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More "Distressing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no easy thing to see a man meet death, but under these circumstances it was particularly distressing. The Chief had been a man of a strong constitution particularly adapted to the health-racking work of a rubber-hunter. He it was who with his forest-wisdom had planned all our moves, and had mapped our course through ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... James went on after a moment, "this is a distressing story altogether, and the best thing we can do is to hold our tongues about it. My father was generous enough not to divorce your mother when she confessed her fall to him; he only demanded that the man who had led her astray should leave the country at once; and, as you know, he went to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... contains no spell to kindle the feelings of man, to make the heart beat with anxiety, and to produce activity and perseverance. The reason is not merely that men are in want of leisure, and are sustained in a distressing continuance of exertion, by their duties towards those dependent on them. They have their seasons of relaxation, they turn for a time from their ordinary pursuits; still religion does not attract them, they find nothing of comfort or satisfaction in it. For a time they allow themselves ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Britannic Gentlemen, both on that distressing Monday and the day following, had the honor to dine with the King: who seemed in exuberant spirits; cutting and bantering to right and left; upon the Court of Vienna, among other topics, in a way which I Robinson "will not repeat to your ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is the admission I was going to make? Well, I will now tell you, right off. I fell in love. Quite hopelessly, desperately in love. It was very annoying and distressing, for had I not, up to then, loved so many that I loved no one in particular, at any rate, except for short periods of time. What was coming over me, I wondered? Oh, but, whatever it was, it was indeed sweet, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... exist, but only the long, lax, and retractable prepuce, that is considered a perfectly physiological condition, the prepuce is liable to cause very distressing and complicating annoyances during the progress of other diseases. The writer has noticed that cases with a thick, leathery, and redundant prepuce, even when perfectly retractable, are more liable to require the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Stoicism that is such a painful feature of the plays of Seneca; nor, however perverse and affected he may be in diction, do we ever feel that his Stoicism is in some respects no better than a moral pose, a distressing feeling that sometimes afflicts as we read Seneca's letters or consolatory treatises. He speaks straight from the heart. His faults are more often the faults of the school of philosophy than of the schools of rhetoric. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... spoilt your visit to Paris; and speaking as a man who has children himself, I am sure it has not been well, either for Miss Daisy or for your son, to have become absorbed, as they could hardly help becoming, in this distressing business." ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer, and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited by the smell of blood is most distressing ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a poor showing, and there were several whispers that ran around the courtroom, but poor Jean's rather distressing manner was improved when Mr. Stryker took him in hand to question him. The prosecutor, observing that the man was more frightened than anything else, soon put him at his ease, and then the witness told a clear and connected story. He admitted frankly ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... in assent, and so ended one of the most painful and distressing scenes it has ever been my fate ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "for one season there were thirty thousand terns killed in one locality alone. And at Cape Cod, and up along the shore near where I lived, they are slain by thousands every season and shipped to New York. Oh, I can't tell you how distressing it used to be to hear the report of the guns day after day and know that every piercing sound was the sign that more innocent lives were being taken. I used to cover up my ears and try not to hear them. It ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... commonly termed a squaw (not a disrespectful word for a lady it is hoped). Bird has been in the Nest at Amsterdam, in the Bowery at New York, and in the accident ward at Vienna, and has witnessed many strange things and distressing circumstances, and has endured interviewers and Irish Home Rulers in America without a shudder, and has perhaps been asked more questions about chess than any man living, because he good naturedly always answers them, and has furnished matter enough ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... is quite possible that humor ought not to be defined. It may be one of those intangible substances, like love and beauty, that are indefinable. It is quite probable that humor should not be explained. It would be distressing, as some one pointed out, to discover that American humor is based on American dyspepsia. Yet the philosophers themselves have endeavored to explain it. Hazlitt held that to understand the ludicrous, we must first know what the serious is. And to apprehend the serious, what better course could be ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... senate, and in all ways showed an intention of working for the people. He was exceedingly active in works of public benefit, building roads and bridges, erecting mile-stones along the principal routes, extending to the Italians the right to vote, and alleviating the distressing poverty of the lower orders by directing that grain should be sold to them at low rates. The laws under which he accomplished these beneficent changes are known, from the family to which the Gracchi belonged, as the Sempronian Laws. In carrying out the necessary ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a thousand years by Shah Abbas, the wisest and most powerful of his successors. [84] His ambition was fired by the hope of launching a Persian navy from the Phasis, of commanding the trade and navigation of the Euxine Sea, of desolating the coast of Pontus and Bithynia, of distressing, perhaps of attacking, Constantinople, and of persuading the Barbarians of Europe to second his arms and counsels against ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... swarmed with men, women, and children, while every nook and corner not thus occupied was filled with pigs, fowls, sheep, or dogs; and the thick smoke, or, as the people emphatically call it, 'cruel steam,' is most distressing to the eyesight, which suffers greatly ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... experienced a sharp pang of uneasiness and pain, for Alice was looking particularly worn and thin and yellow; and when Bertha returned, flushed with her haste, the contrast between them was quite as distressing as that between the withered, dying rose and the opening, fragrant bud. The young man's heart rose to his throat. "We have waited too long," he thought, and resolved to again urge upon her a new treatment which ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... speak to me. This was none other than the tall emaciated-looking negress who, on the day of our arrival, had embraced me and my nurse with such irresistible zeal. She appeared very ill to-day, and presently unfolded to me a most distressing history of bodily afflictions. She was the mother of a very large family, and complained to me that, what with child-bearing and hard field labour, her back was almost broken in two. With an almost savage vehemence of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... out of the harbor, but fourteen hours later was captured in the Gulf Stream by the Federal cruiser Santiago-de-Cuba. He was taken to Point Lookout prison, where he spent four months of dreary and distressing life. To this prison life Lanier always attributed his breakdown in health. In "Tiger Lilies" he afterwards attempted to give a description of the prison and the life led by prisoners, but turned with disgust from the harrowing memories. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... distressing condition under every variety of non-electrical treatment, is the cause of the frequency with which cases present themselves to the specialist. Unfortunately however but few of the referred cases are of recent origin. In almost all instances they have gone through a vast ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... forgetful, so just like me not to have asked her more about it. She had been ill; the journey itself was more than she could stand; and then to have to carry the baby! She said it was not far, but perhaps she only said that to please me. Poor people are so afraid of distressing one; they often make themselves out better off than they really are, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... needed to recruit his strength and nurse his ailments, he would not think of it while his work remained unfinished. To turn back to those dreary sponges, sleep in those flooded plains, encounter anew that terrible pneumonia which was "worse than ten fevers," or that distressing haemorrhage which added extreme weakness to extreme agony—might have turned any heart; Livingstone never flinched from it. What a reception awaited him if he had gone home to England! What welcome from ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... makes inspiration through the nostrils awkward and, when the air has to be renewed quickly, even impossible, obliging the singer to breathe in violently, pantingly, and with other disagreeable and distressing symptoms of effort, through the mouth. The correct method of breathing involves only what may be called the breathing-muscles, but it utilizes all of these, thus insuring complete and effectual action; ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... bridegroom was roaming sadly about, thereby distressing his wife, who followed him with her eyes, hoping to see his state of innocence come to an end, the ladies believed that the joy of that night had cost him dear, and that the said bride was already regretting ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... more now to say. The loss of the jewels and the recollection of the mysterious lady were soon absorbed in the distressing thoughts which the serious illness of the count forced upon my mind. Weeks passed away, and he came not; but he sent repeated messages by Antonio, imploring me to console myself, as he should soon recover, and urging me not to take any step that might ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... political felicity we enjoy. It is a strange heterogeneous assemblage of vices and virtues, and of a variety of other principles, for ever at war, for ever jarring, for ever producing some dangerous, some distressing extreme. Where do you conceive then that nature intended we should be happy? Would you prefer the state of men in the woods, to that of men in a more improved situation? Evil preponderates in both; in the first they often eat each other for want of ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... worry. Why should she know what the trouble is? She came to the marriage bed pure, and clean, and healthy. Her previous education did not include instruction which would even help her to guess what the trouble might be. She is simply conscious of new distressing conditions which she does not understand. She may try to believe that these conditions are incidental to the change in her life. Shortly, however, the discharge, which she has had for a number of weeks, and which she thought was only a leucorrhea, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... which will be continued later by the examining-magistrate; and I wished above all to explain to you the very serious reasons for which I asked you to interrupt your journey and to come back here with Madame de Gorne. You are now in a position to refute the truly distressing charges that are hanging over you. I therefore ask you to tell me the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... arrive on the boat last night, and as you had determined when you wrote Saturday, the 25th, to take the boat as it passed Tuesday, I fear you were prevented either by the indisposition of yourself or of Robert's. I shall, however, hope that it was owing to some less distressing cause. Our room is all ready and looks remarkably nice. Mrs. Cocke, in her great kindness, seems to have provided everything for it that you require, and you will have nothing to do but to take possession. The ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... taking his little pleasures as he found them. His life had shaped itself; was, no doubt, to continue always along these same lines. A woman had entered his small world and instantly there was discord. The disturbing element had appeared. Wherever the woman had put her foot a score of distressing complications had sprung up, like the sudden growth of strange and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... could hardly be a fitting residence for the children of strangers. They had, in all likelihood, become silently aware that his habits were such as to render his society at times most undesirable. Possibly, too, they had, by this time, heard distressing rumours concerning the cause of that remorse and agony of mind, which at times made him restless and unnaturally merry, at times rendered him ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... God through Christ towards his people: So there is also a HEIGHT, "That ye may comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth and length, and depth, and HEIGHT." There are things that are high, as well as things that are low; things that are above us, as well as things that are under, that are distressing to God's people. It is said when Noah was a preacher of righteousness, there were giants in the earth in those days (Gen 6:4). And these, as I conceive, were some of the heights that were set against ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tell the commander of the disturbance between Willett and Case, ascribing it to Case's vinous excitement after some transaction at cards, and though Archer believed the bookkeeper totally innocent of any part in the distressing affair that followed, both he and Bentley believed it due to everybody that Case's possible connection with it be looked into. With Craney they visited Case's own sanctum in the store building not ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... evidence and the fact that God remembered, and Noah with his sons and their wives, as also the animals, was refreshed after terror so great and continuous. If a storm of two days duration causes seafarers to despair, how much more distressing was that tossing about for half ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... undertook the whole, borrowing money in small sums, paying off encumbrances, and repaying the borrowed money as the times improved; thus enabling her brother to keep the land which so many proprietors were then obliged to sell, and yet never distressing the tenants. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... ladies themselves, and their fathers and mothers, and party-givers generally, should not be eager to know Francis Hogarth, and be more than civil to him. The court that is paid to any man who is believed to be in a position to marry, is one of the most distressing features in British society; it is most mischievous to the one sex, and degrading to the other. Long, long may it be before we see anything like ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the Court. It reveals the narrow and unpatriotic spirit of the king and the ministers, who could resist proposals so reasonable in themselves, and so remedial in their effects, at a time when the nation was suffering the heavy and distressing burdens of the most disastrous war that our country has ever carried on. It is especially interesting as an illustration of its author's political capacity. At a moment when committees and petitions and great county meetings showed how thoroughly the national anger was roused against the existing ...
— Burke • John Morley
... he could not dare to ask Caroline Spalding to be his wife. There were certain forms of the American female so dreadful that no wise man would wilfully come in contact with them. Miss Petrie's ferocity was distressing to him, but her eloquence and enthusiasm were worse even than her ferocity. The personal incivility of which she had been guilty in calling him a withered grass was distasteful to him, as being opposed to his ideas of the customs of society; but what would be his fate ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... are experienced. The organic nervous system manifests a functional disturbance in harmony with the disorder of the nervous system of animal life. Gastralgia and abdominal pain (pain in stomach and bowels) and uneasiness are in some cases very distressing symptoms. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... person cultivate a chest voice? How bring the voice directly from the lungs without in the least distressing the throat? This is all important. The young speaker should practise for a short time daily the method of lifting, first, words and then sentences straight from the lungs without making the least possible ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question. Popery is a religion, and if that religion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... be little doubt that Peter had madness in his veins. He was a degenerate and an epileptic, subject to brain storms which terrified all who witnessed them. "A sort of convulsion seized him, which often for hours threw him into a most distressing condition. His body was violently contorted; his face distorted into horrible grimaces; and he was further subject to paroxysms of rage, during which it was almost certain death to approach him." Even in his saner moods, as Waliszewski tells us, he "joined to the roughness ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... maintaining order, which has become more desirable than ever, will be able to avert the terrible fate which the slightest resistance, or any disorderly conduct, would bring upon the city. The course recently pursued by the inhabitants of Vienna, under similar distressing circumstances, must have taught those of Berlin that the conqueror only respects quiet and manly resignation after such a defeat. Hence I forbid all gatherings and clamor in the streets, as well as any public manifestation of sympathy in relation ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... should not be resorted to. The mucous membrane under its influence becomes more irritable, and where the urinary passages are specially involved, the impulsive efforts to void urine are extremely painful and distressing, the urine being reduced to mere driblets, and sometimes even to complete retention. Constant sickness, either arising from mucous inflammation or ulcer of the stomach, contra—indicate the use of the ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... Vaness remains freshly in my mind because he was so fine and large, and because he summed up in his person and behavior a philosophy which, budding before the war, hibernated during that distressing epoch, and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... took place Brigadier-General Rees had to leave us much to every one's regret. He was taken ill with a distressing internal complaint, which necessitated his return for a while to England. He was succeeded by Brigadier-General ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... occurrence is most deplorable and distressing. It seems so dreadful that a strong man should be almost killed and a grand horse completely ruined by two clumsy, ill-mannered dogs. One belongs to the chaplain, too, who is expected to set a model example ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... was advancing; the men were exhausting themselves in vain efforts: hunger, cold, and the Cossacks became pressing, and the Viceroy at length found himself necessitated to order his artillery and all his baggage to be left behind. A distressing spectacle ensued. The owners had scarcely time to part from their effects; while they were selecting from them the articles which they most needed, and loading horses with them, a multitude of soldiers hastened up; they fell in preference upon the vehicles of luxury; they broke in pieces and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... not have begun more auspiciously for the hunters, and by the time Mukoki was ready to leave upon his long trail the adventurers were in buoyant spirits, the distressing fears of the preceding night being somewhat dispelled by their present good fortune and the glorious day which now broke in ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... picture that every Negro in the country may contemplate with satisfaction and pride. In the stronghold of slavery, under the shadow of the legalized institution of slavery, within earshot of the slave-auctioneer's hammer, amid distressing circumstances, poverty, and proscription, three unlettered ex-slaves, upon the threshold of the nineteenth century, sowed the seed of education for the Negro race in the District of Columbia, from which an abundant harvest ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... a sense of despair in his heart. Added to the anxiety caused by this hasty departure, jealousy entered his soul, and in this agonizing moment of disappointment the most distressing explanations ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and skill. The piracies with which the West India seas were for several years infested have been totally suppressed, but in the Mediterranean they have increased in a manner afflictive to other nations, and but for the continued presence of our squadron would probably have been distressing to our own. The war which has unfortunately broken out between the Republic of Buenos Ayres and the Brazilian Government has given rise to very great irregularities among the naval officers of the latter, by whom principles in relation ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... friend; but there are times when the spirit is tortured by a doubtful duty. To preserve silence is undoubtedly wrong, and may lead to wrong, yet greater; and yet, to speak, is so painfully distressing to my peace-loving disposition, that I am tossed for ever on conflicting impulses, and would gladly ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... had given way under the severe shocks she had endured; but all at once more dangerous symptoms began to manifest themselves, and she became so greatly indisposed that she could not leave her room. Extremely distressing in its effects, the attack resembled fever. Inextinguishable thirst tormented her; burning pains; throbbing in the temples; and violent fluttering of the heart. No alleviation of her sufferings could be obtained from ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and, unable to scale the cliffs, would surely all be drowned. This picture, as vividly presented as possible, seemed to give him and his brother great satisfaction. We laughed at his prophecy, but his efforts to talk were distressing. It may be said in excuse for him, that in some paddling up the river from that point, he had arrived at perhaps an honest conviction of what would happen to any one going below; and also, that other wise men of the town predicted that we would never see "Brown's ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... deg. 46' south latitude, and 80 deg. 59' east longitude, after some persuasion, the chief mate consented to bear up for the Isle of France; it may, indeed, be thought strange that he should hesitate one moment in our present distressing situation: however, going to the Isle of France did not destroy the hopes he had formed, when he objected to bearing up. Between the 12th and the 27th, five men died; and on the 28th, Mr. Millar departed this life: the whole were ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... in cold accents, "it must have been very distressing to you to be obliged to have recourse to such ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sent for me; she smoked the chiboque, her mind was wrought to a high pitch of enthusiasm, she talked wildly and was much distressed in mind, in short her intellects were much disordered and it was very distressing. