from a long black sheath was certainly unpleasant [I looked like an ant], particularly as the eyes had lost their brilliancy and all that relieved the face were the sparkling white teeth. She went through the first three acts with a convulsive tremor, and we only recognised the Sarah of Ruy Blas by two couplets which she gave in her enchanting voice with the most wonderful grace, but in all the more powerful passages she was a failure. I doubt ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... voice so near her seemed to recall to her dazed sense the uncompleted action his fall had arrested. She made a convulsive bound towards the railing, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... San," he said gently as she pressed closer to him. He tilted her head, stooping to kiss the tiny mouth that trembled at the touch of his lips. She closed her eyes and he felt an almost convulsive shudder shake her. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... them responded—while Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him understand that he must abandon this method of reassuring himself. They were close upon ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... nervous system of which it is impossible to speak definitely; characterized by disturbance of the reason, will, imagination, and emotions, with sometimes convulsive attacks that ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... under him, picked him up with the reins as he stumbled on the loose stones in the creek bed and almost fell, and though he was becoming a rider, "hunted leather" by holding on to the pommel of his saddle, as the horse with two or three convulsive lunges climbed like a cat up the opposing bank, and reached the top, trembling in every limb. The gully ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... disturbed him by our noise in breaking through the bushes, and before he had time to arrange his ideas, I fired, hitting him through the shoulder. With the usual roars he rolled several times in apparent convulsive struggles, until half hidden beneath the dense ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... With convulsive weeping Maria Theresa saw her son assume his command, and when Joseph bade her farewell, she sank insensible from his arms to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... come swiftly in, and had a glimpse of his horrified face as he leapt forward to join the swaying, heaving mass of figures upon the floor. His coming seemed to make a difference. Sir Giles's struggles became less gigantic, became spasmodic, convulsive, futile, finally ceased altogether. He lay like a dead man, save that his features twitched horribly as if evil spirits were at work ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... terms, sir, I will accept your enmity or any man's. Judith: Mr. Dudgeon will stay to tea. Sit down: it will take a few minutes to draw by the fire. (Richard glances at him with a troubled face; then sits down with his head bent, to hide a convulsive swelling of his throat.) I was just saying to my wife, Mr. Dudgeon, that enmity— (she grasps his hand and looks imploringly at him, doing both with an intensity that checks him at once) Well, well, I mustn't ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... he raised his head and stretched his hand forward. The mother carefully held it up and caught her breath as she looked into his face. With a convulsive and powerful movement of his neck he flung his head ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... adder. When I have teased this snake a few moments with my cane, it seems to be seized with an epileptic or cataleptic fit. It throws itself upon its back, coiled nearly in the form of a figure eight, and begins a series of writhings and twistings and convulsive movements astonishing to behold. Its mouth is open and presently full of leaf-mould, its eyes are covered with the same, its head is thrown back, its white belly up; now it is under the leaves, now out, the body all the while being rapidly ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... almost at the last gasp, but the handkerchief would do the job better. Meschini kept his grip with one hand and with the other snatched up the bit of linen. He drew it tight round the neck and wrenched at the knot with his yellow teeth. There was a convulsive struggle, followed by a long interval of quiet. Then another movement, less violent this time, another and another, and then Meschini felt the body collapse in his grasp. It was over. Montevarchi was dead. Meschini drew back against the bookcases, trembling ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the advantage of being a good swimmer, and exerted himself to the utmost with his feet and one hand; the other was holding fast the young girl. Every possible effort he made to keep up his strength in order to reach the land. He heard Clara sigh, and perceived that a kind of convulsive shuddering had seized her; and he held her the tighter. A single heavy wave broke over them—the current lifted them. The water was so clear, though deep, that Joergen thought for a moment he could ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Erlking, in which the whole wild pathos of the story is compressed into one supreme moment; we see the fearful, half-gliding rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the most intense human interest; for ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... effect of air on the infant is a slight tremor about the lips and angles of the mouth, increasing to twitchings, and finally to a convulsive contraction of the lips and cheeks, the consequence of sudden cold to the nerves of the face. This spasmodic action produces a gasp, causing the air to rush through the mouth and nostrils, and enter the windpipe and upper portion of the flat and contracted lungs, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... exercise it, so engrossed was he in his own distress. By the process, however, of continually repressing the visible signs of his own emotions, he had now learnt to appreciate them in others. And in Mrs. Branscome's sudden change of colour, in little convulsive movements of her hands, and in a certain droop of eyelids veiling eyes which met the gaze frankly as a rule, he read this evening sure proofs of the constancy of her heart. This fresh knowledge affected him in two ways. On the one hand it gave breath to the selfish passion which now dominated ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... covered his brows. For my own part, I was moved beyond description; but my faculties seemed spell-bound, and when I strove to speak, my tongue cleaved to my mouth. The delirium of poor Anne continued for some time to find utterance, either by convulsive gesticulation, half-uttered expressions, and, occasionally, loud and vehement imprecations. At length, quite exhausted with her violence, which required all the efforts of her brother to subdue by positive force, she sunk into a state of insensibility. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... to be effected, the granary was fired, and the batteries and buildings of the enemy suffered much under the heavy cannonade of the besiegers. On the 30th a shell blew up the principal magazine of the city. The shock was felt for two miles, and the camp of the besiegers literally rocked above the convulsive throes of the earth. The magazine contained sixteen thousand pounds of powder. The explosion was instant; with one fierce crash and a long-continued roar, the smoke and flame gushed upwards—one of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... my deck chair for a couple of hours of real sleep. No doubt I must have been snatching short dozes when leaning against the rail for a moment in sheer exhaustion; but, honestly, I was not aware of them, except in the painful form of convulsive starts that seemed to come on me even while I walked. From about five, however, until after seven I would sleep openly under ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... defeated; but the mystic, when caught in the expansive mood, accepts this defeat itself as needful. Thus a refusal to discriminate rationally or to accept human interests as the standard of right may culminate in a convulsive surrender to passion, just as, when caught in the contractile phase, the same mysticism may ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... were inaudible to us, but the sobs and groans increased to a frightful excess. Young creatures, with features pale and distorted, fell on their knees on the pavement, and soon sunk forward on their faces; the most violent cries and shrieks followed, while from time to time a voice was heard in convulsive accents, exclaiming, "Oh Lord!" "Oh Lord Jesus!" "Help me, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... should restore possession of the island pending the arbitration, aroused bitter discussion. "Mr. Goulburn and Dr. Adams (the Englishman) immediately took fire, and Goulburn lost all control of his temper. He has always in such cases," says the Diary, "a sort of convulsive agitation about him, and the tone in which he speaks is more insulting than the language which he uses." Mr. Bayard referred to the case of the Falkland Islands. "'Why' (in a transport of rage), said Goulburn, 'in that case we sent ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... remedy to exhaust her. She was ordered from Frankfort to try the baths and mineral waters of Schwalbach, but without success. After a stay of six weeks, and persevering with exemplary patience in the treatment prescribed, she was one night seized with alarming convulsive spasms, so terrible that her family removed her next morning with all speed back to Frankfort, to the house of a family of most kind friends, where every attention and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... she fell face down upon it, burying her face in her hands. A convulsive sobbing shook her entire being. It was too hard to bear. She had tried to be brave, but her heart was breaking. Ah, if John only knew! What did she care for riches? If only he would come to comfort her ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... from the hatchet in his half raised hand to the long knife in Prentiss's belt. He swallowed with a convulsive jerk of his Adam's apple and his hatchet-bearing arm suddenly wilted. "I don't want to fight—to ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... to say, unless you remove the bonnet." She