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More "Numb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reared itself between Miriam and her kind suddenly crumbled and fell. Warm tides of human sympathy and love came into her numb heart and ice-bound soul. The lines in her face relaxed, her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist of tears. Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed of saying for more than a quarter ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that her father was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone—not at first, but after a little bit—I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... were true indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself suddenly feeling lighter, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... cards with big coloured birds on them that he had got at Sunday-school for regular attendance, and which were always kept between its pages; and while he mused on these things with sudden tenderness, there came back again the same numb feeling of sorrow that he had had when he came home, a heartbroken boy, from his mother's funeral that day so many years ago, and buried his face in the sweet-mary leaves in the old Bible, and blotted its pages with his tears; for ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... young uns on the Everett plantation," he relates, "I worked since I can remembah, hoein', pickin' cotton and othah chohs 'round the fahm. We didden have much clothes, nevah no undahweah, no shoes, old ovahalls and a tattahed shirt, wintah and summah. Come de wintah, it be so cold mah feet weah plumb numb mos' o' de time and manya time—when we git a chanct—we druve the hogs from outin the bogs an' put ouah feet in the wahmed wet mud. They was cracked and the skin on the bottoms and in de toes weah cracked and bleedin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... would undo some of this rope," said the prisoner, who, like Byron's Corsair, seemed to be a mild-mannered man. "I have been tied up ever since two o'clock, and am numb all over. I couldn't run a step if ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... landmarks. And then suddenly they drive past some lodge gates, and there—in the middle of the road—stands a dreadful man smoking a cigar with a band round it. All the glory has gone from the drive, and the girl feels numb and sick and mad ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... my thoughts with you, As your boughs wave to other tossed boughs when First in the windy east the dawn looks through Night's soon-dissolving bars. Return, return? But I have never strayed: Hush, thoughts, that for a moment played In that enchanted forest of the stars Where the mind grows numb. Return, return? Back, thoughts, from heights that freeze and deeps that burn, Where sight fails and song's dumb. And as, after long absence, a child stands In each familiar room And with fond hands Touches the table, casement, bed, Anon each sleeping, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... of feeling had been chasing around inside of me that I had numb spots in my emotional ornaments and intellectual organs. The room cleared out of everybody but Doctor Kirby and Colonel Tom and me. But the sound of the crowd going into the road, and their footsteps dying away, and then after that their voices quitting, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was promise of restfulness ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... riveted on the goal to be fascinated by any special route leading towards it, and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers' requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... cannot sit in your gold and white boudoir, and be true to Ernest while he battles a few more years with destiny, then you could not remain loyal in thought while you held your numb fingers over a chilly radiator in an uncomfortable flat, or omitted dessert from your dinner menu to ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... might as well drop in for half an hour and see what was going on. Being a Mac, he was, of course, theological, scientific, and argumentative. He saw some things which woke him up, challenged the performer to hypnotize him, was "operated" on or "fooled with" a bit, had a "numb sorter light-headed feelin'," and was told by a voice from the back of the hall that his "leg was being pulled, Mac," and by another buzzin' far-away kind of "ventrillick" voice that he would make a good subject, and that, if he only had ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... heard. But that inward murmur filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the warmth ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... and black sea litter of high-water mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold; but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... his dress he became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, and there he stopped to repair his dress. He was only ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... embrace, like that of Death, Earth's pulseless heart reposes, mute and chill; Within her frozen breast, her frozen breath, In its forgotten fragrance, slumbereth still: Sapless her veins, and numb her withered arms, That still, outstretched, stand grim mementos drear Of her once gorgeous and full-leaved charms. Of flower and fruit, all increase of the year: Voiceless the river, in ice fretwork chained; Hushed the sweet cadences of bird and bee; Dumb the last ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... that something savours well; We note a numb relief withheld before; Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell Of Time ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... and then, with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at his feet an unmistakable sound, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was shining into ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... Garth could get out of him. He was presently alarmed to find the boy growing increasingly numb and drowsy; even he knew what this portended in the North. He pulled him out of the saddle; and made him walk; supporting him with one arm, while with the other he led the horse. The animal took advantage of his partial helplessness, to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... nothing; it seemed as if her very life had gone out of her. She was a mere statue now, her mind numb, her heart dead, her very existence a fragile piece of mechanism. But she was looking at Droulde. That one