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... I took all day for the journey of nine miles. It necessitated a terrible effort. Fortunately, however, the day was cool. Several times I was on the point of fainting, and was obliged to lie down. Strangely enough, it was the descent that I found more distressing than the climb. The tendons just above my knees had become slackened through weakness, and refused to act as a brake. I shall ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... I know men whose lives are a burden to themselves and a distressing burden to their relatives and friends simply because they have failed to appreciate the obvious. "Oh, no," I have heard the martyred wife exclaim, "Arthur always takes the dog out for exercise at eight o'clock and he always begins to read at a quarter to nine. So it's quite out ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... allow anyone to be grateful, for a gift is never sufficient for its exorbitant expectations. Of all these hindrances to gratitude, the most violent and distressing vice is jealousy, which torments us with comparisons of this nature: "He bestowed this on me, but more upon him, and he gave it him earlier." There is no kindness so complete that malignity cannot pull it to pieces, and none so paltry that a friendly ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... ewer, and the sponsor was Governor White himself, the baby's grandfather. Thereafter she was known as Virginia Dare, a sweet and appropriate name for this pretty little wild flower that bloomed all alone on that desolate coast. About the time that Virginia was cutting her first teeth there came very distressing times to the colony. There was great need of supplies, and it was determined to send to England for them. Governor White went himself, and never ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... writes, this latest agony is a new one since she wrote last, which was only yesterday. Much that is denied to autobiography is thus gained by Clarissa's method, and for her story the advantage is valuable. The subject of her story is not in the distressing events, but in her emotion and her comportment under the strain; how a young gentlewoman suffers and conducts herself in such a situation—that was what Richardson had to show, and the action of the tale ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... men, the last available soldiers, were no match for Hannibal's veterans. He refused to accept battle but forever he followed Hannibal, destroyed everything eatable, destroyed the roads, attacked small detachments and generally weakened the morale of the Carthaginian troops by a most distressing and ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... article stolen; but stealing within the community, and perhaps even more so within the clan or village, is regarded as such a disgraceful offence, more so, I believe, than either killing or adultery, that its mere discovery involves a distressing punishment to the offender. As regards wounding and killing, the recognised rule is blood for blood, and a life for a life. The recognised code for adultery will be stated in the chapter on ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... when he comes round.' 'It is the most painful thing that can occur for me to have a correspondence of this kind with any of the keepers; and when I come to the Lighthouse, instead of having the satisfaction to meet them with approbation, it is distressing when one is obliged to put on a most angry countenance and demeanour; but from such culpable negligence as you have shown there is no avoiding it. I hold it as a fixed maxim that, when a man or a family put on a slovenly appearance in their houses, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... returned to the fleet and assisted in the tedious work of dragging the vessels over the shallows. In the evening I returned to the diahbeeah, and having dragged the dingy across the sudd, I explored the channel ahead for an hour, for about three miles; passed over distressing shallows for a space of a quarter of a mile ahead of the diahbeeah, after which I entered a deep, narrow channel with ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Cumberland might be less. Accordingly, the Duke sent in on paper what he had to say, and he got two signatures, although they were given very reluctantly. The King says it is unkind in those about him to urge him to sign, as they know how distressing it is to him. In fact yesterday it would have been death to move his arm. We are to meet on Friday to consider what shall be done. Some means must be devised of getting signatures, for his state may last some months. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... and Neptune, with flying cherubs, which is superbly drawn and coloured. Nothing but a chaise-longue on which to lie supine, at ease, can make the study of these wonderful ceilings anything but a distressing source of fatigue. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... are sometimes very distressing," said Madame Valtesi. "Last winter I was having my house in Cromwell Road painted and papered. I went to live at a hotel, but the men were so slow, that at last I took possession again, hoping to turn them out. It was a most fatal ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... is used for that chafing of the skin of the lower part of the body of an infant which is by no means unusual, and is often very distressing. It is almost invariably due to want of care. Either wetted napkins are dried, and put on again without previous rinsing in water, or they have been washed in water containing soda, and not passed through pure water afterwards, or attention is not paid to change the infant's napkin immediately ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... it not distressing to find that this talented author, so superior in other respects to the crude compilers of monkish history, cannot rise above the superstition of the age? Is it not deplorable that a mind so gifted could rely with fanatical zeal upon the verity of all those foul lies of Rome called "Holy" miracles; ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Erin that full load of blessing, For sorrow distressing my heart's pulses fail, If Death overtake me, the whole truth be spoken! My heart it was broken by great love for ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... attachment, are utterly unfelt. In a word, that state of the human heart, occasioned by the mutual affection between the sexes, and from whence proceed the happiest, the most interesting, and sometimes also, the most distressing moments of life, has no existence in China. The man takes a wife because the laws of the country direct him to do so, and custom has made it indispensable; and the woman, after marriage, continues ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... sensation. People could scarce believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the cry of 'Mysterious Death of a Nobleman' came ringing up from the street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord Argentine was found dead this morning by his valet under distressing circumstances. It is stated that there can be no doubt that his lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be assigned for the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and much liked ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... little story in the book which one of the subordinate characters told to a child, the distressing history of a small sugar prince on a Twelfth-cake, who believed himself to be a fairy and was taken tenderly away from a children's party by a little girl who, as the prince supposed, would restore him somehow to his proper position ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... surprised, however, for, as I have said to you, you are sated with the other kind of thing. How long will this fancy last? Now that you are so manly you should not be fickle. You have not half comprehended the penalties of your new role, for you may find that it involves a distressing frankness. I think I had better close. Letter-writing pre-supposes literary qualities which I do not possess. Men, unless sentimentally inclined, or given to hobbies, rarely write long letters to each other. If unusually ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a heavy burden upon our hearts," continued the unhappy father; "when he is with us we find it most distressing to behold the utter wreck his excesses are making of him, and when he is out of our sight it is still worse; for we don't know what sin or danger he may be running into. Indeed at times we are almost distracted. Ah, Travilla, much as I love ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... the Nth Blankshires was seated in his office. It was not an imposing room to look at. Furnished simply but tastefully with a table, officers, for use of, one, and a chair, ditto, one, it gave little evidence of the distressing scenes which had been enacted in it, and still less evidence of the terrible scene which was to come. Within these walls the Colonel was accustomed to deal out stern justice to offenders, and many a hardened criminal had been carried out fainting upon ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... the fire of the garrison had surrounded the fortress with the slain. A cry of indignation arose in the assembly at this intelligence, and a second deputation was instantly despatched to communicate these distressing tidings to the king. The first returned with an unsatisfactory answer; it was now ten at night. The king, on learning these disastrous events, which seemed to presage others still greater, appeared affected. Struggling against the part he had been induced to adopt, he said to the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... "This is a distressing subject to talk or think of. But now that it has been brought before us, I demand a full investigation. Go, wherever you will, among those who know me, and inquire into my character. Recall everything that has occurred between us since the beginning ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... inextricable confusion of everything on board; the slush upon the decks, the crying, the kissing, the mustering of the passengers, the stowing away of baggage still left upon the decks, the rain and the gloomy sky created a kind of half- amusing, half-distressing bewilderment, which I could plainly see to be participated in by most of the other landsmen on board. Honest country agriculturists and their wives were looking as though they wondered what it would end in; some were sitting on their boxes and making ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... young birds are fit to eat, but we read in the accounts of our pioneer naturalists that from eight to twenty birds were often killed by the single discharge of a gun, and that as the survivors would again and again return to the lurking- place of their destroyer, attracted by the distressing cries of their wounded comrades, the unfeeling sportsman would continue his work of destruction until more than half of a large flock would be exterminated. This interesting parakeet may, during the next century, pass out of existence, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... equestrian gait. To show how fortuitous may sometimes be the circumstances which decide what shall be becoming and what not under the pecuniary canon of beauty, it may be noted that this English seat, and the peculiarly distressing gait which has made an awkward seat necessary, are a survival from the time when the English roads were so bad with mire and mud as to be virtually impassable for a horse travelling at a more comfortable ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... he resolutely refuses to hurry for any inducement I can offer him. When I first made his acquaintance I wore myself out in vain efforts to urge him into something that might reasonably be called a trot, but the experience was so distressing to us both that I gave it up in despair. Now, I frankly confess that he is my master. If he chooses to reflect upon the road, I do the same, and say nothing. If he proceeds, well, so do I. I still ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... enchantress, contemptuously waving her wand over them, bade them assume the forms of the animals they most resembled! A moment later a herd of grunting pigs surrounded her, pigs which, however, retained a distressing consciousness of their former ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Mr. Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure his embarrassment better than she herself any question ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... arrived. He still looks dreadfully ill and careworn, and I can see is feeling his position acutely. Since that dreadful day when he found my notes in Gibbon, I have never dared to look at him when in the company of M. E. I feel that distressing sensation of hot and cold during the whole time. M. E., now that no further great efforts are needed, chatters on with most disquieting inconsequence. I can see she is very much upset at Mr. Derringham's ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... in number, bread and provisions were scarce, and the condition of the infant colony was truly deplorable. At this distressing period a British fleet arrived in the harbour of Quebec. What was to be done? The rude fortress of St. Louis could not withstand the assault of an armed fleet, even if it were well defended. But Champlain had no ammunition, and he, therefore, adopted the only course open ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... the war, I believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can suffer in the field, short of wounds and death. Yet it is a strange thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland, in deep ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of that extremely witty preacher, the Rev. Thomas Scoles, who exercised a great influence over her; but she succeeded in convincing everybody that even this was a misfortune. She had passed into a proverb in the family, and when anybody was observed to be peculiarly distressing, he was known as a regular 'Juley.' The habit of her mind would have killed anybody but a Forsyte at forty; but she was seventy-two, and had never looked better. And one felt that there were capacities for enjoyment about her which might yet ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talents and character would have been valuable anywhere. Public spirit abounded, and the men of that day evidently felt as men should feel who are destined to be the ancestors of great cities. In 1837, when the business affairs of Chicago were in a distressing state, and private insolvency was rather the rule than the exception, many debtors and a few demagogues called a public meeting, the real though not the avowed object of which was to bring about some form of repudiation. Some inflammatory suggestions, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the theory of transmigration is the happy moral solution it seems to give to the problem of the dark and distressing inequality and injustice which otherwise appear so predominant in the experience of the world. To the superficial observer of human life the whole scene of struggle, sin and sorrow, nobleness and joy, triumph and defeat, is a tangled maze of inconsistencies, a painful combination ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... France fill me with more horror than any former ones. The King is to be moved only by the fear of some approaching danger to his person. The Queen is agitated by all the alarming and distressing thoughts imaginable. Her health is visibly altered; she cries continually, and is, as Polinitz says of K(ing) James's Queen, une Arethuse. Her danger has been imminent; and the K(ing) left his capital, and her in it, as he was advised to do, il eut ete fait d'elle; she would have been, probably, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... to-night. Yes, Valentine, there he was as tipsy as a coachman—with those little hair-brained de S.'s, the eldest simply tipsy as a lord, the young one, George, was drunk, very drunk. This is not all, the fascinating Prince was escort to two fashionable beauties, two miserable creatures of distressing notoriety, two of those shameless women whom we cannot fail to recognise on account of their scandalous behavior in public; sort of market-women disguised as fashion-plates—half apple-venders, half coquettes, who tap men on the cheek with their scented ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... again with its accustomed smoothness—though, of course, the smoothness was occasionally disturbed. For one thing, there was the distressing behaviour of Uncle Leopold. The King of the Belgians had not been able to resist attempting to make use of his family position to further his diplomatic ends. But, indeed, why should there be any question of resisting? Was not such a course of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... longer time through the one at the bottom, and having performed his customary devotions, soon fell into a slumber, but not into the same quiet sleep as before, for he was often interrupted by sudden starts, of so distressing a character, that I was almost tempted to wake him. After a while, however, he seemed more composed, when I betook myself to the telescope turned ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the manner in which he should probably die, and endeavored to prepare her mind for it. He had distressing turns of suffocation, so that they were obliged to open all the windows and doors for the benefit of the air, and he long expected every turn ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... says but feels, "God's will be done" is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and her stay in England and later her experience in war work in France where for three years she had given rare service in hospital work had somehow made her even more inaccessible to her mother. And now the situation had been rendered more distressing by her determination "to find something to do." She was firm in her resolve that she had no intention of patiently waiting in her home, ostensibly busying herself with social duties but in reality "waiting if not actually ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... speak up for an absent friend, but silence is the best answer to such impertinences," said she, and then went on to talk of Abbotsmead and Kirkham till Bessie was almost cheated of her distressing self-consciousness. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... that Ozark Briskow was compelled to sit out every alternate dance in a distressing condition of sobriety, he enjoyed himself, for he was playing host to the one woman and the one man for whom he cared most. He had dreaded meeting Gray, fearing the effect of an open confession, expecting ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... in Philadelphia, the 18th of February, 1781, was thirty-three years old and had actively served in the United States navy for five years and five months. He never fought another battle under the United States flag; indeed, with the exception of his distressing experiences in Russia, he never fought again under any flag. But to his dying day he did not cease to plan great naval deeds and to hope for greater opportunity to harass the enemy—any enemy. In view of his great ambition and ability, circumstances ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... often the case among New England women of culture, the body had paid the cost of the mind's estate; and, after the birth of her first child, she sank at once into a hopeless invalidism,—an invalidism all the more difficult to bear, and to be borne with, that it took the shape of distressing nervous maladies which no medical skill could alleviate. The brilliant mind became almost a wreck, and yet retained a preternatural restlessness and activity. Many regarded her condition as insanity, and believed that Mr. Dorrance erred in not giving her ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... quite fully revived, and that Reuben had supported his father thither also. He reclined on the lounge, and his usually ruddy face was very pale. Both he and his wife appeared almost helpless; but the doctor had succeeded in arresting, by the use of ice, the distressing nausea that had followed consciousness. They looked at me in a bewildered manner as I entered, and could not seem to account for my presence at once. Nor did they, apparently, try to do so long, for their ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... her—and oh, mother, I believe she is starvingly poor, and she has to earn her own living, I made her have a cup to tea and some bread-and-butter to-night, and she ate as if she were famished. It's awfully distressing. I really don't know ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... Euphratean frontier, and overran all Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor. What was known as the True Cross was torn from the church at Jerusalem and carried off in triumph to Persia. In order to compel Chosroes to recall his armies, which were distressing the provinces of the empire, Heraclius, pursuing the same plan as that by which the Romans in the Second Punic War forced the Carthaginians to call Hannibal out of Italy (see p. 264), with a small company of picked ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the book, Olga, can hardly be called the heroine; she appears too briefly for that. But she is admitted to be a fine portrait of the Russian woman as she was about to become, not as she then existed. Gontcharoff's "An Every-day Story" is also celebrated; equally so is his "The Ravine," a very distressing picture of the unprincipled character of an anarchist. As the author changed his mind about the hero in part while writing the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... prompt and much appreciated return of the entire missing sum within two weeks from the time of its disappearance. . . . Can assure you that the matter will not be allowed to receive the least publicity. . . . Regret exceedingly the distressing death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but . . . Congratulations on your marriage to Miss Wahrfield . . . many charms, winning manners, noble and womanly nature and envied position in the best ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... trade." But when we come to see the head of an old family making ducks and drakes of his family property, threatening the old tenants that have been on the land as long as his own people, raising the rent here, evicting there, distressing the people's minds when they've just as much as they can to bear up with—then it's time for an old friend and neighbour to give a timely ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... footmen—the stoutest that could be found—to put their shoulders occasionally to the wheel, and help the eight black horses to drag the ponderous vehicle through the heavier parts of the road. Science came to the aid of beauty in these distressing circumstances. Springs were invented that yielded to every jolt; and, with the aid of cushions, rendered a visit to Highgate not much more fatiguing than we now find the journey to Edinburgh. Luxury went on—wealth flowed in—paviers were encouraged—coach-makers grew great men—and London, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... but little sleep in camp that night. Out of the nineteen men that were killed, twelve of them were the heads of families, and the cries of the widows and orphaned children were very distressing for Jim and me to hear, although we were blameless. The next morning just after breakfast the committee of five men came to Jim and me and said they wanted to have a private talk ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... unharmed. The chants of the enemy made Antoninus frenzied and beside himself, hearing which some of the Alamanni asserted that they had used charms to put him out of his mind.] He was sick in body, partly with ordinary and partly with private diseases, and was sick also in mind, suffering from distressing visions; and often he thought he was being pursued by his father and his brother, armed with swords. Therefore he called up spirits to find some remedy against them, among others the spirit of his father and of Commodus. But not one would speak a word to him except Commodus. [Geta, so ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... great belt of marsh on to land that swelled upwards in a succession of rolling waves. Just on the hither side of the crest of the first wave we halted for the night. My first act was to examine Leo's condition. It was, if anything, worse than in the morning, and a new and very distressing feature, vomiting, set in, and continued till dawn. Not one wink of sleep did I get that night, for I passed it in assisting Ustane, who was one of the most gentle and indefatigable nurses I ever saw, to wait ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Polynesia—New Hebrides, Loyalty, and Britannia— were little-known, or, at all events, little thought of, till the year 1839, when they were brought into melancholy prominence by the distressing tragedy which occurred in one of them, the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... would be absurd to object the gloomy tenor of his reports as an argument for suspecting their accuracy, since he himself, by introducing this as a condition into the very terms of his original undertaking with the public, has created against himself the painful necessity of continually distressing the sensibilities of his reader. To complain of Herodotus, or any public historian, as drawing too continually upon his reader's profounder sensibilities, is, in reality, to forget that this belongs as an original element to the very task which he has undertaken. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The only difference, therefore, between the inhabitants of the interior parts and those of the more distant coasts, consists in this, that the latter, with the labors of the field, have to encounter alternately the dangers of the ocean and all the fatigues of navigation. To the distressing circumstances at home, as stated above, new difficulties and toils await the devoted farmer when abroad. He leaves his family in October, accompanied by his sons, brothers, and frequently an aged parent, and embarks on board a small open boat, in quest of the herring fishery, with no other ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... together to carry on his travels. Months of delay occurred, and sometimes it seemed that all his labors and struggles would end in futility; that the world would be little better for his sufferings; yet that patient, Christian fortitude sustained him with unfaltering courage through the most distressing experiences. Disease, weakening, piteous, unromantic, unheroic, wasted his form; ulcers, sores, horrible and hideous, made his progress slow and his work sometimes a painful struggle over what many a man would have deemed impossible barriers. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and infirm persons, as the city was likely soon to be "the scene of a bloody conflict." He stated that when the Rose and Phoenix sailed past, "the shrieks and cries of these poor creatures, running every way with their children, was truly distressing." Pastor Shewkirk says: "This affair caused a great fright in the city. Women and children, and some with their bundles, came from the lower parts and walked to the Bowery, which ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the sight of my willing but mechanical hostess scraping the white ashes from the embers, parcelling out these into little heaps of fire upon the hearth, throwing salt into the swinging pot with a hand the colour of which may be distressing to the imagination, then tasting the soup: all this, and much more, I leave her to accomplish in the gathering darkness of the kitchen, and, sparing her the pain of lighting lamp or candle while there is still a gleam of day, I wander out beyond the houses of the village to a quiet woodside, there ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his poison, this gentleman assured me that, at times, his feelings had bordered on those of mental derangement; he thought every body hated him; and he in turn hated every body. He had often, after lying awake for several hours in the night, under the most distressing forebodings, arisen, smoked his pipe to procure a temporary alleviation of his sufferings, in fitful and half delirious slumbers. He even thought of suicide, but was deterred by the dread of an hereafter. In a few weeks after relinquishing the indulgence, all these feelings were gone; ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... hand aroused him more effectually. He then recollected the incidents of the night, and reproached himself for his wild excesses, and his reckless and imprudent confidence in a stranger. He dreaded to think what the consequences might be, and again became confused with the memories of his distressing dreams. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... steaming without steering. Set them on a finely broken horse, on a colt, or a restive horse, and they become helpless children—the powerless prisoners of the brutes they bestride. How often does one see one's acquaintance in this distressing situation, with courage enough to dare what man dare, but without the power to do what the rough-rider has just done! First comes the false indication of the rider, then the confusion and hesitation of the horse; next the violence of the ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. This ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... deputation of citizens, on a matter of business, had found him seated, and to their immeasurable disgust, he had made no effort even to rise. His friends excused him on the allegation, whether true or not, that at the moment he was physically incapacitated from rising by a distressing infirmity. It might be so: as Shakspere elsewhere observes, the black silk patch knows best whether there is a wound underneath it. But, if it were not so, then the imperial man paid the full penalty of his offence, supposing the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... share of common sense, which I hope I enjoy, at least in America I can live independent and free; and rather than live otherwise I would wish to die before the time when I shall be left at my own discretion. I have before me a striking example of the distressing and humiliating situation a person is reduced to by adopting a different line of conduct, and I am determined not to fall ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... very distressing," Harry protested in bewilderment. "But you do me injustice, ma'am. I have forgotten nothing about my father. For I never ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... in all cases be satisfactory to all, but were meant to be just and impartial to all. Mr. Genet had been then but a little time with us; and but a little more was necessary to develope in him a character and conduct so unexpected and so extraordinary, as to place us in the most distressing dilemma, between our regard for his nation, which is constant and sincere, and a regard for our laws, the authority of which must be maintained; for the peace of our country, which the executive magistrate is charged ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Mrs. Chapman, for I must again return to that lady, as she addressed her meek-looking little husband, "how distressing it would be if Mr. Gusher should turn out not to be Mr. Gusher. He is such a nice young gentleman, and so popular in society. If he should turn out to be somebody else? He has been such a favorite at our house, you know. I am sure I should never survive such a scandal as that. I ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... dry channels when they reached its lower courses, the party struck eastward to the Culgoa, and reached that river after a very distressing stage over dry country on which they lost six horses from heat and thirst, whilst ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... proposition to Mercer was made on the spur of one of those moments when the spirit of a hunch possessed him. His morning had been one of unexpected excitement, and now he leaned back in an effort to review it and to forget, if he could, the distressing thing that was bound to happen to him within the next few hours. But he could not get away from the thickening in his chest. It seemed growing on him. Now and then he was compelled to make quite an effort to get sufficient ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... of the Spanish army that night was distressing in the highest degree. They were hungry, exhausted, dejected, and seventeen hundred dangerous wounds demanded immediate attention. There was but one surgeon of the expedition who survived, and he was a man of but ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... has one feature which is invariable: it is always longer than you think it is going to be. I can, of my own experience, recall but two exceptions to this distressing family likeness, both of which were occasions of company which no doubt forbade proper appreciation of their length, and vitiates them as scientific observations. When toiling up a toge I have been tempted to impute acute ascentomania to the Japanese mind, but sober second thought has attributed ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... you will be surprised at my venturing to write to you, considering the distressing circumstances under which we parted. Although the small request I have to make of you is of some importance to me, I should not have the presumption to make it, if it were not that it gives me the opportunity to assure you that the passage of time has made a wiser ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... closed up and a reed stuck through it. Then one man after another would go and draw up into his lungs as much smoke as he could with one prolonged deep inspiration; and then go apart and cough in a hard, hacking distressing way for ten minutes at a time, and then back to the reed for another pull. In addition to the worry of hearing their coughs, the lhiamba gives you trouble with the men, for it spoils their tempers, making them moody and fractious, and prone to quarrel with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... grant them such and such indulgences, they would tell their bed-ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronte. He was so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went home for his holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct,—at one time in the highest spirits, at another in deepest depression,—accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... in the sixth week of their imprisonment, Marion fell ill. She had caught a cold, which was not the first by any means, but much more severe than its predecessors. With watery eyes and red noses and distressing coughs they had become familiar, but this was plainly a more serious matter. For three days more she dragged herself about, trying to conceal her state from him and from herself, but crying softly when he did not ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... to his promise; distressing reports were circulated among the troops; and the royalists, having waited for him almost a fortnight, disbanded in spite of the fears and entreaties of their commander. At last, on the eighteenth day, the King arrived in Milford Haven with the dukes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... flag crossed with blue stripes at one end, and the glorious old star-spangled banner at the other. In fact, she was all dressed out in flags. They were soaked through and through till their slimpsiness was distressing. In fact, the steamboat looked like a draggled rooster with no fence or cart ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... his eyes: a flush came to his forehead, and I felt the warm blood burning over my cheeks and forehead. His lips parted, and for one instant he took my hand, but only to drop it among the cold water-lilies again, as if some distressing thought had aroused him to painful consciousness. Why was this? how came it that he relinquished my hand so abruptly? Was he shocked with my upward glances—did he think my recognition of his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... story against King John. It is probably doubtful; it was only insisted on as exceptional; and it was, by that very insistence, obviously regarded as disreputable. But the real unfairness of the Jews' position was deeper and more distressing to a sensitive and highly civilized people. They might reasonably say that Christian kings and nobles, and even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be accumulated in such ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... been removed from his soul Walter moved away. The whole world had suddenly become a different place. Although the calamity of Lola's disappearance was none the less distressing at least on his own particular horizon there no longer loomed the spectre of discharge and all the disgrace that accompanied it. He could have tossed his cap into the air for very joy and gratitude. In his relief he was bursting to talk to somebody, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... unencumbered with the satyric machinery of the Queen's Arcadia, Hymen's Triumph is a distinctly lighter and more pleasing composition. At least so it appears by comparison, for Daniel everywhere takes himself and his subject with a distressing seriousness wholly unsuited to the style; we look in vain for a gleam of humour such as that which in the final chorus of the Aminta casts a reflex light over the whole play[257]. Again an advance may be observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on an altogether ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... afraid it will be a distressing necessity; but the fact will naturally be known only to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... may fitly be compared with the lyrical freedoms of no matter what epic, and which display an unsurpassable dexterity of hand." And now what are we to say of "Manon Lescaut"? That it is a million times better than Milton and knocks spots off Homer? But all this though distressing is not conclusive; it proves provinciality but it proves nothing worse. Mr. Bennett may really have been thinking all the time of "Robert Elsmere" and "The Epic of Hades." About another of his favourites, however, he is more precise: "I re-read 'A Man of Property,'" ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... grew in Rose that the Countess lowered and degraded her. Her mother's calm contemplation of the lady was more distressing than if she had expressed the contempt Rose was certain, according to her young ideas, Lady Jocelyn ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... excitement for a time, until there arises a curious over-reaction to excitement. The anhedonic patient finds that noises are very troublesome, that he becomes unpleasantly excited over music, that company is distressing because he becomes confused and excited, and crowds, busy scenes and streets are intolerable. Many a hermit, I fancy, who found the sensual and ambitious pleasure of life intolerable, who sought to fly from crowds ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... done so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a general thing, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the time was past for rewarding them) into a sharp light which memory overarched with a halo. Tenderly into that halo dissolved his trivial faults—his trick, for example, of snoring between the courses at dinner, or of awaking and pulling his fingers till they cracked with a distressing sound. These and other small frailties were forgotten as the new Sir Thomas and his spouse took possession and proceeded in a few weeks to turn the place inside out, dismissing five of the stable-boys, cutting down the garden staff by one-third, and carrying ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... her mixing with other young people," he replied; "she has a dull time, poor child, as a rule, and has felt the disappointment about her uncle's property more than she cares to confess. Mrs. Courtenay's illness is very distressing. My wife was speaking to the doctor yesterday: he considers Sir William Garrett ought to be sent for at once; in a few weeks ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... other important towns, were some whose talents and character would have been valuable anywhere. Public spirit abounded, and the men of that day evidently felt as men should feel who are destined to be the ancestors of great cities. In 1837, when the business affairs of Chicago were in a distressing state, and private insolvency was rather the rule than the exception, many debtors and a few demagogues called a public meeting, the real though not the avowed object of which was to bring about some form of repudiation. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and green strike the eye throughout Great Britain, and shock the artistic sense wherever seen. Me! I have never tasted them, and shall not so long as a French restaurant remains open in London. But I doubt not they are as pronounced to the palate as their advertisement is distressing to the eye. If then, this gross pickle manufacturer expected me to track down those who were infringing upon the recipes for making his so-called sauces, chutneys, and the like, he would find himself mistaken, for I was now in a position to pick and choose my cases, and a case ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... and the drooping eyelids was atrociously embarrassed to respond to her compliments in English. He struggled so violently that Mrs. Morrow began to smile with a compassionate patronage which turned him a distressing terra-cotta. Elfrida looked on for a few minutes, and then, as one of the group, she said quietly in French, "And Italian opera in England, how ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... depriving an enemy of these supplies is one of the means intended to be employed for reducing him to terms. The actual situation of France, (it was said,) was notoriously such, as to lead to the employing this mode of distressing her by the joint operations of the various powers engaged in the war; and the reasonings of the text writers applying to all cases of this sort were more applicable to the present case, in which the distress resulted from the unusual mode of war adopted by the enemy himself, in ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... doll still sat astride the iron window-bar; and, with its legs in the room and its head outside, its nightdress clinging to its rosy skin, its eyes glaring, and its hair streaming with water, it looked not unlike a drowned child; and so emaciated did it appear in its comical yet distressing posture of death, that it almost brought tears of pity to the eyes. Jeanne coughed in her sleep; but now she never once opened her eyes. Her head swayed to and fro on her crossed arms, and the cough spent itself in a ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... rose and went softly but quickly out of the room that she might relieve her bursting heart without distressing her husband, but he knew her too well to doubt the reason of her sudden movement, and a faint smile was on his lips for a moment as he said to Oliver,—"She's gone to weep a bit, sur, and pray. It will ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... sang!—would be ridiculous and disgusting. But anything else, any attempt to go on from where they had left off was unthinkable. In the privacy of her imagination she had worked the thing out in half a dozen ways, all equally distressing. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... mother, take the blessing Of a grateful nation's heart; May the news that is distressing Never cause your tears to start; May there be no fears to haunt you, And no lonely hours and sad; May your trials never daunt you, But ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... Inventions looking toward the saving of labor have closely followed each other for so many years that their object is about accomplished, and all the pain and sorrow accompanying daily toil are things of the dead past. Even our animals are relieved from distressing labor and share with us the blessings of an advanced civilization, every heavy weight being raised and every burdensome load being drawn by an arm of steel or aluminum, which neither tires nor feels. We do ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... over-supply, the employers would rather stop paying wages than not. That's the case now. Four months of coal is in yards or on cars, and it's an absolute benefit to the Company to turn seventy or eighty thousand dollars of dead product into live money. Don't deceive yourselves with the hope that you are distressing the owner by your foolish strike; you are putting money into his pockets while your families suffer for food. There is no great principle at stake to make your conduct seem noble and to call forth sympathy for your suffering,—only foolishness and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... instructions to purchase the beer and bring it back to camp. He disappeared at a gallop over the skyline and returned about two hours later with a wagon load of full barrels. He had discovered a detachment of the Royal Army Service Corps and, posing as an orderly officer or a.d.c., had told its officer a distressing story of a brigadier who for several hours had been separated from his personal baggage. The arrival of the wagon was greeted with cheers and after its load was taken off, the men came up and gazed ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... throne itself was the stake for which parties played some forty years before. There was, in fact a substantial personal centre for each side. The one party rallied round a respectable but maniac monarch, whose mental afflictions took the most distressing form, the other round his gay, handsome, dissolute—nay disgusting—son, at once his rival and his heir. The spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their attacks on one another were more personal than anything we can imagine ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... "It's distressing that I should be little and powerless," said the boy. "I don't believe that I am able to help you." "You can't make me believe that you are powerless because you are little," said the cow. "All ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... caliph, "I am overwhelmed with distressing inquietude, and would fain have thee devise some means for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... was profound, but by and by the associations of blows and wounds carried him back to the field of Evesham. The wild melee was renewed, he heard the voice of his father, but always in that strange distressing manner peculiar to dreams of the departed, always far away, and just beyond his reach, ever just about to give him the succour he needed, but ever withheld. The thunderstorm that broke over the contending ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and poets, La Bruyere, Pope, Milton, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare. All this reading was too much for her and excited her brain. She had reserved Chateaubriand's Rene, and, on reading that, she was overcome by the sadness which emanates from these distressing pages. She was disgusted with life, and attempted to commit suicide. She tried to drown herself, and only owed her life to the healthy-mindedness of the good mare Colette, as the horse evidently had not the same ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... would not understand if he were told. He has reason, therefore, to say we are dull. And Dockland, with its life so uniform that it could be an amorphous mass overflowing a reef of brick cells, I think would be distressing to a sensitive stranger, and even a little terrifying, as all that is alive but inexplicable must be. No more conscious purpose shows in our existence than is seen in the coral polyp. We just go on increasing and forming more cells. Overlooking our wilderness of tiles ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... Maurice. His eyes were of a darker blue; his glossy hair was tinged with chestnut, while Bertha's shone with unmingled gold; but, like Bertha's, his recreant locks had a strong tendency to curl, and lay in rich clusters upon his brow, distressing him by a propensity which he deemed effeminate. His mouth was as ripely red as hers, but somewhat larger, firmer, and less bland in its character. His eyebrows, too, were more darkly traced, supplying a want only ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... natural enough—though not, therefore, the less distressing—that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in New York; a tendency to be—of all things—polite. He didn't swear any more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... behaved with great good sense and discretion. Without distressing the youthful proselyte by casting doubts on her "vocation," they reminded her that the consideration was a distant one, as for years to come her first duty would be to her relatives, who would never sanction her present determination. Her confessor, the Abbe Premord, a Jesuit and man ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... certain that when the surgeon is unable to unravel the bowel with his fingers gently applied to the parts themselves, no speculative distension of the bowel could have been effective. But the outlook in these distressing cases, even when the operation is promptly resorted to, is extremely grave, because of the intensity of the shock which the intussusception and resulting strangulation entail. Still, every operation gives them by far the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... men with ponchos, and gentlemen with cloaks. The panuelon is the most essential article of female gear. It answers to the mantilla of the mother country, though it is not worn so gracefully as on the banks of the Tagus. Andean ladies are not troubled with the distressing fluctuations in the style of hats; a bonnet in Quito is as much out of place as a turban in New York. When the daughter of our late minister resident appeared in the cathedral with one, the innovation was the subject of severe remark. The Spanish hair is the glory ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... merely a statement of his financial disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure his embarrassment better than she herself any ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... improved since the depression of three and four years ago. But there are many localities and many groups of individuals, apparently through no fault of their own, sometimes due to climatic conditions and sometimes to the prevailing price of a certain crop, still in a distressing condition. This is probably temporary, but it is none the less acute. National Government agencies, the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, the Farm Loan Board, the intermediate credit banks, and the Federal Reserve Board ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... Births, marriages, deaths, alike are great social events, and upon such occasions, because it is custom to have a priest, the better classes of people even call in the services of the priests, in whom they have no confidence. The effect upon the beliefs of these better classes is most distressing. Spiritism, materialism and atheism are rampant, and one could well believe that these people set adrift without spiritual guides are in a worse condition than if they were still devout believers in the ancient practices of the Roman church. They are far ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think: but that the thoughts of each individual there would be distressing when alone." What he thought was true of all men was certainly true of himself. He hated and dreaded to be alone. It was the pain of solitude quite as much as the pleasure of society that drove him abroad, and induced him to make a business of keeping alive old friendships and procuring new, till ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... were widening the bounds of knowledge of this new subject with details that cannot be more than referred to here. But the crowning achievement of the period in this direction was the discovery made by the German, J. L. Schoenlein, in 1839, that a very common and most distressing disease of the scalp, known as favus, is really due to the presence and growth on the scalp of a vegetable organism of microscopic size. Thus it was made clear that not merely animal but also vegetable organisms of obscure, microscopic species have causal relations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... but she did not say, that in all probability what Frances wished was only to be let alone. The result of these repeated confidences was that Isoult began to want a confidante also; and as Dr Thorpe had asked her to find out what was distressing Lady Frances, she laid the whole matter before him. When he was put in possession of as much as Isoult knew, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... machine of Jasmin's body was often in need of rest, he still went about doing good. He never ceased ministering to the poor until he was altogether unable to go to their help. Even in the distressing cold, rain, and wind of winter—and it was in winter more than in summer that he travelled, for it was then that the poor were most distressed—he entirely disregarded his own comfort, and sometimes travelled ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... month or so after getting rid of "Bracebridge Hall," he gave himself up to the engagements of a London season. But his ankles soon began to trouble him again, and in July, 1822, he set out for Aix-la-Chapelle, where he hoped to get permanent relief from his distressing complaint. He found nothing to keep him long at Aix. The baths and waters were well enough, but he was too dependent upon cheerful companionship to endure life among a company of invalids. He began ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... often occur," he was explaining in a very matter-of-fact voice. "They are unusual, though not unheard-of, and very distressing at the time. But I am confident that Miss Myra will be quite herself again in a day or two. Meanwhile, she had better go to bed and rest, and take care of herself while Angus fetches Doctor Whitehouse. No doubt he will ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... all this money as a simple attendant for papa. I could get two at the price. The fact is papa has an unfortunate faculty for getting involved in street disputes. On account of his prominence a certain publicity is attached to it. Very distressing to the family. I shall expect you to keep him out of such troubles. You will have to be firm. He is very obstinate. But I authorise you to take any measures, any measures to save him from his ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... air-holder (arteria) from the oesophagus, because it is placed before the latter, because food or drink passing into it causes distressing cough and suffocation, and because there is no passage from the lung to the stomach. He knew the situation and use of the epiglottis, seems to have had some indistinct notions of the larynx, represents the windpipe to be necessary to convey air to and from the lungs, and appears ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Petrea wrote long letters, in prose and in verse, to her sisters at home, and imparted to them all that occurred here. Her own misfortunes, which she even exaggerated, she described in such a comic manner that those very things which were at first distressing to her, were made a spring of hearty merriment both to herself and to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... only five patients who did not exhibit the symptom named. They were suffering, in fact, from "theine" poisoning. The paralysing effects of narcotic doses of tea was further displayed by a particularly obstinate kind of dyspepsia; while the abuse of coffee disordered the action of the heart to a distressing degree. The friends and biographers of M. Jules Noriac are unanimous as to the fact that he was inveterate in the use of tobacco. He was wont to smoke to the butt-end, one after the other, the huge cigars sold by the French "Regie," ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... his—Mountjoy. It's altogether a most distressing story. He turns out to be nobody after all, and now he has disappeared, and the papers for an entire month were full of him. What would you do if he were to turn up here? The girl was engaged to him, you know, and has only thrown him off ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... again tried to smother that tiresome little yawn, which seemed most distressing, when he desired to be most polite. Then he flicked off a grain of dust from his immaculate lace ruffle and buried his long, slender hands in the capacious pockets of his white satin breeches; finally he said with ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... finger. At this Caesar, greatly disturbed, started to his feet, and desired Theocritus to make inquiry as to whether Tarautas were wounded or dead; and while the favorite was gone he could not sit still. Agitated by distressing fears, he rose to speak first to one and then to another of his suite, only to drop on his seat again and glance once more at the butchery below. He was fully persuaded that his own end must be near, if indeed Tarautas were dead. At last he heard Theocritus's voice, and, as he turned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reason the worthy who filled that post at Bramble Park was usually changed at least once in six or eight weeks, and thus were matters at the period to which we refer. It seemed as though Robert was never happy unless he was doing some one harm, or distressing some of the many pet animals about the spacious grounds; in this latter occupation he passed much of his leisure time, and was a great adept ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... any disposition to push his advantages to the utmost, and urge his foe to extremity. In every stage of the war, he was open to propositions for peace; and although he sought to reduce his enemies by carrying off their harvests and distressing them by famine, he allowed his troops to commit no unnecessary outrage on person or property. "We must spare our enemies," one of the Peruvian princes is quoted as saying, "or it will be our loss, since they and all that belong to them must soon be ours." 59 It was a wise maxim, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... from all his family and from all his friends, except two or three confidants. While he was making preparation for his departure, most distressing and alarming news came from America—the retreat from Long Island, the loss of New York, the battle of White Plains, and the retreat through New Jersey. The American forces, it was said, reduced to a disheartened band of three thousand militia, were pursued by a triumphant army of thirty-three ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... lorgnon was turned threateningly on Hayden. "Very well, since you have brought this on yourself, you may take the consequences. I will continue with what I have to say. Mademoiselle, I have had a recent and most distressing interview with my son. To put it frankly, I was reproaching him with his devotion to a most ineligible young woman, and he, in a rage, informed me that he cared nothing for her, and proclaimed, openly ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... with the toes of the leopard, With intention of quickly disrobing, And rejoining the forsaken bride, He perceived her sitting erect on the couch, Biting shrewdly, with a distressing air of experience, At one ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... Daughter of Pandarus; within the grove's Thick foliage perch'd, she pours her echoing voice Now deep, now clear, still varying the strain 650 With which she mourns her Itylus, her son By royal Zethus, whom she, erring, slew,[85] So also I, by soul-distressing doubts Toss'd ever, muse if I shall here remain A faithful guardian of my son's affairs, My husband's bed respecting, and not less My own fair fame, or whether I shall him Of all my suitors follow to his home Who noblest ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... which have been refined and cultivated, perhaps over-cultivated by breeding and associations—you are troubled with nothing of the sort. Therefore if these surroundings, this discomfort, not to mention the appalling overtures of our lady friends, are distressing to you, why, consider how much more so ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the psychical aspects of the case, one thing was certain, that the influence of Kinnaird—Kinnaird alone of all those who had entered into relations with the lady—was useful at this time to come between her and the distressing symptoms that would have resulted from the mania of self-starvation. For some months longer she lived in comfort and good cheer. This clear memory of her youth was oddly interwoven with the forgetful dulness of old age, like a golden thread in a black web, like a tiny flame on the hearth ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the current became swifter and the turmoil of the rapids so great that I prepared my mind here to being swamped by the waves. The question whether I would abandon or try to rescue my knapsack after the wreck was distressing. The risk being over, it was with a sigh of relief that I beached the boat, now half full of water, at the nearest spot to the small town. Having moored it and given the sculls in charge of a man whose house was close by, I was soon walking in the warm glow of the September ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... 10 went to pieces, not against the Turks, but by mishap. The first assault made by one or two Companies succeeded, but the assailants were taken for Turks and were attacked in turn and driven off by others of our men. A most distressing affair. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... extensively in Philadelphia and New York, and generally throughout the eastern sections of the country. When these trees began to fill the ground with suckers and the vile-scented sterile flowers poisoned the balmy air of June and the water in the cisterns, occasioning many distressing cases of nausea, a reaction set in and hundreds of trees were cut down. The female trees, against the blossoms of which no such objection lay, were allowed to grow, and have often attained a height of 50-75 feet, with a trunk diameter of 3-5 feet. The fruit ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... dollar of these notes issued a full dollar's worth of silver bullion is at the time deposited in the Treasury as a security for its redemption. Upon this subject, as upon the tariff, my recommendation is that the existing laws be given a full trial and that our business interests be spared the distressing influence which threats of radical changes always impart. Under existing legislation it is in the power of the Treasury Department to maintain that essential condition of national finance as well as of commercial prosperity—the parity in use of the coined dollars ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ..." he muttered in supreme discomfort, swallowing great gulps which rose to his throat at this rash and disrespectful speech from the ex-actress. "Family feuds ... hem ... er ... very distressing of a truth ... and ... ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... all the authority of a command to put an end to the distressing spectacle. They desisted at length; and the screeching and affrighted wretches were permitted to take themselves away—all disappearing rapidly beyond the light of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... alleys; among dirt and ignorance and obstinacy. He spent his days in laboring among people upon whom he sometimes fancied he had obtained no hold. It really seemed that they did not want him—these people; and occasionally a more distressing view of the case presented itself to his troubled mind,—namely, that to those who might chance to want him he had little ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... humble faith address His mercy and his power; We shall obtain delivering grace In the distressing hour. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... sensitiveness to outward impressions made him peculiarly alive to this contrast. None was more open than he to the seducements of luxurious living, the polish of manners, the tacit exclusion of all that is ugly or distressing; but it seemed to him that fine living should be but the flower of fine feeling, and that such external graces, when they adorned a dull and vapid society, were as incongruous as the royal purple on a clown. Among certain of his new friends he found a clumsiness of manner somewhat absurdly allied ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Edward, while the young and lively members of the party seemed to find abundant amusement in the anecdotes and adventures he narrated. Arthur Myrvin gazed earnestly at him, and for a time banished his own distressing thoughts in the endeavour to trace in the fine manly youth before him some likeness to the handsome, yet violent and mischievous boy he had first and last seen in the village ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... harking-back to the days of our infancy or whether it is merely a manifestation to prove the inadvisability of partaking of Welsh rabbits and lobster salads immediately before retiring. More than once Mr. Leary had bedreamed thus, but at this moment he realised how much more dread and distressing may be a dire actuality than a vision conjured up out of ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... profounder slumbers. There was nothing here that might rudely awaken him—no sudden boat shocks, no tossings and heavings of waves, no hoarse, menacing thunders of wrathful surges from rocky shores; nor were there distressing dreams to harass him, or any anxieties carried from his waking hours into the land of slumbers to annoy and to arouse. From Monday night until this time on Thursday, he had known but little sleep, ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... impress on us how much we lost when the English landscapes were hidden—that the vistas which flitted past us as we hurried along were among the pleasantest features of our journey. It was little short of distressing to have mud fences shut from view some of the most fascinating country ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... announced as author. Suppose it were Passion's Perils! She would surely have to leave town after that! She would be too ashamed to stay. Still she would be proud, also, for by that time they would be calling her to Hollywood itself. Of course nothing so distressing—or so grand—had happened yet, for none of her dramas had been accepted; but she was coming on. It ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... towards God; although even this word is very rarely used in reference to man, because God's love infinitely exceeds human love; but God only can have [Hebrew: rHmiM], "mercy," upon man. But still a distressing thought might, and must be entertained by the wife. God's mercy and love have their limits; they extend only to the one case which dissolves even human marriage—the type of the heavenly marriage, the great mystery which the Apostle refers to Christ ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... for the exercise of her power, for its use in the service of her generation, became intense, and then faded away again, as obstacles presented their formidable array before the mind. In the midst of the confusion the thought of the Professor hovered vaguely, with a dim distressing sense of something wrong, of something within her lost and wretched ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... probability was in favour of it, and that, if his complaint should not take an unfavourable turn, he might be able to attend to business in about a month."[60] That unfavourable turn took place when the heroic spirit lost all hope under the distressing news from Berlin and Hanover. Austerlitz, it is true, had depressed him. Yet that, after all, did not concern British honour and the dearest ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... extensive, and complicated iniquity.—To what cause are we to impute this frigid silence—this torpid indifference—this cold inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of polluted integrity?—Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God and the world, to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant regions, and to exterminate oppression from the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... without limitation of time, (a thing unprecedented,) was fastened upon the bosom of her commerce, until life was extinguished. The ostensible object of this measure, was to force Great Britain to terms, by distressing the West Indies for food. But while England commanded the seas, her colonies were not likely to starve; and for the sake of this doubtful experiment, a certain and incalculable injury was inflicted upon the Northern States. Seamen, and the numerous ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... the multitude. Words cannot express the mixed emotions of true gratitude, reverence, sorrow and compassion which must have agitated their souls on this occasion. We find from John, who was also present, that Mary the mother of Jesus was a spectator of this distressing scene. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... lakes.... I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde movement of things, and I solemnly protest that a pecuniary reward of twenty thousand pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do, and, after all, perhaps to lose my character; as it is impossible, under such a variety of distressing circumstances, to conduct matters agreeably to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... and distressing truth occurred to me. Did she believe that I pitied her? I hoped not. Any woman of common sensibility would almost die of shame at the thought of being loved out of pity; and, what is more, she would think none the better of the man who pitied her. The belief that "pity ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... capable of putting a very great restraint upon his feelings, and he so behaved during the long and weary meal as to rouse no suspicions, either in Charlotte's breast or in the far sharper one of the Australian uncle. But, nevertheless, so distressing was the growing sense of coming calamity, that he felt the gay laugh of his betrothed almost distressing, and was truly relieved when he had to change it for the gravity of her father. As he went from the dining-room to Mr. Harman's study, he reflected with pleasure that his future ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... a person unwilling to forgive an insult, Arjuna of keen speech and prowess, and possessed of energy, betraying great fierceness and licking the corners of his mouth, said these words of grave import, smiling the while: "Oh, how painful, how distressing! I grieve to see this great agitation of thy heart, since having achieved such a superhuman feat, thou art bent upon forsaking this great prosperity. Having slain thy foes, and having acquired the sovereignty of the earth which has been won through observance of the duties of thy own order, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... refreshment they bore to the sick, were joyfully welcomed by the whole community; and the spirits of the settlers rose at the prospect of securing Indian friends and allies, who might, under their present distressing circumstances, afford them such essential help and security. The necessity for such aid had lately become more urgent than ever, for a party of their untiring enemies, the Nausetts, had very recently invaded the enclosure within ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... a few days since received the distressing intelligence of the death of my dear son John, a lieutenant in your Lordship's West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, after the sufferings of a protracted and painful illness; the melancholy event took place ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... voluntary deafness on the occasion. But not long afterwards, we were compelled, during an attack of disease which affected the nervous system, to hear the whole discordant performance repeated again and again, with a pertinacity which was really very distressing. Such a case prepares us to give credit to a far more remarkable story, related in one of the works of Macnish. A clergyman, we are told, who was a skilful violinist, and frequently played over some favourite solo or concerto, was obliged to desist from practice on account of the dangerous illness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... signs of neurasthenia," said the specialist. "These symptoms are distressing, but not at all serious or dangerous. You have been thinking a great deal too much about yourself and your feelings. You watch with morbid interest the perverted sensations that arise in various parts of your body. You ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... to the mourners. The Duchess of Kent by her will bequeathed her property to the Queen, and appointed the Prince Consort her sole executor. "He was so tender and kind," wrote the Queen, "so pained to have to ask me distressing questions, but spared me so much. Everything done so ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... weeping with all the unconcealed distressing grief of a disappointed child. She put her pretty be-ringed little hands in front of her face and recited the accumulation of ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... is at once the charm and the misery here. With all these unpretending materials it is one of the most amusing, but also one of the most distressing books we have read for many a long year. We almost long for a little exaggeration and improbability to relieve us of that sense of dead truthfulness which weighs down our hearts, not for the Amelias and Georges of the story, but for poor kindred human ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that Mr Aiken's poetry is merely a chemical compound of the 'nineties, Freud and introspective Imperialism; but we do think it is liable to resolve at the most inopportune moments into those elements, and that such moments occur with distressing frequency in the poem called 'The Charnel Rose.' 'Senlin' resists disruption longer. But the same elements are there. They are better but not sufficiently fused. The rhetoric forbids, for there is no cohesion in rhetoric. We have the ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... wrote. I am truly in serious distress for three or four guineas: can you, my dear sir, accommodate me? These accursed times by tripping up importation have, for this year at least, lopped off a full third of my income;[130] and with my large family this is to me a distressing matter. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... silent, forgetful of the hub-bub around her. It was then that her aunt called out to her, with distressing shrillness, from the carriage:— "Jinny, Jinny, how can you stand there talking to young men when ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... solemnly adjured by me to silence, I think I can answer, particularly when I give him a gentle hint of the station of Beckendorff, for his preserving the confidence with which it will now be our policy partially to entrust him. It is, to say the least, awkward and distressing to leave you alone; but what is to be done? It does not appear that I can now be of any material service to you. I have assisted you as much as, and more than, we could reasonably have supposed it would have been in my power to have done, by throwing ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the enlisted prisoners were packed. To stomachs that had been empty of food all day the odors were especially distressing. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... sea-captain relates the following fact, of which he was an eyewitness:—"A collier brig was stranded on the Yorkshire coast, and I had occasion to assist in the distressing service of rescuing a part of the crew by drawing them up a vertical cliff, two or three hundred feet in altitude, by means of a very small rope, the only material at hand. The first two men who caught hold ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... spread over the country. There were thousands of serious cases; men, women, and children were dying everywhere, unattended and under the most distressing circumstances. Hardly had the first of the foreign aid arrived when the immensity of the task required was recognized, and telegrams and cables were sent all over the world calling for further assistance. To this second appeal ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... said Lady Marcia, with a preoccupied look. "We have just heard distressing news. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the case with Mr. Goschen. Nothing can be less agreeable than his public style, whether on the platform or in the House of Commons. Its tawdry staginess, its "Sadler's Wells sarcasm," its constant striving after strong effects, are distressing to good taste. But in private life he is another and a much more agreeable man. He is courteous, genial, perfectly free from affectation, and enters into the discussion of social banalities as eagerly and as brightly as if he had never converted the Three per Cents, or established ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Grand-dad. You require the refining touches of art. Your beard is unkempt, your hair too long. You shall visit the barber after we have concluded our meal. It is distressing to mankind in general to behold a spectacle like you. You owe a duty to the world at large. You must visit ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... hope is sure in Jesus' might; Against themselves the godless fight, Themselves, not us, distressing; Shame and contempt their lot shall be; God is with us, with him are we: To us ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... lemon-peel on the curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. Well, he no sooner set is eyes upon those lemons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of moods, and the least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When this fit is on him—and it sometimes lasts all day—nothing can distract his melancholy. He refuses to eat, does not even read the newspapers; books, except as projectiles ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes, that the lightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far, that we should never again see their religious ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Thurstane entered, out of breath and red with haste. He had stolen ten minutes from his accounts and stores to bring Miss Van Diemen a piece of information which was to him important and distressing. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the devil was now over, and who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September the General came on board the Golden Hinde "to make merry with us." He greatly deplored the loss of his books and papers; and Mr. Hayes considered that the loss of manuscripts could not be so very distressing, and that there must have been something behind, certain gold ore, for instance, which had perished also— considerations not perhaps of particular value. He was full of confidence from what he had seen, and talked with ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... This distressing circumstance in the life of Hagar was a link in a great chain of events, which were connected together by an invisible agency, and held in the divine hands. A superficial observer might see nothing in all that transpired ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself. But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in of an ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of them saw in their dreams the freedom of the Southern Slav, but Serbia and Montenegro were the only portions of his patrimony which had any kind of independence and the Serbia of Alexander was in a distressing state. The Prince had managed to stay neutral during the Crimean War, in spite of the solicitations very vehemently put by Austria and Russia and the Porte; this neutral attitude secured for Serbia at the peace ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... biographer of Burns accomplished; and, with his means of information, copious as in some respects they were, it would have been absurd to attempt it. The only motive, therefore, which could authorize the writing and publishing matter so distressing to read—is wanting! ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of thing I have only a despairing admiration. I can get an impression if I am given time and can think about it beforehand. But it requires thought. This fact was all the more distressing to me in as much as one of the leading editors of America had made me a proposal, as honourable to him as it was lucrative to me, that immediately on my arrival in London;—or just before it,—I should send him a thousand words on the genius of the English, ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... the downfall of the human race through undue mental development, who foresee us (flatteringly, I must say) winding up the world's history in a kind of intellectual apotheosis. They write distressing pages about the strain of study in schools, the strain of examinations, the strain of competition, the strain of night-work, when children ought to be in bed, the strain of day-work, when they ought to be at play. An article on "Nerves and Over-Pressure" in the "Dublin Review" conveys the impression ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... From the hospital-tent distressing groans and screams came forth. The surgeons, both Confederate and Federal, were busy, with coats off, sleeves rolled up, shirt-fronts and hands bloody. But our work lay ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... worth thinking of;—but if he, who had undoubtedly been always so much the most in love of the two, were to be returning with the same warmth of sentiment which he had taken away, it would be very distressing. If a separation of two months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before her:—caution for him and for herself would be necessary. She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the distressing circumstances surrounding you, I should deeply regret my misplaced confidence in your character; and certainly you must acquit me of the selfishness that could desire to engross ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... shot-silk quality, and is all the finer for that. When people talk of a horse as an ugly animal I think of its beautiful moments, but when I hear a flow of indiscriminate praise of its beauty I think of such an aspect as one gets for example from a dog-cart, the fiddle-shaped back, and that distressing blade of the neck, the narrow clumsy place between the ears, and the ugly glimpse of cheek. There is, indeed, no beauty whatever save that transitory thing that comes and comes again; all beauty is really the beauty of expression, is really kinetic and momentary. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... and yet that night she did not sleep any better than on the preceding nights. The worst anxiety had gone, but so much that was distressing in her situation remained. Since Will was alive now, he would continue to live. And that little circumstance of his remembering about the clocks was full of promise—that is, promise concerning himself. It implied that he meant to go on much as usual. He would ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... close of the year 1824, Mr. Adams responded to a like intimation: "You will be disappointed. To me both alternatives are distressing in prospect. The most formidable is that of success. All the danger is on the pinnacle. The humiliation of failure will be so much more than compensated by the safety in which it will leave me, that I ought to regard it as a consummation devoutly to ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... easy thing to see a man meet death, but under these circumstances it was particularly distressing. The Chief had been a man of a strong constitution particularly adapted to the health-racking work of a rubber-hunter. He it was who with his forest-wisdom had planned all our moves, and had mapped our course through the blind forest, where a man could be lost as easily as on the open sea. ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... of the sinking of the Lusitania as it comes this morning is most distressing," said former President Taft on his arrival from Madison today. "It presents a situation of the most difficult character, properly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... language in respect of swearwords, for it is by no means rich in those “ornaments to conversation.” Except for a few very distressing expressions, now better forgotten, which are put into the mouths of the evil characters in the Dramas, the swears are mostly quite harmless, and even pious. It is not at all difficult or morally dangerous to ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... isn't taken away; I know it's there," persisted Amy, who had evidently been distressing herself with the question how a heart, sinful on earth, could be fit for the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... offer annuities at rates graduated according to ages, on a sliding-scale infinitely more advantageous than what are called tontines, which are based on tables of mortality that are notoriously false. Our company deals with large masses of men; consequently the annuitants are secure from those distressing fears which sadden old age,—too sad already!—fears which pursue those who receive annuities from private sources. You see, Monsieur, that we have estimated life under ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was exemplified the old adage, "that man is but the creature of circumstances." Who could have foretold that in two short weeks we should think so differently, and yet in that fortnight of dark anxiety, undefined dread and forebodings, more distressing than reality itself, we had seemed to live years of misery. The bodily sufferings we had endured from the heat and burning fever of the scorching sun seemed as nothing in comparison with the horrors we afterwards underwent, and it was almost impossible to imagine that we had ever deprecated ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... near its end when Lord Kildonan, in the Embassy at Lisbon, received a letter that for once gravely disturbed that vain man and neglectful father. Saul was dead. The scene at Frank's burial had been very distressing. The day was awful in blackness and wind: the bearers, staggering blindly along under the flapping black pall, found it a hard job, when they emerged from the porch of the minster, to make their way to the grave. Mrs. Ashton was in her room—women ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... we had found in collecting a body of evidence, and the critical situation in which we then were, was peculiarly distressing; but we had no remedy left us, nor could we reasonably complain. Three therefore were selected, and they were sent to deliver their testimony ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... which had been imposed on him by a desire to avoid unnecessarily distressing his mother, had been years of thought, perhaps the richer and riper from the fact that he had refrained from active participation in political life. Like all his class at the South, he was, if not a politician by instinct, at least familiar from early boyhood with the subtle discussion of political ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... hills of Campania when covered with snow. At Alexandria he was subjected to tribute by the avaricious governor, who paid no regard to the written orders of the sultan. The treatment which he received at Cairo was still more distressing. He was thrown into prison, and in this extremity he asked counsel of God; whereupon it was miraculously revealed to him, that thirteen denari, such as he had presented to the other Mussulman, would produce here an equally favourable result. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... fled, or possibly from there being but very few men in that locality; for, as the women informed us, ten canoes had gone away to make an attack upon the neighboring islands. The wanderers had returned from the mountains in such an emaciated condition, that it was distressing to see them; when we asked them how it was that they lost themselves, they said that the trees were so thick and close that they could not see the sky; some of them who were mariners had climbed the trees to ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... enough—frequently lays little emphasis on important points which he considers are sufficiently familiar, in order to give prominent place and emphasis to some more novel point. Herein lies, it would now appear, the explanation of the seeming disharmony between Intuition and Intellect which was gravely distressing to many in his earlier writing on the subject. Later works, however, make a point of restoring this harmony, but, as William James has remarked: "We are so subject to the philosophical tradition which treats logos, or discursive thought generally, as the sole avenue to truth, that to ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... at birth, it may be said frankly that he was not imposing. He was not chubby nor rosy; had no dimples. His face was a puckered protest at the infliction of animal life. In the white garments conventional to his age he was a distressing travesty, even when he gurgled. In the nude he was quite impossible to all but the most hardened mothers, and he was never photographed thus in a washbowl. Even his own mother, before he had survived to her one short year, began to harbour the accursed suspicion ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... She sings of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of passion—among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after page is full of thought—for, vast as the strain may be, it is never empty—but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looked towards him for an eulogistic blessing, But got instead a general and comprehensive curse, We are, as he informed us, with an emphasis distressing, By nature inartistic, and are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... facings,—painful manoeuvrings, on both sides of the Rhine and of the Neckar,—without result farther to the French, without memorability to either side. About the middle of August, Friedrich Wilhelm went away;—health much hurt by his month under canvas, amid Rhine inundations, and mere distressing phenomena. Crown-Prince Friedrich and a select party escorted his Majesty to Mainz, where was a Dinner of unusual sublimity by the Kurfurst there; [15th August (Fassmann, p. 511.)]—Dinner done, his Majesty ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Imperial Family made them ready not only to capitulate but to run away. The chief point at issue was, however, not the fate of the monarchy, which was a dead thing, but simply what was going to happen to Chang Hsun's head—a matter which was profoundly distressing Chang Hsun. The Republican army had placed a price of L10,000 on it, and the firebrands were advocating that the man must be captured, dead or alive, and suffer decapitation in front of the Great Dynastic Gate of the Palace as a revenge for his perfidy. Round this issue ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... exactly the confidant Mr. Wylder would choose, I suspect, in a case of that very painful, and, I will say, distressing character—I rather think—indeed, I ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... terror that he was dead, but we did not give it utterance; there was no need. We knew that the same fear was in both our minds, and we tried to avoid it. We imagined that we ought to be very cheerful, and banish all gloomy and distressing subjects. It was a kind of hymeneal day with us! There were wild altars in our thoughts, hung with garlands, and lighted up by sunshine; and to these we brought our vows and offerings, and all the mirth and gayety, without much speech, we could summon into our looks. There was a visible effort ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the fresh turn of affairs now presented difficulties that were likely to upset his hastily conceived strategy. He had but one purpose in view, and that was to spare her an unpleasant encounter with the government officials,—an encounter that conceivably might result in very distressing complications. He had revealed his plan to her and she apparently was very much taken with it,—indeed, she was quite enthusiastic over the prospect of being whisked unceremoniously to Crowndale, and thence to the home of his sister in New York City, where ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... there is no cure for it. Proper attention paid to the diet will relieve the distressing symptoms to a certain extent, but they will undoubtedly reappear in their intensity the first time the animal overloads the stomach or is allowed food of bad quality. Clover hay or bulky feed which contains but little nutriment have much to do with the cause of the disease, and therefore ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... had occurred, to work this awful, this portentous change? Why, if she had known all, if she had suddenly shared that sharp and perpetual woe ever gnawing at his own secret heart, even amid his joys; if he had revealed to her, if anyone had betrayed to her his distressing secret, could she have said more? Why, it was to shun this, it was to spare himself this horrible catastrophe, that he had involved himself in his agonising, his inextricable difficulties. Inextricable they must be now; for where, now, was the inspiration that before was to animate him to such ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... briefly for that. But she is admitted to be a fine portrait of the Russian woman as she was about to become, not as she then existed. Gontcharoff's "An Every-day Story" is also celebrated; equally so is his "The Ravine," a very distressing picture of the unprincipled character of an anarchist. As the author changed his mind about the hero in part while writing the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... discord, were distressing to Franklin. In answer to an address from Richmond, which deplored the absence, and invoked the restoration, of social peace, he expressed his anxiety with touching ardour:—"With my whole heart I agree with you. Let us be divided then, if we cannot be united in political ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... only poison to those who, from any cause of corporal debility or mental affliction, are liable to the above diseases;—but it is also too frequently found to render the most healthy victims of these alarming complaints. And as nervous disorders are the most complicated in their distressing circumstances, the greater care should be taken to avoid such aliments as produce them, as well as to choose those which are the most proper for their relief and prevention. Those who are now suffering from the inconsiderate ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... does not suspect. I thought there was no need of distressing her. I wanted to tell you while I was able, because—" Harry hesitated, then he continued: "Father wanted to tell you how sorry he was not to make any better provision for you," he said, pitifully. "He didn't want you to think it was ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are variable. If the coffin joint has been invaded, and a septic arthritis exists, the condition is at once grave. An open and infected tendon sheath, while not so serious, constitutes a condition which is distressing, and recovery is slow even under the most favorable conditions. Where a heavy, rigid and sharp nail enters the foot, in such manner that fracture of the third phalanx (os pedis) occurs, this complication makes for a protraction of the condition. Experience teaches that the natural course ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Cot became Madame Theophile Mineur; on the day of the wedding little Berenice—named after a particularly uncanny heroine of Poe's by his relentless French admirer—scratched the long features of her stepfather. The entire town accepted this as a distressing omen and it was not deceived; Berenice Cot grew up in the likeness of a determined young lady whose mother weakly endured her tyranny, whose new ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ago, when I met him at a charity function in Paris. The poor man has had a rather chequered life; twenty years ago he married a woman who was perfectly charming, but who is, I believe, very ill with a distressing malady: I am not even sure that she is not insane. Quite lately Etienne Rambert has been compelled to ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... that Alice, whose memory was clear and strong on all points in which her heart was interested, was lying in a manner senseless: that Jane Wilson was (to use her own word, so expressive to a Lancashire ear) "dazed"; that is to say, bewildered, lost in the confusion of terrifying and distressing thoughts; incapable of concentrating her mind; and at the best of times Will's proceedings were a matter of little importance to her (or so she pretended), she was so jealous of aught which distracted attention from her pearl of price, her only son Jem. So Mary felt hopeless of obtaining any ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down, and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... innocent cause; and he no sooner saw her in the post-office, than he promised himself revenge, such revenge as only the meanest and most cowardly spirit could have taken pleasure in. His best way of distressing Ellen, he found, was through her horse; he had almost satisfied himself; but very naturally his feeling of spite had grown stronger and blunter with indulgence, and he meant to wind up with such a treatment of her pony, real ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... time, of the remissness of the secretary of war in giving him full information. In a friendly but decisive tone he wrote to Mr. M'Henry on the subject. "Short letters," he said, "taking no notice of suggestions or queries, are unsatisfactory and distressing. Considering the light in which I think my services have placed me, I should expect more attention from the secretary of war; but from Mr. M'Henry, as a friend and coadjutor, I certainly shall ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the seventeenth of December we set sail from that country of revolutions. Things soon dropped into working order, and I found reason to be pleased with the change of crew. We glided smoothly along down the river, thence wishing never again to see Rosario under the distressing circumstances through which she had ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none—a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime Minister was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... housing. Until this is effected, all other efforts to raise them mentally and morally must fail of their expected result. The London Times, and other metropolitan, and many local, journals publish almost daily distressing accounts of the miserable tenements occupied by the men and women whose labor makes England the garden of fertility and beauty that it is. Editors are making the subject the theme of able and stirring articles, and some of the most eloquent ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the good name of Lillian May, wanted to go with him. She, too, it appeared, was fresh from a Sunday-school book—one in which a girl of her own age was so proud of her long raven curls that she was brought to an illness and all her hair came out. There was a distressing picture of this little girl after a just Providence had done its work as a depilatory. And after she recovered from the fever, it seemed, she had cared to do nothing but read the Scriptures to bed-ridden old ladies—even after a good deal of her hair came in again—though ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the article stolen; but stealing within the community, and perhaps even more so within the clan or village, is regarded as such a disgraceful offence, more so, I believe, than either killing or adultery, that its mere discovery involves a distressing punishment to the offender. As regards wounding and killing, the recognised rule is blood for blood, and a life for a life. The recognised code for adultery will be stated in the chapter ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... affairs was eliciting warm debates in Congress. In that report he had suggested two methods for modifying or removing commercial restrictions: first, by amicable arrangements with foreign powers; and, secondly, by counteracting acts of the legislature. With the design, as we have seen, of distressing France by cutting off her supplies, two orders in council were issued by the British government, one in June and the other in November, which bore heavily upon the commercial prosperity of the United States. By the first order, British cruisers ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... drive horses and carts to Tombelaine, but this should not encourage strangers to take any chances, for the fate of the English lady who was swallowed up by the sands in sight of the ramparts and whose body now lies in the little churchyard of the town, is so distressing that any repetition of such tragedies would tend to cast a shade over the glories of ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... complete gratification of all his wishes without effort on his part, leaving nothing for his hopes, desires or struggles. The feeling that life is destitute of any motive or necessity for action, must be of all others the most distressing and insupportable to a rational being. The Marquis de Spinola asking Sir Horace Vere what his brother died of, Sir Horace replied, "He died, Sir, of having nothing to do." "Alas!" said Spinola, "that is enough to kill ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... now and then a breathing-time during which their hopes were revived and their numbers recruited. It was observed, too, that the princes, of whose cruelty they had reason to complain, generally ended their career under very distressing circumstances. An ecclesiastical writer who is supposed to have flourished towards the commencement of the fourth century has discussed this subject in a special treatise, in which he has left behind him a very striking ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... that if she did not grant them such and such indulgences, they would tell their bed-ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronte. He was so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went home for his holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct,—at one time in the highest spirits, at another in deepest depression,—accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability of disposition bordering on ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... visit to Paris; and speaking as a man who has children himself, I am sure it has not been well, either for Miss Daisy or for your son, to have become absorbed, as they could hardly help becoming, in this distressing business." ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... had, they still obstinately obtrude their tears, their sighs their groans, they wear a solemn face, and try to persuade others by all their acts, that their grief will end only with their life. This sad and distressing vanity is commonly found in ambitious women. As their sex closes to them all paths to glory, they strive to render themselves celebrated by showing an inconsolable affliction. There is yet another kind of tears ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... most fortunate to have met you! Your arrival has already been notified to us by the avant-courier of the fashionable intelligence, so that we are well aware," here laughing lightly, "of the distinctive right you have to a hearty welcome in Naples. I am only sorry that any distressing news should have darkened the occasion of your return here after so long an absence. Permit me to express the hope that it may at least be the only cloud for you on ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... ill-defined, it becomes of vital practical moment to clarify the atmosphere as far as possible with conceptions borrowed from the natural life. Few things are less understood than the conditions of the spiritual life. The distressing incompetence of which most of us are conscious in trying to work out our spiritual experience is due perhaps less to the diseased will which we commonly blame for it than to imperfect knowledge of the right conditions. It does not occur to us how natural the spiritual is. We still strive ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... her!' cried Frank, forgetting that he could not be understood, and raising her in his arms, as the chair was withdrawn; but she did not speak or move, and there was a distressing throng and confusion of strange voices, seeming to hem them in as Constance looked round, unable to call up a single word of German, or to understand the exclamations. Then, as she always said, it was like an angel's voice that said, 'What is it?' as through the crowd ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over by and by, Betty, and see what can be done;" and she shut the drawer upon the pathetic relics. "You must be ready to meet your responsibilities better than this," she said sharply to her niece, but Betty was already hurrying out of the door. She did not mind Aunt Barbara, but Aunt Mary in the distressing silk wrapper that belonged to cross days was too much for one to bear. They had no business to be looking over her bureau drawer; then Betty was sorry for having been so ill-natured about it. Letty had told her, earlier, ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... smoking constantly, saying nothing. This gentleman's name—it was altogether a disjointed, feverish business anyway—had never been pronounced in Parr's hearing. The stranger had seemed at once a torment and a comfort to Mr. Teck. Occasionally, when Parr entered, it was as if he had interrupted a distressing scene. Mr. Teck had then jumped up with a queer smile, knocking against the chairs as he went to look out of the window. There the strange gentleman would join him, to put his hand on his shoulder, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... jotted down on a slip of paper included three possibilities. "Eggs, stuffed, devilled, or farci," she had written, and the Goblin was endeavouring to decide which of these presented the least distressing responsibility. He was a student of mathematics, and had attempted to reduce the problem to a logical syllabus. He read ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... you in any way," Theron went on, "I beg you to tell me how. I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to be drifting apart has given me much pain. But now it is still more distressing to find you actually disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother Gorringe, between a pastor and a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... being reduced to the necessity of driving a simple but warlike, and, as IT NOW APPEARS, NOBLE MINDED RACE, from their native hunting grounds, is a measure in itself so distressing, that I am willing to make almost any prudent sacrifice that may tend to compensate for the injuries that government is unwillingly and unavoidably ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... and critical. Waldteufel, waltz-master, at the piano. War clouds rising; a distressing dinner; war declared; false news of victories. War play and a Virginia reel with the Emperor. War scenes in Paris and its environs; the Commune proclaimed; murder of the peacemakers; shooting of Generals Thomas and Lecomte; Madame ministers ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... of it," interrupted Colonel Pinckney. "She loves to complain and make herself an object of sympathy. Poor Harry, of course, had a constant cough, and whenever he took cold all his distressing symptoms were aggravated: then she'd write her letters. By the time they were received he would be pretty well again. You can see for yourself what she is: she sends for Doctor Harris, has Adele sleep on a mattress on the floor in her room, leaving little Harry to keep you awake all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... naturalist, it was decided that he should return to England. Accordingly, they parted at Barra when Wallace started on his long journey up the Rio Negro, the duration of which was uncertain; and it was not until many months after the sad event that he heard the distressing news that Herbert had died of yellow fever on the eve of his departure from Para for home. Fortunately, Bates was in Para at the time, and did what he could for the boy until stricken down himself with the same sickness, from which, however, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... "you must cheer up. Of course it's very distressing, very painful and all that. But do you know, it ain't such a bad thing either for you or me? What with his death and your visit to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most distressing to a man on the defense to see the enemy, regardless of everything he can do, advance step by step. He begins to question within himself the efficacy of his fire, which is to doubt his own ability. The more he questions and worries, the less effective his aim ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... the Cabinet and in touch with dissatisfied Republicans outside, was a menace to impartial administration. Less distressing, but noisier than he, was John C. Fremont, the first nominee of the party, who had sulked in the midst of admiring friends since Lincoln had removed him from important military service in 1861. About him the extreme abolitionists were gathered, and in his favor there was held a convention ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... MONSTER.—A day or two since, a gentleman travelling along the road near Colnbrook, had his attention attracted to the screams of a child in the care of a tramping woman, who had with her, two other children totally blind. The cries of the child were so distressing, that he insisted on knowing the cause; but; not getting a satisfactory answer, he forcibly removed a bandage from its eyes, when, horrid to relate, he found these encased with two small perforated ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the upper below and the lower above, and begin to work. Presently the upper and lower jaws become entirely disassociated, the egg is encompassed and forced down into the throat. The process seems a most distressing one to the snake, for so great is the distension of the flesh tissues and the skin that they become semitransparent, revealing the colour of the egg. When the egg is safe in the stomach, the shell submits to the action of the gastric juices, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Greece, determined the democratic character of all their political institutions. And these institutions reacted upon the character of the people and intensified their love of liberty. This passionate love of personal freedom, amounting almost to disease, excited them to a constant and almost distressing vigilance. And it is not to be wondered at if it displayed itself in an extreme jealousy of their rulers, an incessant supervision and criticism of all their proceedings, and an intense and passionate hatred of tyrants and of tyranny. The popular legislator or ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... it was supposed that his sufferings, though great, were not the immediate cause of his death. On the 12th, the mate's boat separated from the other two, and did not fall in with them afterwards. The situation of the mate and his crew, became daily more and more distressing. The weather was mostly calm, the sun hot and scorching. They were growing weaker and weaker by want of food, and yet, such was their distance from land, that they were obliged to lessen their allowance nearly one half. On the 20th, a black ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... Though our legal advisers insisted that the university was sure of winning the case, we lost it in every court—first in the Supreme Court of the State, then in the Court of Appeals, and finally in the Supreme Court of the United States. To me all this was most distressing. The creation of such a library would have been the culmination of my work; I could then have sung my Nunc dimittis. But the calamity was not without its compensations. When the worst was known, Mr. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... disconsolate mother felt her uneasiness increase. In the struggle betwixt her affection for her son and the secret which she must keep from the monarch, for the sake of her uncle's honour, her situation was as distressing as that of Shaseliman. There was at the Court of Bensirak an old slave of Selimansha, who had accompanied the Queen into Egypt, and who since that time had remained in her service. He had all her confidence, and was frequently the depository ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... by the general assembly, as prescribed by the constitution of this state; we do, therefore, solemnly declare and protest against the aforesaid assumption of powers, as exercised by the said judges, and we do, with heartfelt sensibility, deprecate the serious and distressing consequences which followed such decision; yet we forbear to look with severity on the past, in consequence of judicial precedents, calculated in some measure to extenuate the conduct of the judges, and hope that for the future this explicit ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... cried, and fell once more into delicious laughter. But from this access she more speedily recovered. "This is all very well," said she, nodding at him gravely, "but I am still in a most distressing situation, from which, if you deny me your help, I shall find it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the disturbance between Willett and Case, ascribing it to Case's vinous excitement after some transaction at cards, and though Archer believed the bookkeeper totally innocent of any part in the distressing affair that followed, both he and Bentley believed it due to everybody that Case's possible connection with it be looked into. With Craney they visited Case's own sanctum in the store building not two hours after the sound of the shot. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... consequence, weakens the singer's control over his voice-mechanism, makes inspiration through the nostrils awkward and, when the air has to be renewed quickly, even impossible, obliging the singer to breathe in violently, pantingly, and with other disagreeable and distressing symptoms of effort, through the mouth. The correct method of breathing involves only what may be called the breathing-muscles, but it utilizes all of these, thus insuring complete and effectual action; whereas clavicular breathing secures only a partial cooperation of these muscles, ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... friends?'—'I had—but, by God's blessing, Have not been troubled with them lately. Now I have answer'd all your questions without pressing, And you an equal courtesy should show.' 'Alas!' said Juan, ''t were a tale distressing, And long besides.'—'Oh! if 't is really so, You 're right on both accounts to hold your tongue; A sad tale saddens doubly, when ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... I cannot suppose any situation more distressing, than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be bound to such a man as I have described for life; obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste, lest her perception ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is situated at the west end of the town near the fort, close to which there is a public fountain supplied by the aqueduct to which I have already alluded. Brass taps were arranged around the covered stone reservoir, but I remarked a distressing waste of water, as a continual flow escaped from an uncontrolled shoot which poured in a large volume uselessly into the street. Within a few yards of the reservoir was a solitary old banian tree (ficus religiosa), around which a crowd ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of passion—among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after page is full of thought—for, vast as the strain may be, it is never empty—but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tells himself, "we arrive at something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gloonen, Antrim, Dromore, Crosshill, Artrea, Armagh, and so on. And the net result of this policy was that when Bishop Holmes, the Brethren's Historian, published his "History of the Brethren" (1825), he had to record the distressing fact that in England the Moravians had only twenty congregations, in Ireland only six, and that the total number of members was only four thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven. The question is sometimes asked to-day: How is it that the Moravian Church ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... not according to his promise; distressing reports were circulated among the troops; and the royalists, having waited for him almost a fortnight, disbanded in spite of the fears and entreaties of their commander. At last, on the eighteenth day, the King arrived in Milford ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... affair has reached a thoroughly satisfactory culmination, I trust that things will again assume their normal appearance. For the past month or so Barbara has been most distraite; uncle has so evidently tried to be cheerful that the effort has been distressing; and you, little Lady Betty, have been racking your precious brains for a scheme to ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... gentleman, you know. He drank too; not to be intoxicated, but too much—too much! For he will find the temperance man too many for him. I'll win the race, the waiting race;" and he laughed again in a distressing, hysterical fashion, that ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... acquiesced Dumps, evidently pleased with the subject. He was beginning to get happy. 'I hope not, but distressing cases frequently occur during the first two or three days of a child's life; fits, I am told, are exceedingly common, and alarming convulsions are almost matters ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Sayce, of Oxford, wrote a letter, which was published in The Argus, pointing out the obligation that lay upon the Australian colonies to make a scientific study of a vanishing speech. The duty would be stronger were it not for the distressing lack of pence that now is vexing public men. Probably a sum of L300 a year would suffice for an educated inquirer, but his full time for several years would be needed. Such an one should be trained ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... fact these cases are deplorable and they are Real objects of pitty—they are still confined and in houses where there is no fire—poor mortals, with little or no clothes—perishing with hunger, offering eight dollars in paper for one in silver to Relieve there distressing hunger; occasioned for want of food—there natures are broke and gone, some almost loose there voices and some there hearing—they are crouded into churches & there guarded night and day. I cant paint the horable ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Maizie left him with his dog. They had just ensconced themselves comfortably on the steps of the cottage when a distressing accent struck upon their ears, and simultaneously they turned in the direction of the sound. There on a tiny verandah, almost hidden behind a large fern growth, a little girl sat on a low chair crying softly and pathetically as though ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... this distressing statement had to do in some way with the rest of the trip. She stifled her curiosity. Painful knowledge of that ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... towards Brussels, in a sort of running fight, closely pursued by the enemy; the terror of the fugitives now almost amounted to frenzy, and they flew like maniacs escaping from a madhouse. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more distressing scene. A great deal of rain had fallen during the night, and the unhappy fugitives were obliged literally to wade through mud. I had, from the first, determined to await my fate in Brussels; but on this eventful morning, I walked a few miles on the road to Antwerp, to endeavour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... Tuileries to my sister's house was most distressing. We saw several Swiss pursued and killed, and musket-shots were crossing each other in all directions. We passed under the walls of the Louvre; they were firing from the parapet into the windows of the gallery, to hit the knights of the dagger; for thus did the populace ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... thought Mr. Evringham, "this is very distressing. She seems to have lucid intervals, and then so quickly ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abominable din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive. And to make matters still more distressing, the rascally little scape-grace in the steeple was evidently exerting himself to the utmost. Every now and then one might catch a glimpse of the scoundrel through the smoke. There he sat in the belfry upon the belfry-man, who was lying flat upon his back. In his teeth the villain held ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Wales still continue, though the apprehension of some of the rioters who destroyed the Pontardulais gate has had some effect. The following distressing scene ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... though his natural reserve prevented his addressing Edward, while the young and lively members of the party seemed to find abundant amusement in the anecdotes and adventures he narrated. Arthur Myrvin gazed earnestly at him, and for a time banished his own distressing thoughts in the endeavour to trace in the fine manly youth before him some likeness to the handsome, yet violent and mischievous boy he had first and last seen in ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... are all at Florence quite safe, and You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing! We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the troubles. Now you are really besieged; they tell us it soon will be over; Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city. Do you see Mr. Claude?—I thought he might do something for you. I am quite sure on occasion he really ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... an invariable rule that matrimony and good-fellowship can never go together. You're not half the brick you used to be, Fred; but I suppose it can't be helped. There's a degree of slow-coachiness about you which I take to be peculiarly distressing, and if you don't take care it ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... a sudden and summary cleavage between families many distressing and pathetic scenes were witnessed. On board there happened to be a wealthy young member of the Russian nobility—Prince L——. He was travelling with his sister and friends and was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... visitor, in the way the sad and disillusioned have, to things it supposes a stranger would not understand if he were told. He has reason, therefore, to say we are dull. And Dockland, with its life so uniform that it could be an amorphous mass overflowing a reef of brick cells, I think would be distressing to a sensitive stranger, and even a little terrifying, as all that is alive but inexplicable must be. No more conscious purpose shows in our existence than is seen in the coral polyp. We just go on increasing and forming more cells. Overlooking our ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... violence and magnitude it obliterated every sensation of onward movement; and the effect was of being shaken in a stationary apparatus like a mediaeval device for the punishment of crime, or some very newfangled invention for the cure of a sluggish liver. It was extremely distressing; and the raising of Mrs Verloc's mother's voice sounded ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Derby—a good letter, simple and frank, like himself, full of enthusiasm and of plans for making the "Little Devil" a model settlement. He would arrive in Rome, he told her, within a week. But even John's letter gave her only a few moments' relief from her distressing memories. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the ordinary pictorial observation. The Goncourts only tell you the things that Gautier leaves out; they find new, fantastic points of view, discover secrets in things, curiosities of beauty, often acute, distressing, in the aspects of quite ordinary places. They see things as an artist, an ultra-subtle artist of the impressionist kind, might see them; seeing them indeed always very consciously with a deliberate attempt upon them, in just that partial, selecting, creative way in which an ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... sat alone in the embrasure, living a life of emotion in a few minutes; nor did she find any calm for her agitated spirits until the thought flashed upon her that she was distressing herself needlessly. It was most improbable that Colonel Philibert, after years of absence and active life in the world's great affairs, could retain any recollection of the schoolgirl of the Manor House of Tilly. She might meet him, nay, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he ate very little, and that he had a distressing and nearly constant cough, and afterward, as we sat on the piazza, I said, 'Let us go inside, Antony; there is a cold wind, and you ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... that Miss Morrison was "half out of her mind over the distressing affair" had prepared him to encounter a weeping, red-eyed, heart-broken creature of the most excitable type. He found instead a pale, serious-faced, undemonstrative girl of somewhat uncertain age, sweet of voice, soft of step, quiet ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... upon Gov. Wise, who occupied lodgings at the same hotel. He was worn out, and prostrated by a distressing cough which threatened pneumonia. But ever and anon his eagle eye assumed its wonted brilliancy. He was surrounded by a number of his devoted friends, who listened with rapt attention to his surpassing eloquence. A test ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... calculated to appeal to almost anybody. It has just occurred to me quite involuntarily while you were speaking. Many of our clients want to know if they cannot send the judge, who is trying the case, a present of some sort, or maybe loan him a little money; and it is always distressing to be obliged to tell them—usually— that it is quite out of the question; that it would only get them into trouble. Of course, occasionally we let them send the judge a box of cigars, but always with the compliments of our adversary —never our own. Now this shows ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... this bald way the thing may sound incredible, but those whose recollections carry them back to the opening years of the century will bear me out in saying that this was far from being either the most distressing or the most remarkable among the outworkings of what was then extolled as a broad spirit of tolerance. Our "tolerance," our vaunted "cosmopolitanism," were far more dangerous factors of our national life, had we but known it, than either the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... keep the story of his midnight visit to herself, at least for a time; and now here he was again, and his coming had evidently startled her friend. She wanted, above all things, to have a frank talk with Mrs. Truscott. This keeping a secret from her was distressing, and she could not bear the thought of a possible cloud or misunderstanding between them, but poor Grace had totally forgotten the existence of such a person as Wolf by the time they got home. She ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... dawn, he had found himself the sole survivor, as he supposed, of the catastrophe; and of the alternations of hope and despair that had been his throughout the day when the brig appeared in sight, drifted up to within three short miles of him, and there lay becalmed. The most distressing part of his experience, perhaps, consisted in the fact that, although an excellent swimmer, and quite capable of covering the distance between himself and the brig, he had found himself beset by a school of sharks, and therefore dared not forsake the refuge of the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were sensible of their loss, and truly it was a distressing scene. His eldest son and daughter, the former about fourteen, the latter about two years older, lay on the coffin, kissing his lips, and were with difficulty torn away ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... complained to the commanding officer, and on the affair being inquired into it was discovered that the sentinel himself had committed the theft. The man was tried by a court-martial, and condemned to death, a circumstance which, as may naturally be supposed, was very distressing to us. Madame de Bourrienne applied to the commanding officer for the man's pardon, but could only obtain his reprieve. The regiment departed some weeks after, and we could never learn what was the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that the tints were a few shades deeper on the visage of Maurice. His eyes were of a darker blue; his glossy hair was tinged with chestnut, while Bertha's shone with unmingled gold; but, like Bertha's, his recreant locks had a strong tendency to curl, and lay in rich clusters upon his brow, distressing him by a propensity which he deemed effeminate. His mouth was as ripely red as hers, but somewhat larger, firmer, and less bland in its character. His eyebrows, too, were more darkly traced, supplying a want only too obvious in her countenance. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... are great social events, and upon such occasions, because it is custom to have a priest, the better classes of people even call in the services of the priests, in whom they have no confidence. The effect upon the beliefs of these better classes is most distressing. Spiritism, materialism and atheism are rampant, and one could well believe that these people set adrift without spiritual guides are in a worse condition than if they were still devout believers in the ancient practices of the Roman ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... So distressing was this outlook, that her mind refused to be diverted, and after a brief hesitation she returned to the house, intent on a more satisfactory financial arrangement. Now Tootsie was as fond of mystery stories ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... from" (here there came a long word which I could not quite catch, only it was much longer than kleptomania), "and has but lately recovered from embezzling a large sum of money under singularly distressing circumstances; but he has quite got over it, and the straighteners say that he has made a really wonderful recovery; you are sure to ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Cured.—This most distressing and most agonizing complaint may be quickly and entirely cured by a thorough course of treatment with Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. This remedy should be taken continuously; not a day should pass without ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... failures excited spasms of blind fury which left him weak and spent; he began to suffer the depressing tortures of insomnia. At times the nerves in his face and neck twitched unaccountably, and this distressing affection spread. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... but this should not encourage strangers to take any chances, for the fate of the English lady who was swallowed up by the sands in sight of the ramparts and whose body now lies in the little churchyard of the town, is so distressing that any repetition of such tragedies would tend to cast a shade over the glories ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... a journey, Paulina, on business," he said; "business, which I can only transact myself. I shall, therefore, be compelled to be absent from you for a week; it may be even more. Perhaps we shall never meet again. Will that be very distressing to you?" ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... delight to labour. Up till now she had seen no reverse to the picture of life as youth had painted it for her. Now, however, it was borne in upon her that there was a reverse, a reverse that was ugly and painfully distressing. It was this declaration of war between her own people ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the purely metaphysical concept of property; and his insistence upon the value of peace as opposed to truth is surely part of the same attitude. Nor is it erroneous to connect this background with his antagonism to the French Revolution. What there was most distressing to him was the overthrowal of the Church, and he did not hesitate, in very striking fashion, to connect revolutionary opinion with infidelity. Indeed Burke, like Locke, seems to have been convinced ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Distressing, indeed, is war! Its ravages cause us horror. Luckless Filipinos succumb in the confusion of combat, leaving behind them mothers, widows and children. America could put up with all the misfortunes ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... went softly but quickly out of the room that she might relieve her bursting heart without distressing her husband, but he knew her too well to doubt the reason of her sudden movement, and a faint smile was on his lips for a moment as he said to Oliver,—"She's gone to weep a bit, sur, and pray. It will do her good, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of course, that it would be impossible to put into words the feeling of that supreme moment of life. It was not joy that possessed me; I did not exult; I did not lose control of myself in any way. But I remember drawing one or two deep sighs, as if all at once relieved of some distressing burden or constraint. Only some hours after did I begin to feel any kind of agitation. That night I did not close my eyes; the night after I slept longer and more soundly than I remember to have done for a score of years. Once or twice in the first week I had a hysterical feeling; ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... openings; some humorous emprise of Sandy Sawtelle, presumably distressing; the gameness of one Timmins as a winner; the whale as a food animal; the spectacular price of mules broken to harness. Rather than choose blindly among them I spoke of my day's fishing. Departing at sunrise I had come in with a bounteous burden of rainbow trout, which I now said ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the same constitution, each depending, in some measure, on the others strength. For one hundred years you have found in the people of Ireland a faithful and firm friend—though for much of that period we laboured under the most distressing disadvantages, destitute of the means of wealth, and aliens from the most important benefits of the British constitution, we have yet borne our sufferings with patient and uncomplaining attachment to ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... our country has shown greater ability under circumstances so hostile to its development. And all this is found here without any of those distressing and revolting alloys which too often debase the native worth of genius, and make him who was gifted with powers to command admiration live to be the object of contempt or pity. The lower the condition of its possessor the more unfavourable, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... not permit a careful review of this interesting subject, but a novel form of poisoning by the use of quicksilver is startling enough to claim our attention. Gilbert tells us that pouring metallic mercury into the ear produces the most distressing symptoms, severe pain, delirium, convulsions, epilepsy, apoplexy and, if the metal penetrates to the brain, ultimate death. In the treatment of this condition certain physicians had recommended the insertion into the ear of a thin ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... Sterne, and could not waste sympathy over brutes, when she felt that there were human beings who needed it. Her ladyship's dogs worried her because of the contrast between the attention they received and the indifference which fell to the lot of the children. Besides, the then distressing condition of the laboring population in Ireland made the luxuries and silly affectations of the rich doubly noticeable. Mary saw for herself the poverty of the peasantry. Margaret was allowed to visit ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... had to forego the particular honour and jewel of his day—his morning's walk with my father. And perhaps, from this cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the practice, and at length returned entirely to his ancient habits. But the same decision served him in another and more distressing case of divided duty, which happened not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog, but the cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the distemper; and though he did not adore her as he adored my father—although (born snob) he was critically conscious of her position as "only ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will go to the top of this great capitol, and spurning there with his foot the crest of Liberty, let him set out upon his flight while the two houses of Congress and all the people of the United States shall shout—"Sic itur ad astra!" But here a distressing doubt strikes me. How will the manager get back. He will have got far beyond the reach of gravitation to restore him, and so ambitious a wing as his should never stoop to a downward flight. Indeed, as he passes through the constellations, the famous question ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... coiling itself upon their limbs, or upon a table at their bedsides, and knowing that a single motion on the part of the imperilled person would be but to invite certain death, the vigilance and eager solicitude, the distressing anxiety with which they regarded the movements and intent of the venomous creature, but never till a full realization of our position in regard to this organized band of traitors, did we ever experience sensations akin to those of the unfortunate ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... earliest manners were those of an urbane and gentle prince. Later, when he made it his turn to rule, informers begged their bread in exile. Where they are not punished, he announced, they are encouraged. The sacrifices were so distressing to him that he forbade the immolation of oxen. He was disinterested, too, refusing legacies when the testator left nearer heirs, and therewith royally generous, covering his suite with presents, and declaring that to him avarice of all vices was the lowest ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... much greater in amount in some regions than in others. The activity prevailing in this particular branch of inquiry is the more encouraging, as the maladies which it aims at removing are of so peculiarly distressing a nature; and the investigation is one likely to lead ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... But these distressing thoughts did not continue long. Mr. Northcott happened that evening to say a great deal about kindness and its effects in his sermon; and Mrs. Churton, while she listened, again and again recalled those words which her daughter had spoken, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... may suffer from that most distressing and inconvenient complaint, a speedy and effective release from your sufferings is now ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... affairs was even more distressing than on the Continent. The evil effects of the Saxon invasion, the demoralization that accompanied the influx of paganism, and the almost complete destruction of the religious institutions of British ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... been their untutored ignorance, but when that sheeted rifle fire first burst from the roof of the Naval College, and a solid squad or two of our lads went down, and following that the snipers began to get them in ones and twos and threes—when that happened there was no distressing confusion in their ranks. When, later, it became necessary for the Prairie and Chester to fire just over their heads to batter the walls of that same War College, it made no difference. The ships' gunnery was rapid and excellent—they knew it would be—and when ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... part of the conversation exactly as if nothing ugly had occurred between them. His bantering with his son was genial and affectionate, and once she thought he tried to include her in this camaraderie. The few last shreds of her vanity, however, still waved distressing signals of the hurt, and she evaded it. But she felt strangely alone, notwithstanding; with an almost unconquerable self-pity she reflected on the fair-weather friends that had deserted her. A little sense of comfort trickled into her heart, though, when she thought of her boy. HE, at all ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... to the racket most distressing, And wonders, in its bother, if e'er the time will come When the Fates and Constitution will vouchsafe to us the blessing Of a House of Representatives completely deaf and dumb; Or if, perhaps, in exile these noisy mischief-makers, The stream of elocution run most fortunately dry, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... always said was, that for the commonalty, there's no getting out of an Irish cabin a girl fit to be about a lady such as you, Mrs. Carver, in the shape of a waiting-maid or waiting-maid's assistant, on account they smell so of smoke, which is very distressing; but this Honor McBride seems a bettermost sort of girl, ma'am; if you can make up your ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... time between the House of Commons and the Court. It reveals the narrow and unpatriotic spirit of the king and the ministers, who could resist proposals so reasonable in themselves, and so remedial in their effects, at a time when the nation was suffering the heavy and distressing burdens of the most disastrous war that our country has ever carried on. It is especially interesting as an illustration of its author's political capacity. At a moment when committees and petitions and great county ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Voltaire "took a FLUXION" (catarrhal, from the nose only), when Friedrich was quite ready; then, again, when Voltaire was ready, and the fluxion off, Friedrich had gone upon his Silesian Reviews: in short, there had been such cross-purposes, tedious delays, as are distressing to think of;—and we will say only, that M. de Voltaire did actually, after the conceivable adventures, alight in the Berlin Schloss (last day of August, as I count); welcomed, like no other man, by the Royal Landlord there;—and that this is the Fourth Visit; and has (in strict ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the house was distressing to behold; the walls, once whitewashed, were now discolored, and stained to a man's height by constant friction. The staircase with its heavy baluster and wooden steps, though very clean, looked as if it might easily give ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... I close my eyes in death, Free from distressing fear; For death itself is life, my God, If thou ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... of the destroyed ramparts of the town and returned to the hospital, where there were men whose limbs had been amputated, many wounded, many afflicted with ophthalmia, whose lamentations were distressing, and some infected with the plague. The beds of the last description of patients were to the right on entering the first ward. I walked by the General's side, and I assert that I never saw him touch any one ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman general, was one of the most awful and distressing scenes that mortals ever witnessed; and the details, as given by Josephus, are enough to make humanity shudder. During the siege, which lasted nearly five months, upwards of eleven hundred thousand Jews perished. John and Simon, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Benita. When they reached shore some old friends of her father's took her and him to their house, a quiet place upon the Berea. Here, now that the first excitement of rescue and grief was over, the inevitable reaction set in, bringing with it weakness so distressing that the doctor insisted upon her going to bed, where she remained for the next five days. With the healing up of the wound in her head her strength came back to her at last, but it was a very sad Benita who crept from her room one afternoon on to the verandah and looked out at the cruel sea, peaceful ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... himself opposite. Napoleon preferred men with great noses, but that of Totts would have pleased him too well, I think; and Totts blew it continually. It was my hope that supper, or dinner, or whatever they called the next meal, would not be served with the distressing rapidity of this one; one had barely the time to swallow, and the food went whole down one's throat; but the next meal, and all meals, were the same, and, had our convention lasted longer than it did, I should have fallen victim to a grave ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... the public feeling. During this recess it may be conceived that neither side was slack in its efforts. Franklin for his share contributed a pamphlet, entitled "Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs." "Mischievous and distressing," he said, as the frequent disputes "have been found to both proprietaries and people, it does not appear that there is any prospect of their being extinguished, till either the proprietary purse is unable to support them, or the spirit of the people so broken that they shall be willing to submit ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... thus, my son," he cried, "This peerless maiden for your bride, Bids each distressing thought depart, And joy again possess my heart. Fair princess, thine the happy fate, To heal the wounds of mutual hate; No longer shall this bosom know, An Eastern-Saxon as my foe; And she, who bids that passion rest, Doubt not, shall be supremely blest; The part is holy and benign, Befitting ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... throwing themselves against the lower part of doors. It seemed, however, that they were visible to Miss Freer's living dog at times when they were not visible to her, and indeed the abject terror which the Pomeranian displayed in No. 8 was so distressing, that she changed her room from No. 8 ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... pleasing to the royal ears. So a second one was made, and a third, but neither was satisfactory. Then the king said that if the man did not make a bell with pleasing tones his life should be forfeited for his failure. This was very distressing for ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... coming out of the President's room in the bank. He said it looked to him as if John had been trying to make a touch and hadn't gotten away with it. You know I hate to see him distressed for money, especially now when other things are distressing him, and I wonder if there isn't some tactful arrangement by which I could let him have some money without his knowing that it came ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... relief took place Brigadier-General Rees had to leave us much to every one's regret. He was taken ill with a distressing internal complaint, which necessitated his return for a while to England. He was succeeded by Brigadier-General E.P.A. ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... the armistice and Prussian occupation, there were soldiers quartered all around the chateau, and, of course, there were many distressing scenes. All our little village of Louvry, near our farm, had taken itself off to the woods. They were quite safe there, as the Prussians never came into the woods on account of the sharpshooters. W. said their camp was comfortable enough—they ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... the two governors with more reserve. She told them that the duke had received from some person or persons a distressing intelligence which had deeply affected him; that that alone was the cause of his illness, and that if the duke had an opportunity of putting a few further questions to the persons again, he would in all probability ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
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