gave a convulsive twitch to the strings, and pulled them into a hard knot. "Can't you brush it off?" she ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... her feet by a convulsive movement. Her lips parted, and she gasped for breath. She could utter no sound. One by one the people about her, unconscious of what had happened, turned their heads, and inquiry and alarm became visible upon their faces at the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... third effort they heard again that suggestive "crack" as Conway struck, having finally received the ball he wanted. The crowd gave a convulsive gasp, but that was all; there was no time for anything more, so rapidly did events occur. Three runners were in motion, Conway heading down for first, Leonard making for second and O'Malley beating it along the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... and this time the announcement was even more disturbing: "Breakfast's ready!" Immediately after, as if to show that no arguing would avail, steps went clanking along the veranda, heavy at first, fainter with distance, and at last a convulsive banging on the door of some ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... sprang on his tip-toes, and, after a convulsive movement, fell forward on his face. At the same time his weapon was accidentally discharged, his missile flying wide of its mark. Indeed, Hamilton did not fire; in reality, he had resolved not to return his antagonist's ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the shout,—and starting with a bound, The dreadful Creature cleared at once a dozen yards of ground; And grasping at her mane with both my cold convulsive hands, Away we flew—away! away! across the shifting sands! My eyes were closed in utter dread of such a fearful race, But yet by certain signs I knew we went no earthly pace, For turn whichever way we might, the wind with equal ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... de Chateaubriand has rendered famous; but less to imitate that great man (for he does not wish to resemble any one) than to rumple the over-smooth front of his shirt. His cravat is no sooner put on than it is twisted by the convulsive motions of his head, which are quick and abrupt, like those of a thoroughbred horse impatient of harness, and constantly tossing up its head to rid itself of bit and bridle. His long and pointed beard is neither combed, nor perfumed, nor brushed, nor trimmed, like those ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... with Bob's gallant rescue of her, and the unfortunate accident which accompanied it. It is not necessary to repeat the frequent exclamations of horror and admiration which were elicited from the fair auditors as the various details of the occurrence were related; nor to describe the convulsive way in which May was clasped to her mother's breast, and fondled and cried over by all three of the sensitive loving women together as they listened to the story of her terrible peril. Suffice it say that, when the narrative was over, the womenkind went ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... No relation at all"—Fyne emitted with a convulsive effort this, the most awful part of the suspicions Mrs. Fyne used to impart to him piecemeal when he came down to spend his week-ends gravely with her and the children. The Fynes, in their good-natured concern ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... He ascended the second flight of stairs without casualties of any kind, until he got to the top step, close by his father's bed-room door. Here, by a dire fatality, the stifled hiccups burst beyond all control; and distinctly asserted themselves by one convulsive yelp, which betrayed Zack into a start of horror. The start shook his candlestick: the extinguisher, which lay loose in it, dropped out, hopped playfully down the stone stairs, and rolled over the landing with a loud and lively ring—a ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... depends on the wisdom of those that preside over it. With perfect wisdom on the part of the National Assembly, it had all been otherwise; but whether, in any wise, it could have been pacific, nay other than bloody and convulsive, may still ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he had seen Mrs. Burman, and that the interview was over—the leaf turned and the book shut held Victor in a silence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the more human burst of gratitude to the dying woman, who had spared him, as much as she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not called on him for any utterance of penitence. That worm-like thread of voice came up to him still from sexton-depths: it sounded a larger forgiveness without the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told Nataly; at the same time bidding her smell 'the marvellous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the hut's door: her hands fell irresolutely upon the rough surface of it and lay still for a moment. Then with the noise of a hoarse groan the door swung inward, and the light guttered in a swirl of keen morning air, casting convulsive shadows upon her lifted countenance, and was extinguished. She held out her arms in a gesture that was ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... answer, as the snoring abruptly terminated in a convulsive snort: "Ay, ay. What's the matter now, youngster? Has the ship tumbled overboard during the night, or has the skipper's cow gone aloft to roost in the main-top, that you come here disturbing me with your 'Mr ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... that time, but I know he was ever after inconsolable. In me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly lamented, but could never forget I had been the innocent cause of his misfortune, nor did he ever embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they were not on this account less ardent. When he said to me, "Jean Jacques, let us talk of your mother," my usual reply was, "Yes, father, but then, you know, we shall cry," and immediately ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... partly pique at her silencing him, and partly mere unfeeling attention to 'propriety,' which made the servant wish to check the convulsive grasp of the feet, which the master allowed. Underlings are more careful of what they suppose to be their superior's dignity than he is. Much is permitted to love and sorrow, by a prophet, which would be repressed by smaller men. 'Her soul is bitter within ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... such questions being put to him. Replying to them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly had been long absent from Russia, more than four years; that he had been sent abroad for his health; that he had suffered from some strange nervous malady—a kind of epilepsy, with convulsive spasms. His interlocutor burst out laughing several times at his answers; and more than ever, when to the question, "whether he had been ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... remembered, she had smiled and bowed absently to the men and women in the patio on the way back to her room, where she flung herself down upon the couch in a frenzy, burying her face in the cushions; her frame shaking with passionate, convulsive sobs as she writhed in paroxysms of ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... lever, and the engine buzzed merrily. The auto indulged in a series of unwholesome convulsive shivers, but it ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... acknowledgment was once more sternly denied, the long-pent agony in the woman's heart burst all barriers, overflowed every dictate of wounded pride, and with an utter abandon of genuine poignant grief, she gave way to a storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face, after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... not of a single night. At that remote distance it even seemed as if grass were already growing ever this enormous sepulchre, but it was only the tops of the buried pines. The absolute silence, the utter absence of any mark of convulsive struggle, even the lulling whimper of falling waters, gave the scene ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... battle with this good old friend, who had so suddenly been converted into an implacable foe. More than once that night did Little Tim, despite his utmost efforts, fall into a momentary sleep, from which each time he awoke with a convulsive start and sharp cry, to the obvious surprise of Bruin, who, being awakened out of a comfortable nap, looked up with a ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... impotence of the warfare of the small against the great capitalists that, during this convulsive period, the existing magnates increased their wealth and power on every hand, and their ranks were increased by the accession of new members. From the chaos of middle-class industrial institutions, one trust after another sprang full-armed, until presently there was ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... eyes glittered as she saw the receptacle of the coveted medicine. Her lips moved, producing only inarticulate sounds. Then, with a convulsive movement, she suddenly began to try and drag herself along the divan to the place where Gregorios sat. He gazed at her scornfully. She was very weak, and painfully moved on her hands and knees, the straight hair falling about her face, while her eyes gleamed and her lips moved. Occasionally she ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... instant she turned her set face to the window with a sudden convulsive movement, as if she would have called him back, but at the same moment the opposite door creaked and her brother slipped into the room. Whether a quick memory of the deserter's entrance at that door a year ago had crossed her mind, whether there was some ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... attention of the hindermost creature. It turned, and the light from the moon, coming through the half-open door of her bedroom, shone on its glittering eyes and white teeth. It sprang towards her. With one convulsive bound Tina cleared the threshold of a room immediately behind her, dashed the door to—locked it—barred it—flung a chair against it; and stood in an agony, for which no words exist. She seemed to see, all in a moment, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... merrymakers. Harkness coughed into his hand. Mrs. Budge fussed around the spacious belt of