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More "Excitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into Highcombe, on the chance of the telegraph office being still open? Of course it was not open; and if it had been, Theo could not possibly leave Oxford till next morning. But then it was a well-known fact that mamma was excitable, and often did things without thought. He lingered all night, "just alive, and that is all," the doctor said. It was Chatty who sent for the rector, who came and read the prayers for the sick at the bedside, but agreed with Dr. Durant that it was of no use attempting ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... for Mademoiselle was shifting ceaselessly and with trembling hands vases of flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers other excitable and ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory revelations and arbitrary commands,—there is nothing to prevent one of a melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost to justify the old belief in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... by the fire, and a serious expression settled on his features—he was pondering over the events of the evening; his mind reverting constantly in spite of himself to the conversation which he had held with the Mayor. Like most excitable persons, he found, on reviving his own words, much to regret in them. His impulse had been kind, his intention good, but notwithstanding this, he was compelled to admit that his entrance into the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... any other name—was an open-hearted, honest, straight-forward young fellow of twenty, with light-brown hair, frank eyes, and a cordial bearing which at once put every body at their ease. Still there was a latent flash in the eye which denoted an excitable temper—not seldom united, as the reader must have observed, with ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... him also a quiet, business-like concentration of mind which the imaginative girl might have overlooked or undervalued, but which the budding, thoughtful woman must needs recognize and respect. Nor will it seem strange, if, by contrast, it made the excitable Reuben seem more dismally afloat and vagrant. Yet how could she forget the passionate pressure of his hand, the appealing depth of that gray eye of the parson's son, and the burning words of his that stuck in her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... full of the most touching romances about Roland, and Walter of Aquitaine, and Sir Tristram, and a great number of other excitable young fellows, whose behaviour had invariably got them into dreadful difficulties, but had as invariably made them, in the eyes of every damsel they saw, the most attractive, fascinating, sweet, dear ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Steno's lover belonged to the class of excitable, nervous people who exaggerate their feelings by an unconscious wildness of tone and of manner, his face bore the traces of a trouble too deep ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... much more in his mental dialect than the English do. They are independent and wide awake, curious and full of personal interest. The wayside mind in Inverness or Perth runs more to muscle and less to fat, has more active vanity and less passive pride, is more inquisitive and excitable and sympathetic—in short, to use a symbolist's description, it is more apt to be red-headed—than in Surrey or Somerset. Scotchmen ask more questions about America, but fewer foolish ones. You will never hear them inquiring whether there ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... recognized as especially transmissible:—dementia precox, a sort of precocious old age, in which the patient (generally young) sinks into a lethargy from which he rarely recovers; and manic-depressive insanity, an over-excitable condition, in which there are occasional very erratic motor discharges, alternating with periods of depression. Constitutional psychopathic inferiority, which means a lack of emotional adaptability, usually shows in the family history. The common ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the nightmare; that is all. She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the two travellers who descended from the carriage at the door of the Hotel du Palais-Royal had reason to fear the state of mind in which the always excitable papal town might be at that time; for just before reaching Orgon, at a spot where three crossroads stretched out before the traveller—one leading to Nimes, the second to Carpentras, the third to Avignon—the postilion had stopped his horses, and, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... and divines of England were to be murdered. Three or four schemes had been formed for assassinating the King. He was to be stabbed. He was to be poisoned in his medicine He was to be shot with silver bullets. The public mind was so sore and excitable that these lies readily found credit with the vulgar; and two events which speedily took place led even some reflecting men to suspect that the tale, though evidently distorted and exaggerated, might have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... oxhide would not be large enough to contain all the dreams that float through my brain. When I am seated at my work, my mind is more active than my fingers: it is so delightful to dream, to revel in a future of one's own creation, bright as an excitable imagination can make it.... My mother says to me often, but I fear in vain: 'A well born and properly educated young lady should never think of her future husband;' but, in truth, it is not of a husband ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... even if he is a sadder man," said Charles: "I did not know he had so much in him. There is more reflection in all this than so excitable a person, as he seemed to me, is capable of exercising. At the same time there is nothing in all this to prove that he is sorry for what ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... that no party would tolerate its political foes, much less protect them in the exercise of the right of free discussion and legal action. The execution of Louis XVI. was but a solitary incident in the game that was played by the most excitable political gamblers that ever converted a nation into a card-table. He was slain, not so much because he was a king, or had been one, as because he was the natural chief of the Royal party, a party ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... at himself. For the dejection in her attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt a warm desire to sustain and comfort her. More and more thought, more and more contrivance did he throw into the straightening out of this tangle between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for Lady Henry's sake, not, surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But—ah! those two poor, dead folk, who had touched his heart long ago, did he feel the hovering of their ghosts beside him ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "how is Mrs. Liebling?" It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody. From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross. The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing. Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson arm, looked pleased ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... narrow margin had he escaped a horrible death.... Across the room the object of his suspicions continued to sit calmly figuring in a notebook, never glancing around. His attitude was a declaration of the fact that the young man behind him was an excitable firebrand, whose behaviour was scarcely worth troubling about. Let him alone, he will come to his senses, that broad, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... warm-hearted, hearty, cordial, sincere, zealous, enthusiastic, glowing, ardent, burning, red-hot, fiery, flaming; boiling over. pervading, penetrating, absorbing; rabid, raving, feverish, fanatical, hysterical; impetuous &c. (excitable) 825. impressed with, moved with, touched with, affected with, penetrated with, seized with, imbued with &c. 82; devoured by; wrought up &c. (excited) 824; struck all of a heap; rapt; in a quiver &c. n.; enraptured &c. 829. Adv. heart and soul, from the bottom of one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... present themselves to the sitter, viz.: (a) the Symbolic, indicated by the appearance of symbols such as a flag, boat, knife, gold, etc., and (b) Actual Scenes and Personages, in action or otherwise. Persons of a positive type of organization, the more active, excitable, yet decided type, are most likely to perceive symbolically, or allegorically; while those of a passive nature usually receive direct or literal revelations. Both classes will find it necessary to carefully cultivate truthfulness, unselfishness, gratitude for what is shown, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... French count in the famous old play, "One of Our Girls." Mr. Bronson Howard had directed in his manuscript that the count, when struck across the face with a glove by an English officer, should become very violent and angry, in accordance with the popular notion of an excitable Frenchman's character. "But Mr. Mackay," says Daniel Frohman, "argued that the French count, having been shown in the play to be an expert duellist with both the rapier and the pistol, and having faced danger frequently, was not liable to lose control of himself. Mr. Howard readily saw ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... told my brother he thought the King would certainly go mad; he was so excitable, loathing his Ministers, particularly Graham, and dying to go to war. He has some of the cunning of madmen, who fawn upon their keepers when looked at by them, and grin at them and shake their fists when their backs are turned; so he is extravagantly civil when his Ministers ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... cheerfulness; he was of an assured bearing, polite and skilful in social intercourse, with a confidence of spirit which often lighted up his face in a smile. The small events of the day might indeed affect him and annoy him. He was excitable, and easily moved to tears, but on any great emergency, after he had overcome his early nervous excitement, such as, for instance, embarrassed him when he first appeared before the Diet at Worms—then he showed wonderful calmness and self-command. He knew no fear. Indeed, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... they otherwise I should like to know? Never, at least since I have been acquainted with them; and it will require a sovereign such as France has not yet known to satisfy a people so versatile and excitable. Charles the Tenth is not popular. His religious turn, far from conciliating the respect or confidence of his subjects, tends only to awaken their suspicions of his being influenced by the Jesuits—a suspicion fraught with evil, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... weighted down by the feeling that the Orangemen were doing immense service to the cause of Home Rule by their brutality. However, the fumes of Unionist oratory seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a universal favourite—even with his vehement Nationalist ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... of no great strength, but extraordinarily excitable, and the coarse gibes and horse-play of the big negro drove him almost to madness. Rameau would often, after some more than ordinarily outrageous attack, contemptuously fling Goujon a shilling, which the little Frenchman, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... herself and her husband really understood the tremendous difficulties of their task or the vital issues at stake. Although they seemed to be making progress, they knew that they were dealing with a people not only excitable and egotistic, but steeped in guile, and distrustful by nature. The fire was close to the magazine. But this was Edith Cortlandt's chosen field, and she brought to bear a manlike power of cool calculation, together with a brilliant ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... away from our home and our happiness. And it was difficult to give it all up, to come out of paradise. That last night I felt as if I simply couldn't leave you, my darling. But I'm glad and thankful I've done it. I have to do everything for him. The doctor's rather an ass, very French and excitable, but he does his best. But I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice, and—poor fellow, he does suffer so, but he's awfully brave and determined to live. He says he will live if it's only to prove that I came in time to save ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the cries of excitable men, arose when the second speaker took his place. Then as he spoke the temper of the people began to manifest itself undeniably. The crowd swayed and cheered; certain demands were voiced insistently; a wave of intense excitement swept it as it heard its ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... were procured, and the river examined; and then, at last, on the opposite shore, which was open to the fields, some little boot-tracks were discerned in the mud, which left no doubt that the too excitable girl had waded through a depth of water reaching nearly to her shoulders—for this was the chief river of the county, and was mentioned in all the geography books with respect. As Sue had not brought disgrace upon the school by drowning herself, the matron began ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... unheard of for a girl. Her lessons were recited at night, after Mr. Fuller returned from his office in Boston, often at a late hour. "High-pressure," says Col. Higginson, "is bad enough for an imaginative and excitable child, but high-pressure by candle-light is ruinous; yet that was the life she lived." The effect of these night lessons was to leave the child's brain both tired and excited and in no condition to sleep. ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... was saying, "it is tasteful, and something more. It illustrates, as you well say, the better side of our excitable neighbours across the Channel. Setting patriotism apart and regarding the question merely in its—ah—philosophical aspect, it has often occurred to me to wonder how a nation so expert in the arts of life, so—how shall I ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lived much more quietly and with little display. And thus it comes about that there is very little class feeling in the colony, and politics are carried on without any more dangerous outbursts than the personal conflicts of excitable members of Parliament. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... "To think!" said that excitable young girl. "She might even lose her eyesight if she's not careful. My! it must be dreadful to get poisoned with that nasty ivy. I'll be afraid to go into the woods ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... tone of confidence before Mrs. Dinnett had been partly assumed, however. His sympathies were chiefly with Sabina, for she was no ordinary mill hand; she had enjoyed his tuition and possessed native gifts worthy of admiration. But she was as excitable as her mother, and if this vital matter went awry, there could be no doubt that her life must ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... me, when I got my appointment, that I was too excitable a man to be governor of a prison. Perhaps they were not altogether wrong. Anyhow, the quick-witted Doctor saw some change in me, which I was not aware of myself. He took my arm and led me out of the cell. "Leave her to me," he whispered. "The fine edge of my nerves was worn off long ago ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... necessary for the cure, the person afflicted, il tarantolato, is induced to leap and caper by the sound of music, with the result that there exist a number of tunes specially connected with this wild species of dancing. The real explanation of this fable seems to lie in the extremely excitable nature of the Tarentines themselves, assisted by the exhilarating music and by frequent pulls at the wine barrel. The two lines sung to the air of one of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Phoenician colonies, and the political connection between these cities and Phoenicia was so close and of such ancient date that the Phoenicians can scarcely have failed to be moved by their example and by their danger. A wave of sympathy might have been expected to sweep across the excitable people, and it would not have been surprising had they rushed headlong into rebellion with the same impetuosity as their Cyprian brethren. Had they done so the danger to Persia would have been very great, and the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... not suffer from your immersion, Richard. It was very kind, indeed, of you to go to such trouble for the sake of a poor cat. And, perhaps, something might have happened to Bessie too, she is so excitable when anything occurs. I hope you will let me reward you in some way. Won't you accept this, please? You must have quite ruined your clothes by your brave act, and perhaps this will purchase another suit," said the lady, holding out what Dick saw was ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... his hopes, fears and desires beyond all bounds. Hence an excess of sensibility, sudden outbursts of emotion, contagious agitation, irresistible currents of passion, epidemics of credulity and suspicion, in short, enthusiasm and panic, especially if he is French, that is to say, excitable and communicative, easily thrown off his balance and prompt to accept foreign impulsion, deprived of the natural ballast which a phlegmatic temperament and concentration of lonely meditations secure to his German and Latin neighbors; and all this we shall see at work.—These constitute ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "a man of infinite learning, jest and bonhommie, and moreover a sterling heart that reverbs no hollowness."[53] Another intimate who charmed them much was one of the attaches of the English embassy, and a poet of unquestionable faculty, very young, very gentle and refined, delicate and excitable, full of sensibility, "full of all sorts of goodness and nobleness," but somewhat dreamy and unpractical, "visionary enough," writes Mrs Browning, "to suit me," interested moreover in spiritualism, which suited her well, "never," she unwisely ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... for the excitable Bacheet, who, followed by his friend, Wat Gamma, with more courage than discretion, rushed into the river, and endeavoured to catch the crocodile by the tail. Before I had time to call them back, these two Arab water-dogs were up to their necks in the river, screaming out directions to each other ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... She cried, "a real little black pig." I stood near the table groaning with covetousness, but She didn't pluck him for me, not then, or ever, and perhaps the cook ate him.... This cat's a dissembler. Maybe he ... But away with care! I'm too excitable! I mustn't let myself think of these things. Life is beautiful, O Fire, since you illumine it ... I'm going to sleep ... Watch over my unconscious body ... ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... suddenly saw some people in it whom he knew. We will suppose for the sake of our theory that these people were a woman whom he loved and a man whom he hated—and who in return hated him. The young man was excitable and impulsive. He opened the door of his carriage, stepped from the footboard of the local train to the footboard of the express, opened the other door, and made his way into the presence of these two people. The feat (on the supposition ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... occasion of this parable. It was spoken at Jericho, on our Lord's last journey to Jerusalem, Bethany was but a day's march distant; Calvary but a week ahead. An unusual tension of spirit marked our Lord's demeanour, and was noticed by the disciples with awe. It infected them, and the excitable crowd, which was more than usually excitable because on its way to the passover festival. The air was electric, and everybody felt that something was impending. They 'thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Lefferts and others, two of them could not sit still to read something that wanted to be read; they walked the floor, one holding the candle, the other the paper; both fighting mosquitos with both hands. I am of a less excitable temperament—for I contrive to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... for the present, he could grin and bear and finally get used to it, as other people did. But Uncle Henry possessed an irritable and excitable temperament, that not one man in ten thousand could boast of, and hence he grew—at length sour, then savage, and, finally, quite meat-axish, towards every outsider who dared to ring his bell, and proffer wooden ware and tin fixins, for rags ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... like the head of a lion, who, with the shaking of his mane and the power of his anger, destroyed every thing which dared to put itself in his way. And the French nation loved this lion, and listened in reverential silence to the thunder of his speech, and the throne shook before him. And the excitable populace shouted with admiration whenever they saw the lion, and deified that Count Mirabeau, who, with his powerul, lace-cuffed hand, had thrust these words into the face of his own caste: "They have done nothing more than to give themselves the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... The crowd is an individual without responsibility, unoppressed by the usual ties of prudence and decorum, who betrays himself because he lacks entirely self-consciousness and the desire to pose. In Spain the crowd is above all things good-humoured, fond of a joke so long as it is none too subtle, excitable of course and prone to rodomontade, yet practical, eager to make the best of things and especially to get its money's worth. If below the surface there are a somewhat brutal savagery, a cruel fickleness, these are traits common with all human beings together assembled; they are merely evidence ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Loutherbourg to put trust in this arch-juggler? Can it have been that from the painter's native Strasbourg had come to him unimpeachable accounts of Cagliostro's feats during his stay there, which had preceded his nefarious expedition to Paris? But the artist is ever excitable, receptive, impressible—the ready prey of the dealer in illusion and trickery. De Loutherbourg is soon at the feet of the quack Gamaliel; soon he is proclaiming himself an inspired physician, practising mesmerism. Cosway and his wife declared ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and baronial in his instincts, surroundings, and characteristics. He was nervous, excitable, and bloodthirsty. He would "pluck up drowned honor by the locks" and make a target of everyone who laughed. He hunted, fought, gambled, made much of his ancestors, hated niggers, despised Yankees, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... that his heart was sound, but that he must diminish his work. He pleaded to be allowed to finish his imminent engagements; the doctor said that he might do that, if he would put off all subsequent ones. This was wisely done, in order to reassure him, as he was an excitable though not a timid patient. He was at Hare Street for a day or two, and his trusted servant, Mr. Reeman, tells me that he seemed ill and out of spirits. The last words he said as he drove away, looking round the ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... To May's excitable mind it was not difficult to suggest a new train of thought, and she immediately proceeded to explain why she had chosen ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... I understand my characters. [Translator's Note: In the play "Ivanov."] Ivanov is a gentleman, a University man, and not remarkable in any way. He is excitable, hotheaded, easily carried away, honest and straightforward like most people of his class. He has lived on his estate and served on the Zemstvo. What he has been doing and how he has behaved, what he has been interested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen from ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Rose Anderson, an excitable little creature of fifteen, lifted a face white as chalk. "O," she sobbed, "something came in—right up on my bed. It was big and—and furry—and wet! O Mrs. Royall, I never was so scared in my life!" She ended with a burst ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... declared themselves enchanted with him; some again maintained that he was theatrical, others that he was not to be trusted. Two or three friends judged otherwise. "A noble nature," they said, "most honourable, but with all its virtues, nervous, passionate, excitable, fiery tempered...." So there had never been any ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... stolid, serious and impressive with homely common sense as Sir Lomer Gouin, the Premier of Quebec. This man spoke slowly, massively, almost gutturally like a Saxon, in fluent but accented English. He was far less excitable than the Premier of Ontario on the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... book can teach one to have presence of mind, a cool head, or to restrain a more or less excitable temperament in the midst of sudden danger, yet assuredly with proper knowledge for a foundation, a certain self-confidence may be acquired which will do much to prevent hasty action, and to maintain ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... sing in time, or even to beat time, to walk in time, or to graduate the strength and rapidity of their movements. Such children are unrhythmic, and it will generally be noticed that these children are stiff and awkward, often also over-excitable. This lack of rhythm is almost like a disease. It is caused by the lack of balance between the mental and physical powers, which results from insufficient co-ordination between the mental picture of ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... private, to speak of Miss Jewsbury as "Miss Gooseberry," while Carlyle himself said that she was simply "a flimsy tatter of a creature." But it is on the testimony of this one woman, who was so morbid and excitable, that the most serious accusations against Carlyle rest. She knew that Froude was writing a volume about Mrs. Carlyle, and she rushed to him, eager to furnish any narratives, however strange, improbable, or salacious ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... up with fresh power in his excitable soul, and his lost cheerfulness returned to him like a butterfly to the newly opened flower. The image of his beloved Daphne rose before him in sunny radiance, and he saw himself in his studio in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was so beside himself that he hardly knew what he was doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have suffered! Didn't you think him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... growing on the excitable girl during the absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again to her room as she had done before. Instead of lying down she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, and listened with a beating heart ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... smile that she would come on board again when we returned from Arrecifos, or as she called it, Ujilong, and spend them. Shortly afterward, her women attendants carried his Majesty up on deck, and Hayes sent him ashore in one of our boats; and then, with our decks filled with the noisy, excitable Pleasant and Ocean Islanders, and the white traders rolling about among them in a state of noisy intoxication, we got under way, and, with our yards squared, ran down the coast within a cable length of ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... of horror burst from the lips of the watchers in the adobe. It was all that Kid Wolf could do to hold back the excitable younger Robbins, who wanted to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... "But madam," said the excitable captain on that memorable occasion, "I must insist on your taking it. Excuse me, I have my own reasons,—and they are extremely good ones,—for saying that it is my duty to give you this sum and yours to take it. I owe it to your late husband, who more than once laid ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... narrated that at this period of his life, young Otis gave strong evidence of the excitable temperament with which he was endowed. In the intervals of his study his nervous system, under the stimulus of games or controversial dispute, would become so tense with excitement as to provoke remark. Nor may we in the retrospect fail to discover in this quality ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... desirous to share his anxieties with some one and even to bid for counsel. Pilate was of the solid type of Roman, with sufficient imagination intelligently to enforce the iron policy of Rome, and not unduly excitable under stress. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... full of his discovery to take note of the other's annoyance. He was one of those excitable persons who mistake hurry for ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... there was any other special resemblance. I do not remember my father myself: he died when I was eight years old. But I am told I am like him in face. He was tall (five feet ten inches) and a large man, very popular, and very excitable in his cases, so that I am told that Counsel against him used to urge him, out of friendship, not to get so agitated. A connection of mine who knew him well, went over to hear Charles Dickens read the Trial Scene, to see if he at all imitated him in voice or manner, but ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... who shared these hearty laughs with her aunts—James's eldest daughter, Anna—differed widely from her cousin, Edward's daughter, Fanny. She was more brilliant both in looks and in intelligence, but also more mercurial and excitable. Both occupied a good deal of Jane's thoughts and affections; but Anna must have been the one who caused her the most amusement and also the most anxiety. The interest in her was heightened when she became engaged to the son of Jane's ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... fortune-telling, second-sighted person in the car. She has the section next to mine and has been directed by a familiar spirit to go to Seattle. She has a parrot with her, and they are both very excitable and communicative. She just told me that it is revealed to her that my youngest boy will have a genius for sculpture. I miss you more than usual to-day. You could help me with some copying, and there is positively nothing interesting to see out of the window; what there is of uninteresting ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and excitable young men, settled upon a sandy level about as large as a poor widow's potato-patch, walled in by sky-kissing hills, absolutely compelled to remain on account of the weather, which has vetoed indefinitely their exodus, with no place to ride or drive even if they had the necessary vehicles ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... that she looked much more quiet than she used to. Not so active, you know. In her best days she was always excitable, and a little demonstrative; but now she seems to have sobered down, and is as quiet and well-bred as any of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... going to do, but it was to be a big affair, and they were to come back loaded up with natural-history specimens and to make a pile of money out of the venture, too. And he was telling me all about it in his eager, excitable way when the other man came in, and I was introduced to him. And, gentlemen, that's the man I saw—under the name of Sir Gilbert Carstairs—on the bench at Berwick only the other day! He's changed, of course—more than I should have thought he would have done in fifteen years, for that's about ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours about Stanway's condition. Milly, inspired by dreams of the future, had learnt her part perfectly in five days. She sang and acted with magnificent assurance, and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus. Harry Burgess lost his air of fatigued worldliness, and went round naively demanding to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle. Even ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... the time she was relieved, a sort of intimacy was already formed between us. I, for my part, had learned from the manner in which she bore this attack, that she was a firm, patient woman (patient under physical pain, though sometimes perhaps excitable under long mental canker); and she, from the good-will with which I succoured her, discovered that she could influence my sympathies (such as they were). She sent for me the next day; for five or six successive days she claimed my company. Closer acquaintance, while ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... he was very anxious to save and support; expressed great anxiety to make it up with O'Connell by giving him a great judicial situation, is convinced he is sincere (at the moment) in all he says, but that he is so vain and excitable and ambitious that when he returns to Ireland he forgets all he has promised or professed; the demon of agitation regains the ascendant, and he bursts into all those excesses which have made him so odious and formidable; but there is no chance of any arrangement ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the 61st Howitzers, was, by the way, a little aggrieved by this French battery coming and taking up its position close alongside him and invading his observing stations. The captain also got on his nerves, for he was somewhat excitable, and his shells were numerous that burst prematurely, whilst a house only 100 yards off, which should have been well under the trajectory of his shells, was several times hit by them. However, he doubtless caused much ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... with bright colors, with the glitter of the badges and stars that are crumbs of royalty, to inflame them with the jingle of bayonets and medals, with trumpets and trombones and the big drum, and to inspire the demon of war in the excitable feelings of women and the inflammable credulity of the young. I see the triumphal arches, the military displays in the vast amphitheaters of public places, and the march past of those who go to die, who walk in ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that almost every Senator wheeled about with an expression of lively ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... peculiarly sensitive, and the unwise treatment of his mother, fond and harsh by turns, destroyed maternal authority. At five years of age, he was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen, where he made but slim attainments. Though excitable and ill-disciplined, he is said to have been affectionate and generous, and perfectly fearless. A fit of sickness rendered his removal from this school necessary, and he was sent to a summer resort among the Highlands. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... flew to the landing, and manned the boat. "We have come for the flag," announced George, as Stut was looking on the excitable boys. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to-day," and she called out, "Oh! cherries." She cut out a round of paper and tried to sew round it, holding it in place with her other hand. I suggested putting in a stitch to hold the paper. Cecil was absorbed in sewing, and it seemed quieting for such an excitable boy and good for his weak hands. One child said, "Fancy a boy sewing," so I told how soldiers and sailors sewed. They ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... well balanced, as boys, girls are in great measure debarred from the sports and physical exercises which are justly thought absolutely necessary for the full development of the vigour of the more favoured sex. Women are, by nature, more excitable than men—prone to be swept by tides of emotion, proceeding from hidden and inward, as well as from obvious and external causes; and female education does its best to weaken every physical counterpoise to this nervous mobility—tends in all ways to stimulate the emotional part of the mind and ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... space wider than it is. Dinah had never seen Hetty affected in this way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing, and began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Hetty was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she became irritated under Dinah's caress. She pushed her away impatiently, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the people are calm and phlegmatic; their speech is jejune, lacks color. Elsewhere temperaments are more evenly balanced; one finds precision, the word exactly fitted to the thing. But farther on—effect of the sun, the air, the wine perhaps—hot blood courses in the veins, tempers are excitable, language is extravagant, and the simplest things are said ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... which, having suffered most severely during the Puritan usurpation, was least likely to show consideration to a leading teacher of the Puritan body. Nor were reasons wanting to justify their severity. The circumstances of the times were critical. The public mind was still in an excitable state, agitated by the wild schemes of political and religious enthusiasts plotting to destroy the whole existing framework both of Church and State, and set up their own chimerical fabric. We cannot be surprised ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... intend to fight outside the ramparts. I was reading yesterday the account of a court-martial on one of these heroes, who had fallen out with his commanding officer, and threatened to pass his sword through his body. The culprit, counsel urged, was a man of an amiable, though excitable disposition; the father of two sons, had once saved a child from drowning, and had presented several curiosities to a museum. Taking these facts into consideration, the Court condemned him to six days' imprisonment, his accuser ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... without liability to give him a distaste for study, thus showing that we are making a demand for an amount of mental force which he has not ready at hand to give. There is, however, but one opinion upon this point—that the least safe thing to do for girls at this nervously critical and mentally excitable period is, to allow them time to indulge and feed their fancies, or to grow weary of themselves; that mental work is as healthful as food, but, like the food, needs careful regulation; and that the health of women would be vastly improved by increasing the school work in ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... a good deal," said the doctor before leaving, "but that is of no very great moment. The important thing is to watch him to prevent his getting out of bed, if he should become excitable. We must have no undue strain on his ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... for us, I expect. Our friend, Nehal, is of an excitable disposition. I hope you haven't had to wait long for me, Nicholson. You said you had some business you wanted to ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... excitable, Cousin Tom," she said, laying her gloved hand upon his arm; "there is nothing ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... credulous astronomers, who must have been themselves hypnotized, or they could not have hypnotized the rest of us, in 1909. Wills were made. Human life might be swept from this planet. In quasi-existence, which is essentially Hibernian, that would be no reason why wills should not be made. The less excitable of us did expect at least some pretty ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... gnomelike little man with a Titan's brain, labored with his calculations, made swiftly concrete his theories, while at the Sound-and-Vision apparatus excitable General Munson ranged the aerial battlefield to see how the tide of battle ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... alone were all the protector she now had in the wide, wide world. Ere long Ella too awoke, and the noisy outburst which followed the knowledge of her loss, made Mary still the agony of her own heart in order to soothe the more violent grief of her excitable sister. ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... emptied out upon the battlefield a flood of defenders. It was a gallant sight. The white uniforms of the brave regiments of the line—Royal Roussillon, La Sarre, Guienne, Languedoc, Bearn—mixed with the dark, excitable militia, the sturdy burghers of the town, a band of coureurs de bois in their picturesque hunters' costume, and whooping Indians, painted and raging for battle. Bougainville had not yet arrived from Cap Rouge, and for ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... disturb the calm of an out-of-the-way country village. Such a thing had never occurred before in his lifetime, nor within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. All were therefore properly impressed with the importance of the occurrence, and none more so than the excitable, impressible, enthusiastic Poet. For days before the one appointed to make the journey to the Market Town, he was in a great state of excitement and hilarious pleasure, and with difficulty controlled his inclinations to laugh, dance, and sing, and otherwise gayly disport himself. The exuberance ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... the manner of a man placing at my disposal plenty of rope with which I might entangle myself. He appeared to think me excitable, and used soothing expressions as if I were a fractious child to be calmed, rather than a sane equal to be reasoned with. On many occasions I had the facts at my finger ends, while he remained in a state of most complacent ignorance, and though this attitude of lowering ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the great capital, which he was not to see again till, after the lapse of near thirty years, he returned, bowed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wrote to his friends at Paris that the kindness and the attention with which he had been welcomed surpassed description, that the King was the most amiable of men, that Potsdam was the paradise of philosophers. He was created chamberlain, and received, together ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sought an interview with the marquis. This was Monsieur Perigord, who, after being admitted into his master's presence, began, with much agitation, by imploring him to interfere in an affair of the most terrible importance. The marquis, who was well acquainted with the excitable disposition of his old chef de cuisine, supposed that some slight had been put upon him by the inferior domestics, or perhaps even by M. Boulederouloue himself, so he kindly told the old man that he would take care to see him righted if he would only ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... idiocy of mankind generally. These three things make me think that a certain section of hot-headed Republicans with yourself, my dear Deroulede, en tete, are about to attempt the most stupid, senseless, purposeless thing that was ever concocted by the excitable ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... across again, and the excitement grew high. The ladies looking from Miss Carlyle's windows saw what had happened, though they could not divine the cause. Some of them turned pale at sight of the handcuffs, and Mary Pinner, an excitable girl, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... new and unexpected fact to one of her excitable Southern blood, easily raised, and easily depressed—she discovered that neither her husband, nor Winter, nor Geri, nor Wenoch, nor Ranald of Ramsey, nor even the romancing harping Leofric, thought ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... unbounded means of happiness, affluence for every reasonable want, security against every danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom, we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our hearts clouded, from a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... what manner of man he was—fiery, excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great bitterness, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... let us do so. Me, Cesarini never can forgive; he will think I have robbed him of you. But we men—the woman we have once loved, even after she rejects us, ever has some power over us, and your eloquence, which has so often roused me, cannot fail to impress a nature yet more excitable." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him to paint some pictures for her to send as a present to her own family, the Orsini of Rome. These works, of which the subjects are not known, passed afterwards into the possession of Casar Borgia. She also sat to Mariotto for her own portrait. It is easily imagined how elated the excitable youth became at this notice from the mother of the magnificent Lorenzo. He had dreams of making a greater name than even his master, Cosimo, whose handiwork was in the Sistine; of excelling Michelangelo, of whose genius the world ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... A short, wiry little man with a sharp nose and a general resemblance, both in manner and appearance, to an excitable bullfinch. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... coast, unknown, and represented to abound in shoals and reefs, is the harbour for pirates of every description. Here every man's hand is raised against his brother man; and here sometimes the climate wars upon the excitable European, and lays many a white face and gallant heart low on ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the orchestra he seems to indulge in a frenzied dance which follows the smallest details of his music—music that is as agitated as limpid water into which a stone has been flung. But he has a great advantage over Mahler; he knows how to rest after his labours. Both excitable and sleepy by nature, his highly-strung nerves are counterbalanced by his indolence, and there is in the depths of him a Bavarian love of luxury. I am quite sure that when his hours of intense living are ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... said Noanoa Tiare. "That is too good for you not to know. You know that the French are excitable, n'est-ce pas? B'en, a French officer, Major Marchand, put up the tricolor in some place called Fashoda in Africa, and the English objected. There was some parleying between the two nations, and the information arrived in Tahiti that England was going to make war on France. The French papers ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... he took the nurse apart, and said, "Now, you are an experienced woman, and to be trusted about an excitable patient. Mind, I object to any female servant entering Mrs. Staines's room with gossip. Keep them outside the door for the present, please. Oh, and nurse, if anything should happen, likely to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... went into his cheek at the mention of Dr. Ferris, but the expression of his face underwent no change. "Of course," he said simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, "I have forgiven your father. He was very young—very excitable—inexperienced." ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the largest and most important city of Greece. The commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. In this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. The vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. The Greek goddess Aphrodite had a magnificent temple in which a thousand priestesses ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... treacherously attacked by these Buquils, and many of them killed. One of these was the brother of a sub-chief, who now approached us, and who was, I believe, the husband of the frenzied woman. It was a very excitable scene that followed. I suppose one might call it a council of war. It was a mystery to me where all the Negritos came from and how they found us out; but they came in ones and twos till there was a huge concourse of them present, all gathered ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... rooms of bedlam you call the "excitable wards." They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts? Nothing in the kitchen. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... for a world that either was exceedingly excitable and sentimental, or had the convention or tradition of great sentimental excitability. All his people, suddenly surprised, lose their presence of mind. Even when the surprise is not extraordinary their actions are wild. When Tom Pinch calls upon John Westlock in London, after no very ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... could not see, the Canandaigua water as it ran under its canopy of willows, over whose foliage the light wind passed in silver waves. On the height of the hill above the mill-dam he turned his horse into the yard of the Croom homestead. The stalwart deacon in overalls, his excitable, slender wife, her cap-strings flying, came forth, the one from the barn, the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... The reality of the popular credulity and terror in later Rome clearly appears from the fact that Marcus Aurelius had a law passed condemning to banishment "those who do any thing through which men's excitable minds are alarmed by a superstitious fear of the Deity." Nero, after murdering his mother, haunted by her ghost and tortured by the Furies, attempted by magical rites to bring up her shade from below, and soften her vindictive wrath Suetonius, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... very little to object to so long as Nellie showed no preference for any one of her admirers at Warrener, and unless peevish or perturbed in spirit would have made little allusion to it. As matters stood, however, she was in a most querulous and excitable mood: she could not rail at the real cause of her misery, and so, woman-like, she was thankful for a pretext for uncorking the vials of her wrath on somebody or something else. If the young matrons ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... created, however. Election was approaching, and that absorbed all the excitable matter of the people, in spite of the newspapers. The disputes and defences of the faith which Murty O'Dwyer had to maintain since the departure of the young, "beautiful Irish girl," as Bridget was called, were many and critical; ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away from the scene of the festivities and did not appear ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head, while Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, seeking out tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grew late, Norton, smarting under the repeated charges of being a metaphysician, clutching his chair to keep from jumping ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... understood no word that was said. But De Sylva's animated gestures and flashing eyes were enough. Ever and anon, the excitable citizens of Maceio would turn and gaze at one or other of the three, while loud cries of "Bravo!" punctuated the President's oratory. When Coke's turn came for these demonstrations, he tried to grin, but was only able to scowl. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... little late, but I am not quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... was taken for granted that there the Prince was to effect his morganatic marriage. But what was to happen afterwards? We were chartered for twelve months. That bespoke a cruise, and guesses flew about the ship. Lane, the purser, was the most in evidence in these discussions. He was an excitable man with a passion for talk and company, and he offered to lay me a certain sum that we should pull up ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... affair, and, having sandbagged the cellar windows, posted notices stating that, in the event of shelling, customers could continue business in the cellar. And this was in a nation that we have always looked upon as effeminate and excitable! ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... she and Sally had thought it would be fun to be in New York, to know real actors and actresses, to go about to restaurants in taxicabs. But what if the money that paid for the taxicabs were needed for Ted's winter shirts and Margar's new crib? What if the actors were only rather stupid and excitable, rather selfish and ignorant men and women, to whom homes and children, gardens and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... that Balzac remained at home in Villeparisis, he longed for the quiet freedom of his garret; he could not adapt himself to the bustling family circle, nor reconcile himself to the noise of the domestic machinery kept in motion by his vigilant and indefatigable mother. She was of a nervous, excitable nature, which she probably inherited from her mother, Madame Sallambier. She imagined that he was ill, and of course there was no one to convince her to the contrary. Had she known that while she thought she was contributing ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... do as you please so far as I am concerned," he said in a low tone, "but I warn you that you are taking big risks. Allie is nervous and excitable at any time, and to-night she is close to hysterics, and she won't get over the shock of even a simple operation in a hurry, especially if he is fool enough to ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... and very excitable, he went down to the crossing, and, sure enough, there stood, in defiance of his orders, a long freight train, anchored squarely across it. A brakeman who didn't know him by sight sat complacently on the top ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... accustom himself, while in this stage, to the engine controls which have been explained already; and he is not likely to be guilty of the error of one excitable novice who, while driving his machine back on the ground towards the sheds at an aerodrome, after his first experience in "rolling" became so confused, as he saw the buildings looming before him, that he lost his head completely ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... board. While on the Suviah—I think that was the name of our vessel—I heard a tremendous racket at the other end of the ship, and much and excited sailor language, such as "damn your eyes," etc. In a moment or two the captain, who was an excitable little man, dying with consumption, and not weighing much over a hundred pounds, came running out, carrying a sabre nearly as large and as heavy as he was, and crying, that his men had mutinied. It was necessary to sustain the captain without question, and in a few minutes all the sailors ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... man of many friends among men; he was small and excitable, but was counted handsome. He was versatile to an unusual degree, being an adept at painting, as well as billiards, chess, riding, swimming, and general athletics. He was also something of a scholar in Greek and Latin, and his correspondence was so enthusiastically kept up that ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... was to obey, and so he resigned himself without a murmur to the hard conditions which had fallen to his lot. "I shall, nevertheless," adds Anderson, "knowing how excitable this community is, continue to keep on the qui vive and, as far as is in my power, steadily prepare my command to the uttermost to resist any attack that may be made.... Colonel Huger designs, I think, leaving Charleston for Washington to-morrow night. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... change our position, and let him enjoy seeing me attack my aunt in rear. This inflamed me at once. Aunt rolled from off me. I took my place behind, and we ran a most delicious course, rendered much more excitable to me by the introduction of uncle's two fingers up my fundament, which kept time with my action in the delicious aperture of my aunt's most superb and glorious backside, the movements of which beneath my delighted gaze had not been the least ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... two namesakes was as different as the poles asunder. Of a fair height and good appearance, Mr. J. Macintyre was one of the most excitable men that ever stood in front of a goal. He generally warmed up at bit, however, and even showed more daring when his old club were playing an uphill game, and I know for certain that in the great ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... in doing so. He simply dropped Oscar in silence; and asked about Lucilla. How had it begun on her side? I reminded him of his brother's romantic position at Dimchurch and told him to judge for himself of the effect it would produce on the excitable imagination of a young girl. He declined to judge for himself; he persisted in appealing to me. When I told the little love-story of the two young people, one event in it appeared to make a very strong ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... he had done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of "L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind, continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith had experienced at the hands of Guise, had imbibed the fanatical notion that it was his special calling of God to rid the world of "the butcher of Vassy," of the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... light of the candle or fire shone fully on them, but pointed them out correctly in the shade, or when they were dimly illuminated. At other times, however, the pupil of the eye was quite insensible to light. Her feelings also appear to have been very excitable. During one of her paroxysms she was taken to church; attended to the service with every appearance of devotion, and was at one time so much affected by the sermon, that she shed tears. The sensibility of the eye was also observed, in the case of Dr. Bilden; when a degree of light, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... He wished Fred would n't fumble so. He could hold a hundred difficult balls in succession, but when a critical point came, he 'd let go of even a dewdrop. He 'd have to send him out in the field and bring in Jones to first base. Only Jones was so excitable. He could hold any kind of a ball, no matter how critical the play was, but there was no telling what he would do with the ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... have been expected in so excitable a man, he was in a terrible state of agitation. Thankfulness at the escape of his only, beloved child, rage with the Kaffirs who had tried to kill her, and extreme distress at the loss of most of his property—all these conflicting emotions boiled together in his breast like ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... glory, or command, or riches; if any fear of danger, any debt, any difficulties in pecuniary matters, have had influence; if the man is bold, or fickle, or cruel, or intemperate, or incautious, or foolish, or loving, or excitable, or given to wine; if he had any hope of gaining his point, or any expectation of concealing his conduct; or, if that were detected, any hope of repelling the charge, or breaking through the danger, or even postponing it to a subsequent ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... were as they should be. Things were moving slowly, they must of necessity move slowly, and Storri had grown impatient. The Russian's warmth was expected; Mr. Harley had read him long since like a primer book. Storri was excitable, volatile, full of fever and impulse, prone to go off at tangents. In some stress of nerves he had sent for Mr. Harley to urge expedition or ask for explanations. The thing had chanced before. Mr. Harley would cool him into calmness with a dozen words. Storri's poise restored, Mr. Harley would seek ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... We disembarked yesterday morning at ten o'clock, and took two hours to come here. The most perfect order was maintained in spite of the immense mass of people assembled, and a more good-humoured crowd I never saw, but noisy and excitable beyond belief, talking, jumping, and shrieking instead of cheering. There were numbers of troops out, and it really was a wonderful scene. This is a very pretty place, and the house reminds me of dear Claremont. The view of the Wicklow Mountains from ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... that the sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... had they digested the news about the two missing girls, in a search for whom they mentally agreed they would join, than along came excitable ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... bump the casco soundly against the solid iron plates of the larger ship. A most disreputable-looking crew it is, the ragged trousers rolled up to the knee, the network shirts, or cotton blouses full of holes drawn down outside. Highly excitable, and yet good-natured as they work, they take possession and disgorge the ship, while Chinamen descend ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... affluence for every reasonable want, security against every danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom, we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our hearts clouded, from a settled, taught, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... our dinner in that dignified fashion in which a dinner should be served. He would pass the soup with one paw, the fish with the other, while serving the bread with his tail, and all simultaneously, so that instead of dinner becoming a peaceful meal, it was at all times, a highly excitable function that left us all in a state of trembling nervousness when it was over. Try as we might we could not induce them to do one thing at a time, and finally when this particular butler, to whom I have referred, instead of standing as he was instructed to do behind Adam's chair, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... with the orders of Doctor Martin, who feared that I had sustained some injury to my spine in addition to my other contusions. This suspicion of his turned out, fortunately for me, to be groundless; but the rest he enjoined was very much out of keeping with my buoyant and excitable nature, which was fidgety in ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... he called, "how is Mrs. Liebling?" It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody. From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross. The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing. Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson arm, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of union. But, as many wise men have remarked, a uniform happiness, which only attaches women more and more, has often upon men a precisely contrary effect, and so it was with Martin Guerre. Of a lively and excitable temperament, he wearied of a yoke which had been imposed so early, and, anxious to see the world and enjoy some freedom, he one day took advantage of a domestic difference, in which Bertrande owned herself to have been wrong, and left his house and family. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... much more readily than did the Jews from whom its matter was borrowed.[FN321] He did something to abolish the use of wine, which in the East means only its abuse; and he denounced games of chance, well knowing that the excitable races of sub-tropical climates cannot play with patience, fairness or moderation. He set aside certain sums for charity to be paid by every Believer and he was the first to establish a poor-rate (Zakat): thus he avoided ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... every messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death. That palsying thought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could neither speak, think, nor dream of any thing else. My host was of a less excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted himself to sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect was not at any time affected by unrealities. To the substances of terror he was sufficiently alive, but of its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... was disquieted within her by what she had already heard; but a moment's reflection convinced her that her presence on the occasion might be serviceable to Sarah, whose excitable temperament and delicate state of health ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and most seriously upon Kingsley's earliest books, because they were in many respects his most powerful, his typical works. As he grew in years, he did not develop. He improved for a time in literary form, but his excitable nerve-system, his impulsive imagination, drove him into tasks for which he had no gift, and where he floated hither and thither without sure guide. From the time of his official success, that is, for the last fifteen years of his life, he produced ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... for themselves," said Mr Brymer. "Look here, youngster, I shall speak plainly to you, because you are a sensible lad. If you spoke about what we have said, and it reached Captain Berriman's ear now he is in that excitable state, he would immediately think I was conspiring against him, go frantic, and there might be terrible mischief. So don't say a word, even to your messmate, or he'll go chattering to that French scoundrel and the rest of the men. By the way, Dale, let me give you a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... deal," said the doctor before leaving, "but that is of no very great moment. The important thing is to watch him to prevent his getting out of bed, if he should become excitable. We must have no undue strain ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... unusual feat in that day for a boy, but hitherto unheard of for a girl. Her lessons were recited at night, after Mr. Fuller returned from his office in Boston, often at a late hour. "High-pressure," says Col. Higginson, "is bad enough for an imaginative and excitable child, but high-pressure by candle-light is ruinous; yet that was the life she lived." The effect of these night lessons was to leave the child's brain both tired and excited and in no condition to sleep. It was considered singular that she was never ready for bed. She was hustled off to toss on ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... vague as yet, were in circulation on the Bourse. Was it a manoeuvre of the enemy, of that Hemerlingue against whom Jansoulet was waging ruthless financial war, trying to defeat all his operations, and losing very considerable sums at the game, because he had against him his own excitable nature, his adversary's cool-headedness and the bungling of Paganetti, whom he used as a man of straw? In any event, the star of gold had turned pale. Paul de Gery learned as much from Pere Joyeuse, who had entered the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and which Lucien, for I had heard much of both and knew their characteristics, though I knew not their faces. Joseph was the handsomer of the two, and looked more like his august brother, with the same fiery eye and mobile mouth, showing the same excitable temperament. Lucien had the calmer face that belongs to a scholar, though in some respects I thought it a stronger one than his brother Joseph's. In the marble bath lay Bonaparte, only his head and a little of his shoulders ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Poodle puppy you will find it like other intelligent and active youngsters, full of mischief. The great secret in training him is first to gain his affection. With firmness, kindness, and perseverance, you can then teach him almost anything. The most lively and excitable dogs are usually the easiest to train. It is advantageous to teach your dog when you give him his meal of biscuit, letting him have the food piece by piece as a reward when each trick is duly performed. Never attempt ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... had designated a sister official to occupy the chair when the nominating speeches were in order, and was awaiting the announcement of the result of the ballot with inward trepidation. Her composed manner and smiling face won Miss Kiametia's admiration; she was herself of too excitable a temperament to keep her equanimity unimpaired, and she watched Mrs. Whitney's calm demeanor and unruffled poise, conscious of her own disheveled appearance. She missed Kathleen; the latter's presence had become ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... passionate Catholic, and an energetic writer in the service of the Church Militant. Shortly after my arrival, I met him at dinner. He was a middle-aged, pale, carelessly dressed man with ugly, irregular features, and a very excitable manner. With him came his wife, who though pale and enthusiastic like himself, yet looked quite terrestrial. He introduced himself as Ernest Hello, contributor to Veuillot's then much talked of Romish paper, L'Univers, which, edited with ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... quarrel, when a small minority of the Parish succeeded in preventing the permanent settlement of her sister's husband as minister. She seems to have the idea that all that party are emissaries of Satan. I do not wonder her little girl should be so nervous and excitable, being the child of such a nervous, high-strung woman. But I am going to see them again this afternoon; will ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... crowds listening to the harangue of a somebody or a nobody. Sometimes short, ugly demonstrations were made against an unpopular newspaper office or the residence of an unpopular citizen; the police were rough and excitable, the nerves of the populace on edge, the city was now nearly denuded of its militia, and everybody was very grateful for the temporary presence of volunteer regiments in process ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of Mr. Vesey, the good old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers, and as tricky a pair as one could meet, ever up to their eyes in mischief from morning until night. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... utterances did Tardrew, in true British bulldog fashion, express a repentance too deep for words; too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance not of the excitable and theatric southern, unstable as water, even in his most violent remorse: but of the still, deep-hearted northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man; and having told it, is a new creature ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... and what appeared like terror. She clung fast to Cuthbert's arm, and her eyes were dilated with fear. She was an excitable little mortal, so he did not feel any great alarm at her looks, but strove to reassure her in a friendly, brotherly fashion. The Christmas festivities and excitements, which had lasted above a week, had doubtless done something to upset the balance of her ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hysterical cheering and shouting; everything was quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight—a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even Dick Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to have undergone ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... not going to take any more chances than were necessary. Steve seemed to be all ready to fire, and he knew the other to be a pretty good shot. But, then, who could wholly depend upon such an excitable fellow? ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... course this singer died. The weather was hot at the time, and the body in the shell was surrounded by ice until the time came to carry it out of the hotel. As it passed through the hall the manager, who had had many and many an upbraiding from the excitable Italian after the latter had been proffered the hateful iced water, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Grady's last talk with Bannon. The delegate, in the course of the meeting, bitterly attacked Bannon, accusing him, at the climax of his oration, of an attempt to buy off the honest representative of the working classes for five thousand dollars. This had a tremendous effect on the excitable minds before him. He finished his speech with an impassioned tirade against the corrupt influences of the money power, and was mopping his flushed face, listening with elation to the hum of anger ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... a French army falling back and concentrating on the Marne to receive the enemy blow. Equally alive to German racial traits, the German Staff had organized in their mass offensive the elan which means fast marching and hard blows. So, we found the supposedly excitable French digging in to receive the onslaught of the supposedly phlegmatic German. When the time came for the charge—ah, you can always depend on a Frenchman ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... applause when the comic man shuffles through the charinga—a popular negro dance, difficult of performance, and shouts of laughter are produced in the scene between a Yankee, who speaks very broken Spanish, and a lady who speaks Spanish with the approved Cuban accent. It is an enthusiastic and excitable audience. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Lucy swept her off her chair, and twirled her about the room as excitable young ladies are fond of doing when their joyful emotions need a vent. When both were giddy they subsided into a corner and a breathless discussion ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... visited her that I did not see new evidences of waning reason. In the beginning I was fearful that she might do some violence to herself or her servants, but her insanity began to assume a less excitable form; and at last she sank into a condition of torpor, both of mind and body, from which I saw little prospect of her ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... one can be of anything that comes from the streets. He is an excitable, bumptious, quarrelsome man; but he has a certain influence with those beneath him, although it seems hard to realise ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests until ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... can teach one to have presence of mind, a cool head, or to restrain a more or less excitable temperament in the midst of sudden danger, yet assuredly with proper knowledge for a foundation, a certain self-confidence may be acquired which will do much to prevent hasty action, and to maintain a useful amount ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... every other Unionist, was weighted down by the feeling that the Orangemen were doing immense service to the cause of Home Rule by their brutality. However, the fumes of Unionist oratory seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a universal favourite—even with his vehement Nationalist foes; and he speaks with evident sincerity. But he had so ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... this psychology may we suppose was rendered apparent to the motley collection of excitable people who flocked to see the play—which appears to have been a popular one—in the years 1591-97? Probably as much as may be gathered by an audience to-day from a tolerable representation of the piece. The subtler truths of Shakespeare have always ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... of New York. A whirlwind of noise and smell and hovering shadows. The jargon of Jewish matrons in brown shawls and orthodox wigs, chaffering for cabbages and black cotton stockings and gray woolen undershirts with excitable push-cart proprietors who had beards so prophetic that it was startling to see a frivolous cigarette amid the reverend mane. The scent of fried fish and decaying bits of kosher meat, and hallways as damnably rotten of floor as they ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... quiet freedom of his garret; he could not adapt himself to the bustling family circle, nor reconcile himself to the noise of the domestic machinery kept in motion by his vigilant and indefatigable mother. She was of a nervous, excitable nature, which she probably inherited from her mother, Madame Sallambier. She imagined that he was ill, and of course there was no one to convince her to the contrary. Had she known that while she thought she was contributing everything to the happiness of those around her, she was only doing the ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... was as silent as Angelique, and, pale from anxiety, looked at him calmly and soothingly. But he, always an excitable man, was now so overcome by what he had just seen that, forgetting his usual submission, he was almost beside himself, could not keep still, but threw his hands up and down in his ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... casual visitors from the camps. At Beaufort and Hilton Head large and flourishing Sunday schools are in operation. Most of the freedmen belong either to the Baptist or Methodist denomination, and the fervor and zeal of the preachers of the latter persuasion always find a response in the excitable and impulsive nature of the blacks. It is not a little singular that, while Cochin can write concerning the freedmen in the French colonies that 'the Catholic worship has incomparable attractions for the blacks,' we find the negro in our own country everywhere attracted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fought around him, good and evil, for the victory. "A million dollars!" shouted the evil ones, "do not throw them away." "A human soul!" wailed the others, "do not let it fall into evil." His sensitive, excitable mind trembled before the crisis. His own soul shuddered and sickened, for he seemed to see the hosts of greed of gold, and they were stronger than the hosts of light. And Stephen himself now was badly equipped for the conflict. He felt and recognised with dismay ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... of which Jerrold was a member, a fierce Jacobite, and a friend, as fierce, of the cause of William the Third, were arguing noisily, and disturbing less excitable conversationalists. At length the Jacobite, a brawny Scot, brought his fist down heavily upon the table, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... hurry for us, I expect. Our friend, Nehal, is of an excitable disposition. I hope you haven't had to wait long for me, Nicholson. You said you had some business you wanted to ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... enough of this. The frequent allusions in his correspondence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act of poetical composition indicate a frame which, though made robust by exercise and temperance, was by nature excitable rather than strong. And even in the direction in which we should least have expected it, there is reason to believe that there were capacities of feeling in him which never broke from his control. "Had I been a writer of love-poetry," he is reported ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... much like caterwauling, and I need not say that there is no fascination in it—on the contrary its tendency is to destroy any other kind of attraction. It is generally far more due to an ill-trained, unregulated, excitable, nervous temperament ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... such an excitable impetuous creature is not likely to escape going wrong, without steady control from herself or from someone else,' ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the west door—I'm glad to see you're using the new sort of graining . . . why, it all reminds one of the French Revolution." After one or two dissociations of this sort, the expected Morris Carleon enters through the French window; he is rather young and excitable, and America has overlaid the original Irishman. Morris immediately asks for Patricia and is told that she is wandering in the garden. The Duke lets out that she sees fairies; Morris raves a bit about his sister being allowed ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... to mention mushrooms—fresh mushrooms. She threw down her cards before the words were out of his mouth, and began to call, "Jules! Jules!" Mr. Horace pulled the bell-cord, but madame was too excitable for that means of communication. She ran into the antechamber, and put her head over the banisters, calling, "Jules! Jules!" louder and louder. She might have heard Jules's slippered feet running from the street into the corridor and up-stairs, had she not been so deaf. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... saw in Borrow's highly nervous excitable nature, if not the cause of his wife's breakdown, at least an obstacle to her recovery, and was of opinion that Mrs Borrow's disorder had been greatly aggravated by ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... deeply marked,—seemed to be devoured by an internal unrest. His dreams were of the old times: words and names long unused came from his lips as he slept by her side. Although he bore his grief with more strength than she had hoped, he grew nervous and excitable,—sometimes unreasonably petulant, sometimes gay to a pitch which impressed her with pain. When the spring came around, and the mysterious correspondence again failed, as in the previous year, his uneasiness increased. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... London with this object, and I therefore ask it of your Christian charity that you should visit me here at Loughlinter. You, as a Roman Catholic, cannot but hold the bond of matrimony to be irrefragable. You cannot, at least, think that it should be set aside at the caprice of an excitable woman who is not able and never has been able to assign any reason for leaving the protection ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... usefulness by informing those who were quite ignorant, and therefore innocent, that there are crimes of which they had no idea; and thus, in their fanatic wish to improve, they demoralise. Such have been the consequences among this excitable yet well-meaning people. The author of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... reeks of a vast sugar factory or distillery. Sips of the balsamic syrup are free to all, and birds and insects rejoice and are glad. A perpetual murmur and hum of satisfaction and industry haunt the neighbourhood of the trees as accompaniment to the varied notes of excitable birds. Chemists say that insects imprisoned in an atmosphere of melaleuca oil become intoxicated. Insects and birds certainly are boldly familiar and hilarious during the time that the trees offer their ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... yet, and Crandell said I didn't hit one when I shot. I thought it was singular and that perhaps my bullet had struck a bush or twig, glanced off and saved Mr. Bruin's hide. Now it looked as though the Indian was going to get our bears away from us, sure enough, and now for a chase that is more excitable than is often seen ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... that, though Barere was a man of quick parts, and could do with ease what he could do at all, he had never been a good writer. In the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured; for it was a time of literary as well as of civil lawlessness, and a patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... province, and had been for many years a very prominent politician. In Chinese poetry there is an apparent absence of passion which is due to the same practice of under-statement. They consider that a wise man should always remain calm, and though they have their passionate moments (being in fact a very excitable race), they do not wish to perpetuate them in art, because they think ill of them. Our romantic movement, which led people to like vehemence, has, so far as I know, no analogue in their literature. Their old music, some of which is very beautiful, makes so little noise that ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... hands of the Spanish government might prove a docile and most dangerous instrument to the internal repose of France not only after Henry's death but in his life-time. Conde's character was frivolous, unstable, excitable, weak, easy to be played upon by designing politicians, and he had now the deepest cause for anger and for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Oakes lost all his constitutional and feverish impatience while the fleets drew nigher and nigher. As is not unusual with brave men, who are naturally excitable, as the crisis approached he grew calmer, and obtained a more perfect command over himself; seeing all things in their true colours, and feeling more and more equal to control them. He continued to walk the poop, but it was with a slower step; and, though his hands were still closed behind his back, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... difficult accounts while his wife and "old maid" daughter did needlework and attended to the few wants of one boarder, Sam Lyman. The "banker's society" recognized the Staggs family in the evening of the day which followed Sam Lyman's call at the First National, and was in excitable progress while Lyman, in ignorance of it all, prolonged his talk with Warren. In the family sitting room the banker talked of the possibility of a panic in Wall Street. In the parlor the younger relatives were playing games, with Annie Staggs, the old maid, as director ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... such language, on perceiving, as Sarah at once did, that her father, whose eyes were shut, was fast asleep at the time. In her, however, it only produced such a high degree of excitement and interest, as might be expected from one of her ardent and excitable temperament, imbued as it was with a ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... adjoining room. How the strain of that one dreadful week had told upon their fresh young faces! Bess had almost lost her peach-blow; Hazel, never highly colored, but always bright of eye, showed signs even of pallor; Betty had put on too much color, that characteristic of the excitable disposition when the skin is the thermometer of the nerves, and her eyes not only sparkled, but actually glittered. All this was instantly apparent to the trained eye of the ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... said the general, "it seems to me that a sick-nurse would be of more use here than an excitable person like you. Perhaps it would be as well to get some sober, reliable man for the night. In any case we must consult the prince, and leave the patient to rest at once. Tomorrow we can see what can be done ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in playing with my best feelings, and in regarding the understanding as the most important thing in the world. The rector had completely mistaken my undisguisedly candid and sensitive character; my excitable feelings were made ridiculous, and thrown back upon themselves; and now, when I could freely advance upon the way to my object, this change showed itself in me. From severe suffering I did not rush into libertinism, but into ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... St. Simon, Staff soberly escorted the woman to the lounge, meaning to leave her there while he enquired for Eleanor at the office; but they had barely set foot in the apartment when their names were shrieked at them in an excitable, shrill, feminine voice, and Mrs. Ilkington bore down upon them in ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... it have been wise for me to tell you at the time—the trial was in April—when you were still dangerously weak and excitable? It was not as if I had known that it would be—what shall I say?—a matter of such great concern to you. Remember that we had never mentioned his name since we left England, and I could not assume that the old friendly ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a store-room for chemicals in quantity and for chemical apparatus and utensils. A grimly humorous incident, as related by one of the laboratory staff, attaches to No. 3. It seems that some time ago one of the helpers in the chemical department, an excitable foreigner, became dissatisfied with his wages, and after making an unsuccessful application for an increase, rushed in desperation to Edison, and said "Eef I not get more money I go to take ze cyanide potassia." Edison gave him ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and conqueror, "created to be the father of soldiers," and aided, if not directly sent, by God, to show forth the power and the glory of France. The Russian peasant, more thoughtful by nature as well as less excitable and combative in temperament, admits that Napoleon was sent on earth by God, but connects him with one of the deep problems of life by using him to show the divine nature of sympathy and pity, and the cruelty, immorality, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... their protracted lenten fare exchanged for abundance of good meat, and bread, and "tay, galore, for the priest and the mistress;" but when politics or any stirring cause is offered to them, their feelings are found to be as excitable, and their temperament as fiery, as though still standing on the banks of the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... entirely in his opinions and feelings; and her strong sense of right and wrong caused her to condemn the injustice of the government, and the weak, truckling spirit of the sister-churches. But her judgement was more calm and dispassionate than that of Roger, and her temper far less excitable. She therefore saw the impropriety, as well as the danger, of, causing a schism in the church; and she used all her powerful influence to induce her husband to give up these irregular assemblies; and, without compromising his own opinions, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... my hand on hern. It wus little and soft, and trembled like a leaf. Some folks would have called her nervous and excitable; but I didn't, thinkin' what she had went through ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that affair in Red Hot Gulch, Colorado, where, under pressure, he had invested sundry pieces of lead in the persons of several obstreperous citizens and then had paced the zealous and excitable sheriff to ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... intellectual dignity and to maturer views of government; to give a new impulse to literature, art, and science, and to show how impossible it is to extinguish the fires of liberty when once kindled in the breasts of patriots, or to put a stop to the progress of the human mind among an excitable, intelligent, though fickle people, craving with passionate earnestness both popular rights and constitutional government in accordance with those laws of progress which form the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... bald," Webster objected. "Her incompetence came, rather, from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous, excitable. She was more ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... fortunate enough to receive that kindly and intelligent treatment to which one on the brink of mental chaos is entitled. Though during this second period of elation I was never in a mood so reckless as that which obtained immediately after my recovery from depression in August, 1902, I was at least so excitable that, had those in authority attempted to impose upon me, I should have thrown discretion to the winds. To them, indeed, I frankly reiterated a terse dictum which I had coined during my first period of elation. "Just press the ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... feeding her own child, or she is of a moody and unhappy disposition, it is the mother's place to give her breast to the infant. The condition of mind of the mother has a great deal to do with the quality of the milk. A despondent and excitable temperament is often more productive of harm than a low physical condition. It is hardly necessary to warn the mother to be careful of her diet, as this has immediate effect on the quality of the milk. Of course, any drink containing alcohol must be avoided. Tea ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... His excitable nerves were plainly on the rack of some strong emotion, and as he met the blank amazement in Christopher's face he turned away with a gesture of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... if he is a sadder man," said Charles: "I did not know he had so much in him. There is more reflection in all this than so excitable a person, as he seemed to me, is capable of exercising. At the same time there is nothing in all this to prove that he is sorry for ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... these fears. To be sure, the political atmosphere of Washington was electric. The House spent weeks wrangling over the Speakership, so that when the serious work of legislation began, men were overwrought and excitable. California with a free constitution was knocking at the door of the Union. President Taylor gave Congress to understand that at no distant day the people of New Mexico would take similar action. And then, as though he ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... then the speaker would be interrupted by his excitable listeners with some exclamation of wonder, horror, incredulity, derision, pity, or the like—which, being in Anglo-Congo or ebony lingo, must needs be unintelligible to many of my readers. Therefore, for the enlightenment and edification of the unlearned, have I thought it best to give ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... lovable—from crescentric sandpit—coaxing and consenting to the virile moods of the sea, harmonious with wind-shaken casuarinas, tinkling with the cries of excitable tern—to the stolid grey walls and blocks of granite which have for unrecorded centuries shouldered off the white surges of the Pacific. The flounces of mangroves, the sparse, grassy epaulettes on the shoulders of the hills the fragrant forest, the dim jungle, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... myself," Lutchester confessed. "To tell you the truth, I have been wondering all luncheon-time. If ever a man broke the letter and the spirit of that simple warning I should say your excitable young friend, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for more than two hundred years, why should not a written page retain for a week or a month the equally mysterious effluence poured over it from the thinking marrow, and diffuse its vibrations to another excitable ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bring in an editorial that he had written himself, highly excitable and full of cyclonic language, and if we printed it Alphabetical would buy a hundred copies of the paper containing it and send them East. His office desk gradually filled with woodcuts and zinc etchings of buildings that never existed save in his own dear ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... ring and vanished into the blackness of the side street. Eberhard Ludwig remained looking after him into the gloom. A bitter thought came to him of the superiority of this child of the back streets over the Erbprinz of Wirtemberg—that poor, sickly, excitable boy, whose disappointing personality was a source of constant irritation and humiliation to his father. Eberhard Ludwig loved personal vitality, and that vigorous manliness which he himself possessed, and which he saw daily in the sons of his poorest subjects; and he ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... disturbance at the midday meal. The father was annoyed and sat without saying a word. The aunt, with great animation, tried to point out to him with this proof, how excitable children become when they do not go to bed in good time. Edi, too, sat quite ill-humoredly before his plate, as if he had to swallow sorrel instead of little golden apples; for he felt much troubled that his father had heard of his inattention in the school. Ritz had expected ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... restful form, topped with that weather-beaten and chin-bearded face, was the hub of the summit of Hampstead. He was as richly local as the pond there—that famous pond which in hot weather is so much waded through by cart-horses and is at all seasons so much barked around by excitable dogs and cruised on by toy boats. He was as essential as it and the flag-staff and the gorse and the view over the valley away to Highgate. It was always to Highgate that his big blue eyes were looking, and on Highgate that he seemed to be ruminating. Not that I think he wanted to go there. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... very excitable, but whose feelings still never overstep certain limits, and who are therefore known as men full ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Washington" would excite derisive comment; and when she heard uncle Rutherford's report of Jim's further adoption of great names, she groaned in spirit, and awaited with sundry apprehensions his return from school, fearing that his excitable temper might have been provoked into some manifestation, which would not only affect his creditable entrance into the school, but also his standing ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... horror of anything elderly comes, probably, from the fact that the preceding generation went to the other extreme, young women retiring at forty into becapped old age. Knowing how easily our excitable race runs to exaggeration, one trembles to think what surprises the future may hold, or what will be the next decree of Dame Fashion. Having eliminated the “old lady” from off the face of the earth, how fast shall ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Yet in conversation they are very plain and unreserved, though by no means gross. They acknowledge that such things as generation, gestation and parturition exist, and it may be that this very absence of mystery tends to keep chaste so excitable ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... exactly for me to say, and, of course, I don't know the rights of it, bein' only a servant, but they say there was a sudden quarrel last night between Mr. Peytral and Mr. Bowmore. I think myself that Mr. Peytral was getting a bit excitable lately, whatever it was. On Thursday night, just after dinner, he went strolling off in the dusk, alone, and presently Mr. Bowmore—he came down in the afternoon—went strolling off after him. It seems they went down toward ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... you how overwhelmingly pathetic it is—the sight of these brave Frenchmen. Every one has remarked it. Once and for all the tradition that the French are an excitable, emotional people with no grip on their passions and no rein on their impulses—that fiction ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... with careful absence of expression. "Get some woman to put her to bed and to stay with her till the nurse comes. She's in a very excitable state. Good afternoon. I'll ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... revulsion of feeling. The assault of the old woman on two harmless strangers seemed too wanton to be tolerated. Ludlow's easy manner and calm language restored them fully to their senses, and the sight of his revolver effectually overawed the more excitable or reckless. They were also jealous of the good name of the town, and now began to be enraged with the old woman. A murmur passed through them. Curses were freely lavished upon her, and the threats which but a short time ago had been directed against the landlord and his guests, were ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... shutting his mouth, "I see no reason at present why this should not succeed. It has been badly handled, not understood. Mr. St. Vincent was not able to make the workmen see with his eyes, and in his state of health he was so excitable, confused, and worried that I don't wonder, indeed, I have this plan to propose. If either of you gentlemen," glancing at Wilmarth and Grandon, "will advance me sufficient means, and allow me to choose my own foreman, perhaps a head ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hand on his arm and seemed to be soothing him like a careful groom quieting an excitable horse. "Don't mind them," she said, "you will go away after a time and make a place for yourself out ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... first. The delivery occupied an hour or more. Mr. Pierpont commenced reading his poem, but before he had made any considerable progress, a slight clicking of knives was heard from the extreme portion of the tent. Mr. Pierpont was an excitable man. He had a reputation as a preacher, lecturer and poet. It was apparent from his flushed face that his pride was wounded. I expected that Mr. Woodbury, who was president of the day, would rise and ask the guests to abstain ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... something in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could HE possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... soon as possible," said his Majesty to the prior. "The monk's keen repentance touches me; his brain is still excitable; it needs fresh air and change. I will appoint him to a curacy at Saint Domingo, and desire him to leave for that place at the earliest opportunity. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... could do anything for her. In a few words she gave him to understand that her husband was of a very excitable nature at intervals, took to drink and continued it until he fell sick. She begged Alfred to have Jake apologize and not to quarrel or cross the man, no matter what provocation he gave them, all of which Alfred promised her. Jake readily agreed to ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... The modernists think the church is doomed if it turns a deaf ear to the higher criticism or ignores the philosophy of M. Bergson. But it has outlived greater storms. A moment when any exotic superstition can find excitable minds to welcome it, when new and grotesque forms of faith can spread among the people, when the ultimate impotence of science is the theme of every cheap philosopher, when constructive philology is reefing its sails, when the judicious grieve at the portentous metaphysical ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... statements, and certificates; depriving Englishmen of their liberty and their property with a gesture of her taper fingers; and venting the conventional terms, "Aberration," "Exaltation," "Depression," "Debility," "Paralysis," "Excitable," "Abnormal," as boldly and blindly as any male starling in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... gone out, and happily was not within hearing, and Mr. May calmed down by degrees, and told Ursula various circumstances about the parish and the people which brought him down out of his anger and comforted her after that passage of arms. But the commotion left him in an excitable state, a state in which he was very apt to say things that were disagreeable, and to provoke his children to wrath in a way which Ursula thought was very much against the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... "An emotional and excitable people," he said, "but, believe me, Mr. Gorman, warm-hearted, and capable of devotion to a trusted leader. They will rally ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... criticisms only to listen in religious silence to Wagner's music banged out on the piano by the girls of the family. A friend with a tenor voice used to sing Lohengrin in Catalan. Enthusiasm made the most excitable roar, "the hymn ... the hymn!" It was not possible to misunderstand. For them there was only one hymn in existence, and in a trilling undertone they would accompany the liturgic music of Los Segadores (The Reapers). [The revolutionary song of Catalunia, originated ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feeling that ensued was almost too much for the excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat. Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even more difficult ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... stationer's. I have found a fortune-telling, second-sighted person in the car. She has the section next to mine and has been directed by a familiar spirit to go to Seattle. She has a parrot with her, and they are both very excitable and communicative. She just told me that it is revealed to her that my youngest boy will have a genius for sculpture. I miss you more than usual to-day. You could help me with some copying, and there is positively nothing interesting ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the excitable man, as he shook hands with Tom and Ned and noted the packing evidences all about. "You're ready to go ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... dislike for Smith was as unreasoning and violent as was her liking for the excitable little man whom she had helped up the hill, and whose wagon was now rumbling close at ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. "Everybody does it nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good one, Andrew; but—now don't get angry—you are too excitable and too intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and to collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can give you a little of the sense ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... hours preceding, the reverend's excitable nerves had been wound up to something above concert pitch. He seemed to hold the real risk—discovery and the bullet of a sentinel—very cheap; but, magnifying imaginary difficulties after his own peculiar fashion, he had come to look upon the roof as a pass of peril, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... honour be made good again?" "wen ich sterbe!" ( if I die!) ... and here the "romance" ended (but not Lola's life!). After a few days she got better and soon became as lively as ever—the wild and excitable creature she is by nature, whom none would take to be the mother of four children—and a "learned dog"—into the bargain! The thing is—could the dog have caught up an impression from some human mind—something she had heard said in conversation, and which she ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... children who startle us by the precocious grasp of their intellect, by their intuitive perception of truths which we had deemed far above their comprehension. Madelon's precocity was of quite another order. In her quick, impulsive, energetic little mind there was much that was sensitive and excitable, little that was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her impulses would have the strength of inspirations; that she would be more ready to receive impressions than to reason ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... lived continuously amongst his people, absorbed in them and his horses, carrying on the traditions handed down to him by his predecessor and devoting his life to the tribe. They are like children, excitable, passionate and headstrong, and he has never dared to risk leaving them alone too long, particularly with the menace of Ibraheim Omair always in the background. He has never been able to seek relaxation further afield ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... to fight outside the ramparts. I was reading yesterday the account of a court-martial on one of these heroes, who had fallen out with his commanding officer, and threatened to pass his sword through his body. The culprit, counsel urged, was a man of an amiable, though excitable disposition; the father of two sons, had once saved a child from drowning, and had presented several curiosities to a museum. Taking these facts into consideration, the Court condemned him to six days' imprisonment, his accuser apologised to him, and shook hands ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... was much more the creature of impulse than of feeling, and consequently more the victim of extrinsic circumstances than was her sister. Emily, on the contrary, possessed considerable firmness and decision. She was less excitable, but when excited her feelings were more intense and enduring. She wanted much of the gaiety, but with it the volatility of her younger sister. Her opinions were adopted, and her friendships formed more reflectively, and her affections seemed ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... folded and enclosed in an envelope, which he carefully sealed and addressed to John Stretton, Esquire. He placed the other sheets in his own pocket-book, and then went peacefully to bed. He could do nothing more, he told himself, and, although his excitable disposition prevented his sleeping until dawn grew red in the eastern sky, he would not waste his powers unnecessarily by sitting up to brood over the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... must have been to impress him with the necessity of doing what he was told to do. She had scolded the boy herself about that very thing many a time. The fault was hers, she had been too hasty, too excitable, too impetuous. Ah, yes, that was always her fault! She looked at William with everything that she thought and felt clearly to be seen on her transparent face. But a ray of comfort shone through the cloud ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... expatriated frog," cried Rooney, staggering under the weight of an enormous pot, "come here, won't 'ee, an' lind a hand. Wan would think it was yer own weddin' was goin' on. Here, slew round the crane, ye excitable cratur." ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... immediately kindled flame of popular bigotry. The always inflammable population of Jerusalem was more than usually excitable at the times of the Feasts, when it was largely increased by zealous worshippers from a distance. Noble teaching would have left the mob as stolid as it found them; but an appeal to the narrow prejudices which they thought were religion was a spark ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Highcombe, on the chance of the telegraph office being still open? Of course it was not open; and if it had been, Theo could not possibly leave Oxford till next morning. But then it was a well-known fact that mamma was excitable, and often did things without thought. He lingered all night, "just alive, and that is all," the doctor said. It was Chatty who sent for the rector, who came and read the prayers for the sick at the bedside, but agreed with Dr. Durant that it was of no use attempting ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... nothing of a devil of a row with the civil authorities. In the army the Italian still fights his duello, but these affairs never get into the newspapers, as in France. Seldom, however, is any one seriously hurt. They are excitable, and consequently a good shot is likely to shoot wildly at a pinch. So there ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
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