a dress for a handkerchief and, finding none, surreptitiously lifted a corner of her apron. Mrs. Lynch caught her throat with a convulsive movement as though something hurt it. Robin, watching her, slipped her hand into the mother's ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... breathing time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... crossed the rugged lineaments of the hunter amounting so nearly to anguish as to frighten his companion, while the sensation of choking became so strong in the Pathfinder that he fairly griped his throat, like one who sought physical relief for physical suffering. The convulsive manner in which his fingers worked actually struck the alarmed girl with a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... tempted to believe she enjoyed the stabbing pain. There were people who took a sensual delight in suffering, or at least she had heard that there were. She watched curiously the sort of rapturous twist of the patient's body, the convulsive grip of her hands on the rim ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... happening to glance up, saw Buck's pallid face as it rested on the arm of one of his supporters who was helping to place him on the ready cot. She gave a convulsive gasp, seized Andra by the arm and pushed forward, hardly sensible of where she was, but only that this youth from the State next to her ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... the scene of Romeo and the apothecary, who, going for the phial of poison, found it broken; not to detain the scene, he snatched, in a hurry, a pot of soft pomatum. Quick was no sooner presented with it, than he fell into a convulsive fit of laughter. But, being soon recalled to a sense of his duty by the reproofs of the audience, he came forward and made the following whimsical apology:—"Ladies and gentlemen, I could not resist the idea that struck me when the pot of pomatum, instead of the phial of poison, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... and spars, and planks, and other parts of the ship, were seen the forms of numerous human beings, some yet struggling, but struggling in vain, for life; others floating helplessly among the pieces of wreck, or clinging to them with a convulsive clutch, while many, already lifeless, were tossed to and fro in the boiling caldron, happier than those who were seen every now and then, as they were swept off, to throw up their arms, and then, with a fearful shriek of despair, to sink ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the knob of his stick and made a brief convulsive show of laughter, which had much the same genuineness as an old whist-player's chuckle over a bad hand. Still looking at the fire, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... screen convulsive excitement followed, accompanied by a certain Jack-in-the-box effect which seemed highly to amuse the little boys ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... was here, at the time of Mrs. Hamley's last illness' (the squire here checked his convulsive breathing), 'I was in the library, and Osborne came in. He said he had only come in for a book, and that I was not to mind him, so I went on reading. Presently, Roger came along the flagged garden-path just outside the window (which was open). He did not see me in the corner where ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... gentleman was still. Then when the candle of the waking housewife had burned low down to the socket, and the wasted flame on the hearth was expiring bluely in convulsive leaps, the head of the family resumed: "Jane, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the womb, of which there are two motions—natural and symptomatic. The natural motion is, when the womb attracts the male seed, or expels the infant, and the symptomatical motion, of which we are speaking, is a convulsive drawing up of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... With a convulsive shudder the thing stiffened, the jaws relaxed, dropping me to the ground, and then, careening once in mid air, the creature plunged headforemost to the road, full upon Woola, who still clung tenaciously to ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Blowers, placing his thumbs in his vest, and making a step backward. Another second, and the attendant lighted a hand-lamp,—a sharp, slapping blow was heard, a death-like shriek followed; the flesh quivered and contracted into a discoloured and inflamed pustule; the body writhed a few seconds in convulsive spasms; a low moaning followed, and that fair form hung swooning in the slings, as the keeper, in fright, cried out, at the top of his voice, to the attendant—"Lower away the fall!" As if the fiend had not yet gratified his passion, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... light brown hair hung dishevelled and in disorder about her neck and shoulders, and added to her forlorn appearance. She stretched forth her arms and pronounced the name of "Father!" but further utterance was prevented by the convulsive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... over the brow of a cliff, which, had Mysie been alone, she would have pronounced entirely impracticable. Now, however, fired with a lofty emulation, she silently followed her guide, grasping, however, at every shrub and protection with somewhat convulsive energy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... but I could see that her eyes were red with weeping, and, noticing continued convulsive sobs as she spoke, I ventured to ask ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... atmosphere. These small, scurrying fragments of cloud, the vanguard of the approaching tempest, rapidly increased in size and in number, while the twisting and writhing of the great cloud masses momentarily grew more rapid and convulsive, until it appeared as though the entire firmament were in the throes of mortal agony, the suggestion soon becoming intensified by the arising in the atmosphere of low, weird, moaning sounds, that at intervals ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... no doubt, that had been shot from its socket by the clapping to of the door, and afterwards kicked aside by the warder in his convulsive struggles. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... fated to be interrupted in her convulsive attempts at "run-and-back stitching." Winnie was hardly in the house, before Sarah Rowe came out in the garden to hunt ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... no one could have said. Was it when they touched the Caskets? Was it off Ortach? Was it when they were whirled about the shallows west of Aurigny? It was most probable that they had touched some rock there. They had struck against some hidden buttress which they had not felt in the midst of the convulsive fury of the wind which was tossing them. In tetanus who would feel ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... voyage, and evidently had misgivings that they might never again see their native country. Some of them peeped over the bulwarks from time to time, with a faint hope, perhaps, of seeing something new in that direction; but from the singular noises they made, and the convulsive motions of their bodies, I had reason to suspect they were heaving some very heavy sighs at their forlorn fate. The waiters were continually running about with cups of coffee, which served to fortify ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way; a convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the statue; and then, as if on some impulse of despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down head foremost; and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... his mother held him fast in her arms. He turned his face away and looked with hot eyes into the dark night, upon the desolate blackness of the wood and across at the will-o'-the-wisp, still pursuing its erratic course, now rising with convulsive, trembling flame, now sinking into the ground beneath, only to come up again quivering and glimmering. There was something ghostly and horrible, and withal strangely fascinating in the ceaseless dance ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... erected at the commencement of the fourth century. In Nicomedia also, under the very eyes of Diocletian, a church was built that surpassed in splendour the very palace of the Emperor. The army of Diocletian destroyed the holy building in the last grand persecution. It was the last convulsive effort of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... placed the fatal velvet on his head and rose to pronounce sentence, she started with a kind of convulsive motion, retreated a step or two back, and, lifting up her hands ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... sorry for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I tasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken with tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into the shadow ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... chair, there was a sort of choke, a gasping struggle, his head fell on Felix's shoulder, the boy in terror managed to stretch out a hand and rang the bell; but in that second felt that there was a strange convulsive ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... god, and the other is styled u briew or man, they are connected by a thin membrane. Directly the bird has been disembowelled the sacrificer throws a few grains of rice on the entrails and then watches their convulsive movements. If the portion of the entrail called u blei moves towards that portion which represents man, it is considered proof positive that the god has heard the prayer of the sacrificer, but if the movement proceeds in the opposite direction, then ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... he was trapped on the roof of a country home. Suddenly Fairbanks, disregarding the plan of retreat indicated by the author, gave a wild leap into a near-by maple, managed to catch a bough, and proceeded to the ground in a series of convulsive falls that gave ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... that if death should surprise them in the midst of their sins the eternal torments of hell would be their portion. The over- excited congregation upon this repeated their words, which naturally must have increased the fury of their convulsive attacks. When the discourse had produced its full effect the preacher changed his subject; reminded those who were suffering of the power of the Saviour, as well as of the grace of God, and represented to them ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... drawing-room had been growing empty, had remained ensconced in the depths of an arm-chair, no longer speaking, but overcome by that species of magnetic slumber which stiffened him, and fixed his eyes on something far away beyond the walls. He protruded his face, a convulsive kind of attention seemed to carry it forward; he certainly beheld something invisible, and heard ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sometimes talked aloud with great vehemence, sometimes stamped as in rage, sometimes threw down his poker, then clattered his chairs, then sat down in deep thought, and again burst out into loud vociferations; sometimes he would sigh as oppressed with misery, and sometimes shaked with convulsive laughter. When he encountered any of the family, he gave way or bowed, but rarely spoke, except that as he went up stairs ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... mine, loaded with 12,000 pounds of powder, was to be the signal of attack. At eight o'clock this mine was fired, and the effect was terrific; the ground trembled as if agitated by an earthquake, and after it had heaved up with several convulsive throes, the volcanoes burst forth. The whole of the salient angle and the stone cavalier in its rear were lifted into the air, and, after the smoke and clouds of dust had passed away, the bastion with three hundred men were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... got her sign manual on my back, and her picture here, and I 'd give all the rest of my life to see her smashed and sunk, and feel that I 'd had some hand in the doing of it. Ay, I know her. Could a man ever forget her!" continued the seaman, turning away white with passion, and shaking his fist in convulsive rage at the frigate, which made a handsome picture in spite of all. Seymour's face was ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... submissive after the first convulsive struggle was over. He knew that the men who walked on each side of him grasping his arms were more than his match singly, so he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder, and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon his arm, till the white face was turned up ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Merrill, with much presence of mind, directed his son, while his wife guarded the opening of the door with her ax, to empty the contents of a feather bed upon the fire. The dense smothering smoke filled the flue of the chimney. The two savages, suffocated with the fumes, after a few convulsive efforts to ascend fell almost insensible down upon the hearth. Mr. Merrill, seizing with his unbroken arm a billet of wood, despatched them both. But one of the Indians now remained. Peering in at the opening in the door he received a blow from the ax of Mrs. Merrill which severely wounded him. Bleeding ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... knew how much he must place to the account of the physical condition of this unfortunate girl, and did not conceal from himself that her charges were not wholly unjustifiable. So he restrained himself, and when she had gained control over the convulsive sobbing which shook her bosom, he told her his intention of leaving her and not returning until he could expect a less hostile reception. Meanwhile she might consider whether the Emperor's decision was not worthy of different ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... women in the drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long suspense, all started when the reverberation of that closing door made itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick, convulsive pressure. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... same time was born the spirit of scrutiny and curiosity. These great catastrophes were also great spectacles, impressive cataclysms. It was the North hurling itself upon the South; the Roman world changing shape; the last convulsive throes of a whole universe in the death agony. As soon as that world was dead, lo! clouds of rhetoricians, grammarians, sophists, swooped down like insects on its immense body. People saw them swarming and heard them buzzing in that seat of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... intensity of passion he continued, "But no, never shall he have her. Never. God hears me. Never. Him I will kill, destroy." He had wrought himself up into a paroxysm of uncontrollable fury, his breath came in jerking gasps, his features worked with convulsive twitchings, his jaws champed and snapped upon his words ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... upright with a savage yell and dashed the knife from him as if it had been an asp stinging him. He stood with his bloodshot eyes fastened on it, his hands spread, and his body shrunk up with horror. "Forged in hell! and for me, for me!" he screamed, as he sprang forward and seized it with a convulsive grasp. "Damned pledge of the league that binds us!" he cried, holding it up and glaring wildly on it. "And yet a voice did warn me—of what, I know not. Which of ye put it in this hand? Speak—let me look on you? D'ye hear me, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... The world made several convulsive circuits in its orbit and the bass drum performed a solo inside his head during the moment that followed. When the tumult subsided he found a pair of bright brown eyes smiling up at him and a small ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... the gun, and sank at her father's feet, hiding her face on his knees. Her father bent over her, took her head in his hands, and the nervous agitation of the last few hours brought on a convulsive fit of sobbing. His daughter passionately clasped his trembling frame, and silently held him in her arms. There they were, a broken-down existence, and one in which the warm glow of youthful life ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of a fit was in her despair. She set her bent knees against the window-frame, and a shower of glass fell between them; but she flinched not from her convulsive grasp. "Let me come back, that I may shoot myself," Carne panted, for his breath was straitened; "what is life to me after losing you?" She made no answer, but took good care not to release so fond a lover. Then he threw himself ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Flint felt a convulsive twitching at the corner of his mouth, but he had sworn to himself that he would betray no levity. Brady looked so uncomfortable that his friend pitied him. There is much which disturbs us, chiefly through the sensibility ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... no encouragement yit, Uncle Jase?" she whispered once when he came to the bedside, with a convulsive catching at her throat, though her eyes were dry and hot, and the old man, too ruggedly honest to soften the edge of fact ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... instantaneous glimpse of a foreshortened tawny-hided black-spotted form, with a rounded head and short ears, standing at the very edge of the water, staring steadfastly toward the raft. Then, as the vision vanished, a snarling sound, half roar, half shriek, met his ears, followed by a few convulsive splashes— then stillness. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... away!" cried the prisoner in a tense voice. "Paul, Paul, my own little Paul!" The woman's breath came and went in gusts, and her child cried from the convulsive ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... crouching in the doorway, his gaze fixed upon the woman; he did not seem even to notice Helen's outburst, so lost was all his soul in the other sight. Fie saw that the stranger's convulsive efforts were weakening, and he staggered forward with a cry, and flung himself forward down on his knees beside her. "Mary, Mary!" he called; but she did not heed him, tho he clasped her hands and shook her, gazing into her face imploringly. ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... no longer of anything, he paused no longer at anything, he saw nothing but this fair young girl whom he coveted, who was alone with him, her hand in his, sitting by his fire-side, in the silence and the mystery of the night. His clasp became convulsive. Under the fire of his burning gaze Suzanne raised her head, and a second time fell back in dismay. She tried to release her imprisoned hand, but he bent over it, and pressed it to ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... appeared on the crest of a wave a little to the right. At this moment the moon shone out brightly! and I saw that it was Morton, swimming toward us. He reached the boat panting and out of breath, and catching hold near me with an almost convulsive effort, remained some minutes without being able to speak a word. Arthur, who had observed Max's struggles to get into the yawl, now swam round to where Morton and I were hanging on, and taking hold also, his additional weight depressed the gunwale ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... ungrateful fool. I know what I think of myself and of you, and if ever I am anything but a drunkard, why—Never mind, only may the God in whom you trust bless you forever." And this warm-hearted, whole-souled, hot-brained, sorely-tempted young man wrung his friend's hand with an almost convulsive grasp, ...
— Three People • Pansy
... adieu, and the final petition for public acknowledgment was once more sternly denied, the long-pent agony in the woman's heart burst all barriers, overflowed every dictate of wounded pride, and with an utter abandon of genuine poignant grief, she gave way to a storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face, after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed her. There in the temple of Art, where critical eyes were bent searchingly upon her, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... much for my weary, suffering heart; I seized both her hands in mine and cried over them, with my head in her lap. My weeping grew more violent, until at last it rose to a desperate, convulsive sobbing, which I could no longer control, and which thoroughly alarmed Susanna; for she hushed me, called me by my name, and kissed me like a child, to quiet me. I felt such a deep need of having my cry out, that it ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... let him in! Mamma! Don't let him in!" moaned the terrified child upon her breast, clinging to her and weighing her down, and grasping her neck and arm with convulsive strength. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... then one darts its long bayonet-like beak into the water, invariably drawing it out with a fish between the mandibles; this, after a short convulsive struggle, and a flutter or two of its tail fins, disappearing down the crane's ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... in the room now; only from a far distant rolls of ceaseless thunder sent their angry echo through the oppressive air. Caligula was staring at the girl as he would on some unearthly shape. Gasping he had fallen back a few steps, the convulsive twitching of his fingers ceased, his mouth closed with a snap, and great yellow patches appeared ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of masts, and spars, and planks, and other parts of the ship, were seen the forms of numerous human beings, some yet struggling, but struggling in vain, for life; others floating helplessly among the pieces of wreck, or clinging to them with a convulsive clutch, while many, already lifeless, were tossed to and fro in the boiling caldron, happier than those who were seen every now and then, as they were swept off, to throw up their arms, and then, with a fearful shriek of despair, to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... soon starting from this state of prostration, she rolled herself upon the floor, rent her garments, covered her beautiful dishevelled hair with ashes, tore her bosom and cheeks with her nails amid convulsive sobs, and abandoned herself to all the excesses of Oriental grief, the more violently that she had been forced so long to contain her indignation, shame, pangs of wounded dignity, and all the agony that convulsed her soul, for the pride of ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... flew down the staircase. Diana approached the window trembling, and with a convulsive shudder, like the bird fascinated by the serpent of the Antilles. She saw the duke on horseback, and the light of the torches held by the gendarmes fell on ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... rudimentary survivals of what was once an integral part of every college. Making dead languages optional was the last convulsive ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... in the Rue Quincampoix. This new issue at five thousand francs caused the rates in the Rue Quincampoix to diminish: in an instant they were below five thousand francs—even as low as four thousand—so blind were these movements, and, so to speak, convulsive, during this period of feverish excitement. There was no possible reason for selling in one place for four thousand francs that for which they paid five thousand at another. But this phenomenon lasted only a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... are in this agitated and convulsive painting! The clouds and the garments whirl, the gestures are rapid, the attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every lip, and a great mute cry seems to rise throughout this entire temple and throughout this entire ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the question, and it seemed to come from the figure of Christ, "Will you obey? Will you leave off sin?" I answered in the affirmative as well as I could, for the convulsive sobs that shook my frame almost stopped my utterance. I now know that when the priest left me, he placed himself, or an assistant, behind a curtain close to the images, and it was his voice that I heard. But I was then too young to detect their ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... forms of disease to the operation of the Devil. We have references to many cases, but only in exceptional instances are the details given. Oliver Heywood, one of the eminent Dissenters of northern England, fasted and prayed with his co-workers over the convulsive and hysterical boys and girls in the West Riding. Nathan Dodgson was left after long fastings in "a very sensible melting frame,"[2] but the troubles returned and led, as we shall see in another connection, to very tragic results. The Puritan clergymen do not seem, however, to have ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... (6/46. Mr. W.J. Moore gives a full account of the Ground Tumblers of India ('Indian Medical Gazette' January and February 1873), and says the pricking the base of the brain, and giving hydrocyanic acid, together with strychnine, to an ordinary pigeon, brings on convulsive movements exactly like those of a Tumbler. One pigeon, the brain of which had been pricked, completely recovered, and ever afterwards occasionally made somersaults.) and before the year 1600 pigeons remarkable ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... There was a convulsive, shrill gasp of laughter, which would have instantly developed into an hysterical roar, had not the young Prince, with quick, tactful disregard of British convention, sprung to his feet, and with one hand holding champagne glass, and the other uplifted, commanded silence. So did the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... man" came all the ulcers that festered in the social body. He saw the great economic machine grinding on day and night, the mighty forces rushing to their culmination. He saw the toiling millions pressed deeper and deeper into the mire; he saw their blind, convulsive struggles for deliverance; he saw over them the gigantic slave-driver with his thousand-lashed whip—the capitalist state, class-owned class-administered—backed by the capitalist church and the capitalist press and capitalist "public sentiment". So the hopes of the people went down in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... so more by slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society—rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners, without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has provided ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... couch, and had not passed urine spontaneously for sixteen years. Among other symptoms, I find noted 'awful suffering in spine, head, and eyes,' requiring the use of chloral and morphia in large doses. 'For many years she has had convulsive attacks of two distinct types, which are obviously of the character of hystero-epilepsy.' The following are the brief notes of the condition in which I found her, which I made in my case-book on the day of my first visit. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... groping way, to the bed, and stooped over it. Nearly at the same moment there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek, accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the arms drumming on the bed, and then another blow—and silence. The diabolical surgery was over. There came a little tapping ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... With pangs like these the soul and body part! And thus, but oh, with far less agony, The poor departing wretch still grasps at being, Thus clings to life, thus dreads the dark unknown, Thus struggles to the last to keep his hold; And when the dire convulsive groan of death Dislodges the sad spirit—thus it stays, And fondly hovers o'er the form it lov'd. Once and no ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... she cried, in tremulous tones through her chattering teeth and white, trembling lips. All her gay exultant courage had been drenched and chilled out of her. She tried to check his stride with a loose convulsive clutch at the reins as she peered about with blinded eyes for a place of shelter. The horse shook his head with angry impatience, neighed again, clasped the bit in his strong teeth, stretched his neck still further and covered ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... on his breast, and he stumbled on the brink of the chasm as before, the thievish hands went once more, quick and busy, to his breast. He made a convulsive attempt to cry "No!" desperately rolled himself over into the gulf; and sank away from his enemy's touch, like a phantom ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... approached my own home. I had left Olivia at an inn five miles away, intending to prepare my family for her reception. To my amazement, I saw the house bursting out into a blaze of fire, and every aperture red with conflagration! I gave a loud convulsive outcry, which alarmed my son, and all my family ran out, wild with apprehension. Our neighbours came running to our assistance; but the flames had taken too strong a hold to be extinguished, and all the neighbours could do was to stand spectators of the calamity. They brought us clothes and furnished ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... It was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive agony; and then congealed forever in ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... various scenes of your public life, so long and so successfully devoted to the most arduous services, civil and military; as well during the struggles of the American revolution, as the convulsive periods of a recent date, we can not look forward to your retirement without our warmest affections, and most anxious regards, accompanying you; and without mingling with our fellow citizens at large, in the sincerest wishes for ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... of cold water from a neighboring spring dashed into her upturned face; a continued chafing of the pure white soft hands; then there was a convulsive twitching of the features, a low moan, and the eyes opened and darted a glance of affright into the face of the ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... of a horse's hoofs, and she started and made a convulsive effort to crawl to one side. She was nearer fainting than she had ever been in ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... young, prudent to let them wear out their ill-humour, as some people do, in total neglect. Children, when they are left to weep in solitude, often continue in wo for a considerable length of time, until they quite forget the original cause of complaint, and they continue their convulsive sobs, and whining note of distress, purely ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Narcisse's repentance and salvation might not be swept away by violence from without, renewing bitterness within. Not till towards morning was he called back. The hard, lingering death struggle had spent itself, and slow convulsive gasps showed that life was nearly gone; but the satanic sneer had passed away, and a hand held out, a breathing like the word 'pardon' seemed to be half uttered, and was answered from the bottom of Berenger's kind and pitying heart. Another quarter of an hour, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these great convulsive throes of the planet we have many ancient legendary accounts. The Biblical accounts, and the irrefutable testimony of the globe itself, as recorded in the veined strata which have held their record for ages inviolably concealed, until man should finally bring to the unmasking of her secrets ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... her lips, and Doris burst into convulsive tears. Then relaxing the tension of these many weary years, the bearer of good tidings folded his arms about the slight form for a moment as he led her to her mother. Not yet, even, would he give full rein to his hopes. He might fail. There was inflammation ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... streaked with paint, their lips were greasy with traces of the dish, the air of the place was reeking from their breaths. My eyes were slower than Alicia's, and so I did not distinguish our quarry at first, although a slow sigh at my ear and a convulsive clutch at my arm told ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... and painful pause, in which the crackling of the brand, and the heavy breathing of the old man were the only sounds to break the silence. Pale like a marble image stood she before him; no word of excuse, no prayer for forgiveness escaped her; only a convulsive quivering of the lips betrayed the life that struggled within her. With every moment the hope died in Bjarne's bosom. His visage was fearful to behold. Terror and fierce indomitable hatred had grimly distorted his features, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... The Queen wept, concluding that royal tears were irresistible; but he remained unmoved, and would grant nothing but a frigate to convoy her own frigates[8] to Trieste. He told her Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough. The Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying there to nurse her; he does not intend going home till he has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter each other all day long." It is only fair to say that there ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... disappeared in a shallow gully, and realized that it was a serow. A few seconds later it reappeared, running directly away from me along the upper edge of the gorge. I fired and the animal dropped, gave a convulsive twist, rolled over, and plunged into ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... inherited results of fruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of the older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be permanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wondering children to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a little brighter ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... child's smile, turned away. He did not look again, although he felt that the blue eyes with a look of insistent admiration were steadfastly upon his face. The country through which the car was now passing was of a strange, convulsive character. It was torn alike by nature and by man. Storms and winds had battered at the clayey soil, spade and shovel had upturned it. It was honey-combed and upheaved. There were roughly shelving hills ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birth-mark upon the whiteness of her cheek, that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... each other—my lover and I—crushed, unable to utter a word. I sank into an armchair, and I felt a desire, a vague, powerful desire, to flee, to go out into the night, and to disappear forever. Then convulsive sobs rose in my throat, and I wept, shaken with spasms, my heart breaking, all my nerves writhing with the horrible sensation of an irreparable, misfortune, and with that dreadful sense of shame which, in such moments as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... passionate energy of Kean's acting on Byron's mind, that, once, in seeing him play "Sir Giles Overreach," he was so affected as to be seized with a sort of convulsive fit. Some years later, in Italy, when the representation of Alfieri's tragedy of 'Mirra' had agitated him in the same violent manner, he compared the two instances as the only ones in his life when "any thing under reality" had been able to move him ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... time was permitted to France between two convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy played at Paris ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive shadows marred two dogged faces. "I think it best not to recall that boy and girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame and Queen, the merit of the business I have in hand is questionable. It is you who have set all England by the ears, and I am guiding ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... dolorous motions of her head bespeaking her grievous malady. A tall girl afflicted with chorea—St. Vitus's dance—was dancing with every limb, without a pause, the left side of her face being continually distorted by sudden, convulsive grimaces. A younger one, who followed, gave vent to a bark, a kind of plaintive animal cry, each time that the tic douloureux which was torturing her twisted her mouth and her right cheek, which she seemed to throw forward. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... as a fencer's thrust, the destroyer was upon him, wound round him, entangled, enfolded, compressed him, all the while cunningly avoiding the convulsive kicks of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Godber?" said he commanding his emotions: but at that instant Sir Charles Davenant entered the room; and he turned to him with a convulsive eagerness.— ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... and imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took up fifty packets each containing ten thousand francs in bank-notes, and held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill accepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ran through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they fell on the forged signature ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... emotion stirs within him,—more Than mere compassion ever waked before; Unconsciously he opes his arms while she Springs forward as with life's last energy, But, swooning in that one convulsive bound, Sinks ere she reach his arms upon the ground;— Her veil falls off—her faint hands clasp his knees— 'Tis she herself!—it is ZELICA he sees! But, ah, so pale, so changed—none but a lover Could in that wreck of beauty's shrine discover The once adorned divinity—even ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... unknown evil powers, of demons and spirits, and of being persecuted and possessed by the devil. Simultaneously they complain about all sorts of bodily sensations. In isolated cases one may observe convulsive twitchings of the voluntary and involuntary musculature. Finally severe motor excitements set in. The patient becomes noisy, screams, runs aimlessly about, destroys and ruins everything that comes his way. With this the disease has reached its height. At this stage consciousness is entirely ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... her lips move. The countryman started, shuddered, and by a clumsy, convulsive motion of his arms, upset his quart. He rubbed his eyes. Before he had voiced his emotions ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... settles all; they'll find no helper there, And if—without a head—the body should rebel, Convulsive throes I mock, and nerveless fury quell. Whate'er ensues the Emperor must approve, I shall have done my part, and win his love. ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... up with a sort of convulsive shudder, and at the same time—you may laugh if you like—the most horrible feeling came over me. I didn't see anything, but I just felt that there was something or someone in the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his hands over his face, and the bed was shaking with his convulsive efforts to repress his strong emotion. Fear had impelled him to withstand his growing conviction that his long-lost child had been restored to him—fear of the consequences of a mistake, both to himself, and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... A convulsive effort at the oars told how willing the men were to obey, but the strength of the strong men was gone. 10 One of the poor fellows washed us twice in recovering his oar and then gave out, and the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... they saw the man lying with his face against the marble of the mantel-piece. He gave a convulsive movement. His ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... prostrate gentleman was still. Then when the candle of the waking housewife had burned low down to the socket, and the wasted flame on the hearth was expiring bluely in convulsive leaps, the head of the family resumed: "Jane, who said anything ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... indeed, the clinging arms would give me a convulsive hug which set my blood jumping, but that was only when Gray Robin stumbled, and it meant nothing more than a fear of falling overboard on her part, and I ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... his moans by putting her handkerchief to his mouth; unhappily he saw me; his face became even more distorted, a convulsive cry rent the air, and he gave me a dreadful look as ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... Barrett with a convulsive shudder. The most deadly error mortal man can make, with the exception of calling a school a college, is to call ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Barker at the drug store has promised to fumigate everything after we are gone, so we won't scatter any germs in our wake." Carol spoke hurriedly, her heart swelling with pity as she saw the sudden convulsive clutching of David's hands beneath the covers. "Mr. Daniels has a list of 'who bought what,' and will see that everything is delivered in good shape. Only, we take the money ourselves in advance. Now look at this chair, ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... eyes went from the hatchet in his half raised hand to the long knife in Prentiss's belt. He swallowed with a convulsive jerk of his Adam's apple and his hatchet-bearing arm suddenly wilted. "I don't want ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... of noonday made him blink. On reaching the pavement he recoiled with a convulsive movement: the jailors ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... mournful procession that Lady Bude ran out to meet. She passed Mr. Macrae, whose face was set with an expression of deadly rage, and looked for Bude. He was not there, a gillie told her what they knew, and, with a convulsive sob, she followed Mr. Macrae ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... of the letter wrung some tears from Faith's eyes, but afterwards the effect of the whole was to shake her. She sat down on the couch with the letter fast in her hand, and hid her head; yet no weeping, only convulsive breaths and a straitened breast. Faith was wonderful glad of that letter! but the meeting of two tides is just hard to bear; and it wakened everything as well as gladness. However, in its time, that struggle was over too; and she went down to Mrs. Derrick ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and, detecting a slight movement beside the briars, she swooped towards the ditch, grasped one of the "urchins" in her claws, and rose into the air. Her quarry, feeling the sudden grip of the sharp talons, made a desperate, convulsive movement, and the owl found, to her astonishment, that her grasp had shifted, and that she was holding, apparently, a hard bunch of thorns. Nevertheless, she tightened her grasp; but an unendurable twitch of pain, as the spines entered ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... saved the situation and its life at the same time. Mary-'Gusta was near the edge of the pine grove and Con was close at her heels. David gave one more convulsive, desperate wriggle, slid from the girl's arms and disappeared through the pines like ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at the outset, the French Revolution was now guided by demagogues and adventurers, whose only hope of keeping erect lay in constant and convulsive efforts forwards. Worst symptom of all, its armies already bade fair to play the part of the Praetorians of the later Roman Empire. Nothing is more singular at this time than the fear of the troops. Amidst ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of truth in it," she answered angrily; "Patrick Henry would never do such a cowardly thing." "But this is Patrick Henry," said Mr. Tyler, pointing to him. The old woman was amazed; but after some reflection, and with a convulsive twitch or two at her apron string, she said, "Well, then, if that's Patrick Henry, it must be all right. Come in, and ye shall have the best I ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... me. At that distance, the Dutchman could hit a half-crown; I therefore made sure of bagging. The bank was about four feet above the water; thus the angle was favourable, and I aimed just behind the eye. Almost as I touched the trigger, the crocodile gave a convulsive start, and turning slowly on its back, it stretched its four legs above the surface, straining every muscle; it then remained motionless in this position in water ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... and, with every fathom of descent, the downward motion grew increasingly slower. The wreck had sunk to a depth of perhaps twenty or five-and-twenty fathoms, when the absorbed spectators in the Flying Fish's pilot-house were startled by observing a sudden convulsive motion in the body of the female. Her hands were unclasped, her arms were flung wildly out above her head, and her body was slowly straightened out. At the same moment the space between her and the sinking wreck widened; the vessel was ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... would you, would you? Would you buy me for fifty thousand francs as De Griers did?" she gasped between her convulsive sobs. ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the constancy of glowing tenderness with which, in all his wanderings, woes, and glory, he cherished the love of his sister Augusta, Mrs. Leigh. She remained unalterably attached to him through the dreadful storm of unpopularity which drove him out of England. With what convulsive gratitude he appreciated her fond fidelity, he has expressed with that passionate richness of power which no other could ever equal. Four of his most splendid poems were composed for her and addressed to her. In the one beginning, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the fallen patriarch. I placed my hand upon his heart, but there was no answering throb. He was indeed dead, and my whole frame was shaken with convulsive grief. ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... was hoarse and strained. He crumpled the letter in a convulsive grasp—"Matter? I'm ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... there, she was instantly relieved from her pain by the last sad resource, the fatal unerring ball, which, when directed by a skilful hand, produces instantaneous death, without a groan, or scarcely a convulsive struggle. I dropped a tear when she had breathed her last; consoled only by the reflection, that my life had been spared by a merciful and beneficent Creator; for had the poor animal fallen, at the swift pace she was going, my destruction ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... was trapped on the roof of a country home. Suddenly Fairbanks, disregarding the plan of retreat indicated by the author, gave a wild leap into a near-by maple, managed to catch a bough, and proceeded to the ground in a series of convulsive falls ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... it did. The houses and farms which the wretches had set on fire were surrounded with dead bodies, for those who went near had not the power to escape the flames which reached them; and soon others were seen, with a convulsive laugh rushing voluntarily into the midst of the burning, so that they ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... from it. Round about were all kinds of strange utensils. Good God! as my old father bent down over the fire how different he looked! His gentle and venerable features seemed to be drawn up by some dreadful convulsive pain into an ugly, repulsive Satanic mask. He looked like Coppelius. Coppelius plied the red-hot tongs and drew bright glowing masses out of the thick smoke and began assiduously to hammer them. I fancied that there were men's faces visible ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... materialized. A man climbing in! His weapon spat. There was a tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had shot at Carter: struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the floor; his convulsive movement when he was hit hurled him to the ceiling. His body struck; twitched; bounced back and sank inert on the floor grid almost ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... A., who will be mentioned later, but had never consented to take part in the manifestations, which she regarded with great repugnance. While sitting with us en petit comite, she used sometimes to be seized with a convulsive and involuntary effort of her hand to write, but she always refused to submit to the influence. Fanny in her normal state showed no indications of mediumistic powers, nor ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... destinies. He comes; behold the god!" Thus while she said, (And shiv'ring at the sacred entry stay'd,) Her color chang'd; her face was not the same, And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possess'd Her trembling limbs, and heav'd her lab'ring breast. Greater than humankind she seem'd to look, And with an accent more than mortal spoke. Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll; When all the god came rushing on ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... as the Elmoran was about to turn, the great Zulu made a spring, and in the growing light we could see his long lean hands close round the Masai's throat. Then followed a convulsive twining of the two dark bodies, and in another second I saw the Masai's head bent back, and heard a sharp crack, something like that of a dry twig snapping, and he fell down upon the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... either of anger or of shame. On the countenances of others, still more varied traits have rippled, within a much briefer period of time. May not these be due to some physiological revolutions, general or convulsive, which are in progress in the particular orb, and which, by affecting the constitution of its atmosphere, compel the absorption or promote the transmission of particular rays? The supposition appears by no means improbable, especially if we call to mind the hydrogen volcanoes which ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face,—so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them,—how heart-breaking when there is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... itself sooner than she anticipated. Next afternoon she strolled into her aunt's drawing room, and her heart gave a queer little convulsive jump when she found Lady Fermanagh engaged in ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... cold with the chill of mortal congestion; but the fever rages all the more fiercely about the vital parts, where the maddened energies of the whole system are concentrated in the last desperate struggle for life. Possibly there may be a little reaction here and there, or even a violent convulsive effort of tremendous energy; an incursion may be made into Kentucky, or some temporary success achieved in other quarters; but the revival will be deceptive and evanescent, and the fitful return of life to the limbs will only serve to complete ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Jerusalem, which in a manner organized the strength of Europe for its defence, blend the detail of manners, institutions, and military establishments, with the otherwise too frequent narratives of battles and sieges. Next come the vast and almost convulsive efforts of the Orientals to expel the Christians from their shores; the long wars and slow degrees by which the monarchy of Palestine was abridged, and at last its strength broken by the victorious sword of Saladin, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... there, pallid, motionless, gazing into the vast blank space of the unknown future; only the convulsive workings of his face betrayed the intense agitation of his mind. It was the psychological crisis in the life of a man who too late becomes aware of having destroyed his better self, of having annihilated all those hopes which on entering life had floated before his vision in ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... of fantastic chimney-pots and black rounds of trees leaped into being between us and the sudden expansion of a fan of yellow flame. A bomb! We just felt, but hardly heard, the shock of it. A furious succession of such bursts of light followed, a convulsive opening and shutting of night. We saw that when midnight is cleft asunder it has ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... furious passions of the Celtic race glittered savagely in his eyes, and changed to a grey horrid pallor the healthy colour that was natural to his face. "Oh, my temper, my temper!" he cried, as Iris shrank from him. "She hates me now, and no wonder." He staggered away from her, and burst into a convulsive fit of crying, dreadful to hear. Compassion, divine compassion, mastered the earthlier emotion of terror in the great heart of the woman who loved him. She followed him, and laid her hand caressingly on his shoulder. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... her hand tightened upon my shoulder. Something was moving in the shadow of the tool-house. I saw a dark, creeping figure which crawled round the corner and squatted in front of the door. Seizing my pistol, I was rushing out, when my wife threw her arms round me and held me with convulsive strength. I tried to throw her off, but she clung to me most desperately. At last I got clear, but by the time I had opened the door and reached the house the creature was gone. He had left a trace of his presence, however, for ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well known to all Dresden musicians. This circumstance alone was sufficient to make me take a great interest in him; but the point about him which attracted me more than anything was the manner in which he listened to the various items in the programme: he used to give peculiar, convulsive nods of his head, and blow out his cheeks as though with sighs. All this I regarded as a sign of spiritual ecstasy. I noticed, moreover, that he was quite alone, that he belonged to no party, and paid no attention to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of wails arose. The guards shrank and cowered at the suggestion. Their terror was more than panicky, it was even hysterical. They shook with convulsive jerks of fear, as though they had ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... cow or the camel, for camels hate elephants as horses hate camels until they get used to them. The cow bolted to the right as quickly as it could, which was not very fast, and the camel bolted to the left with such convulsive bounds that we were nearly thrown off its back. However, being an equable brute, it soon recovered its balance, and we got back to the track ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... as wheat, an hour in which he might have fared ill had the woman who loved him not stood by with her new strength. But it passed in victory, and when at last he laid his head down upon the top of the gate where they stood and convulsive sobs shook his frame, she knew that ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... me, in consequence of such terror, I was seized with convulsive spasms, and for several days, as I now hear, the doctors were very uneasy, and even feared for my reason. But thanks to the strength of my constitution, I am now almost myself again, and nothing would remain of this cruel agitation if, by a singular ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... began to cry. Catching the child up to her breast, she stilled her by convulsive caresses. Clasping her tight in her arms, she walked a few steps towards Alessandro, who, seeing her, made an imperative gesture to her to return. Sick at heart, she went back to the veranda and sat down ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... came to her, and not a word was spoken. If they had been strong enough they would have carried us to camp upon their shoulders. As it was they stopped two or three times, and turned as if to speak, but there was too much feeling for words, convulsive ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... to me to say, in his case: "You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Before it sat an elegantly-dressed woman, whose hair, artistically arranged, was of the darkest shade of brown—almost black. Her arms were crossed upon the table, her face was buried in them, and from her came a succession of convulsive sobs, that indicated she was in ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... pallor was spreading over it. Her head had fallen back against the chair. I had never seen her look so death-like in any of her illnesses, and I sprang to my feet in terror. She stopped me by a slight convulsive pressure of her hand, as I was about to unfasten her brooch and open her dress ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... after a sinking in which she seemed dying, she strove to let us know that she knew it by trying to speak the word 'death.' Divining her thought, I said, 'Is it death?' Then in a kind of convulsive outburst came, 'Death, death!' Thinking that she was right, that it was indeed to her death begun, of what could die, thus dating her life immortal, I said, 'No, oh no! not death, but life immortal.' She instantly ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... told him your intent, Replying, what he knew of that affair Would give no satisfaction to the king; Then, falling on his knees, begged, as for life, To be dismissed from court: He trembled too, As if convulsive death had seized upon him, And stammered in his abrupt prayer so wildly, That had he been the murderer of Laius, Guilt and distraction could not ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... hand of God! O lamp of peace! O promise of my soul!— Though weak, and tossed, and ill at ease, Amid the roar of smiting seas, The ship's convulsive roll, I own, with love and tender awe, Yon perfect type ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... was moving at the pace proper to feeding time, and, judging by its deliberate sluggishness, it seemed to be inviting death. When the short pitter-patter of the terriers' feet sounded on the grass, Bunny made a clumsy attempt to quicken his pace; the leading dog plunged at him, and by a convulsive effort the rabbit managed to swirl round and get clear. Then the second dog shot in; then came one or two quick, nervous jerks from side to side; then the beaten creature faltered, and was instantly seized and swung into the air. A good wild rabbit would have been half-way ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... With her own peculiar grace, Josephine advanced to the seat provided for her. Leaning her pale forehead upon her hand, she listened with the calmness of stupor to the reading of the act of separation. The convulsive sobbings of Hortense, mingled with the subdued and mournful tones of the reader's voice, added to the tragic impressiveness of the scene. Eugene, pale and trembling, stepped forward and took a position by the side of his adored mother, to give her ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... last desperate effort of a drowning man, uttered a third cry, and felt himself sinking, as if the fatal cannon shot were again tied to his feet. The water passed over his head, and the sky turned gray. A convulsive movement again brought him to the surface. He felt himself seized by the hair, then he saw and heard nothing. He ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... There was a good deal of lively talk until the race became too exciting. Then many fell silent, until, as the boats neared the line, and still more as they crossed it, the shouts burst forth which showed how a cramp of attention finds its natural relief in a fit of convulsive exclamation. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Pilot on his own, pressing it with a convulsive grasp, as he replied, in a voice, if possible, even more desperately calm ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one of the smaller pages, a boy of twelve or thirteen, by name Robin Ingoldsby, crossed the court. He had been crying; his face was red and blubbered, and his body was still shaken with convulsive sniffs. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... silence for some time. Suddenly the fisherman put out his hand, seized Donal's with a convulsive grasp, was possibly reassured by the strength with which Donal's responded, turned, and without a word ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... The convulsive struggle within the breastwork was frightful; for a few moments the Blackfeet fought and yelled like pent-up tigers; but the butchery was complete, and the mangled bodies lay piled together under the precipice. Not a Blackfoot ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... erected, from which some one was delivering an oration or address of some sort. He stood beside a long table, upon which lay something which I could not clearly distinguish, except that it seemed alive, and moved, or rather writhed with convulsive twitchings, as if trying to get free of the bonds which confined it. Round the stage in front were a number of seats occupied by listeners, many of whom were women, whose interest seemed to be very great, some of them being furnished with note-books; while a great unsettled crowd coming ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... that precious word "dear" to her again to-day? Would he take her by the hand and lead her sometimes, or was that a special gentleness because he knew she had suffered from her sister's words? She clasped her hands with a quick, convulsive gesture over her heart and looking back to the sweet face in the glass, said softly, "Oh, I love him, love him! And it cannot be wrong, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... doctor, fearing that it might roll over him, and finding his seat not the most comfortable in the world, leaped off; then running some way ahead, he again fired into the creature's mouth. The last shot proved an effectual quietus to the saurian, which, after making a few convulsive struggles, rolled ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
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