sense in her had remained alive: ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sea ran even higher, and at night it became very cold; but still they did not dare to leave off baling for an instant, though their legs and arms were numb with fatigue ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... again at his companion. It mattered nothing to him who or what he was; he would have done much to still that pleading voice and pacify him, but since he could not do this, he would go for a little while out of sight and hearing. He was fast growing numb with the fierce cold. He would come back and renew his care, but just now he would go home. He walked fast, and gained his own door with blood ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek succeeds, And pearls of ice bestrew the glittering meads; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... He put the numb and senseless form aside with a great effort, resting the head upon Ben's coat. Twice he attempted to speak, but his trembling lips ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... of his work, and left his life all barrenness and desolation. He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully in these days of sorrow. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cold shudder ran freezingly through his veins,—a something chill and impalpable appeared to pass between him and her caressing arms—his limbs grew numb and heavy—his sight began to fail him ... he was sinking ... sinking, he knew not where, when suddenly she withdrew herself from his embrace. Instantly his strength came back to him with a rush—he sprang to his feet and stood erect, breathless, dizzy, and confused—his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a shock. It was a feeling so tranquil. It was as if an immensely heavy—an unbearably heavy knapsack, supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without sensation of life. I tell you, I had no regret. What had I to regret? I suppose that my inner soul—my dual personality—had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper—that she represented a real human being ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of the swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make supplication ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... dreadfully suggestive still? His mind would keep building up every step of the operation, and fancy made it more ghastly than fact could have been. His nerves tingled and quivered. Minute by minute the giddiness grew more marked, the numb, sickly feeling at his heart more distressing. And then suddenly, with a groan, his head pitching forward, and his brow cracking sharply upon the narrow wooden shelf in front of him, he lay ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge 300 Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with every word.] ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them—all of those who used knives—were unable to wear gloves, and their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... dining room, quiet. Quiet. His body felt queerly remote and numb, but his mind was working frenziedly. Clearly, too, in spite of the frenzy. Death. That was the first thought. Death. It would be easy. But he didn't want to die. Strange, but he didn't want to die. He liked Life. The Park, the trees, the Club, the talk, the whole show.... Nettie was a ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Thirlwell began his homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a winter journey in the bush, for men who brave the ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Numb. i. 20, et seq., where the descendants of Levi are not included among the twelve, and Deut. xxxiii. 6-25, where Simeon is omitted from among the tribes blessed by Moses before ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight, If folly bound our prospect by the grave, All feeling of futurity be numb'd, All godlike passion for eternals quench'd, All relish of realities expired; Renounced all correspondence with the skies; Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire; In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar; Prone to the centre; crawling in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... headache, and all the other unpleasant symptoms of which he had complained two hours earlier, but his general condition was also greatly improved, the swelling of the injured limb had subsided, the flesh had recovered its natural colour, the numb feeling had almost disappeared, and now all that remained to remind him of his disagreeable and perilous adventure of the previous night was the smarting and burning sensation of the cauterised wound itself, which he endured with ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... remembered now they had no existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful mood—and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others—not from any unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was terrible—in the dead of night, when no one saw it. With a strange perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, the only sights she cared to see, were the circumstances ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have always wondered what the hedgers would have said if they had suddenly had their rustic on dit capped with the tale of how the hemlock was used in Athens 2,400 years ago. Did the "woman" of Somersetshire stave off the effects of the poison by walking about? Did her limbs grow cold and numb and dead while the brain still worked? But such questions are destined to remain for ever unanswered. Country people do not like to be cross-questioned upon stray remarks of this character, and if you attempt to fathom ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... course," cried Vince stoutly. "There, my arms are not so numb and full of pins and needles now. Come here ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... home, I say, at so late an hour that night, numb with the cold, hungry, ashamed, and disgusted as you can imagine, thinking about my sick old father more than about myself. I should have to write to him for money, and this would astonish as much as it would grieve him, since he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... but our own is characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopes have grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be in store for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organic power. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive part of a man's life, which it has been, and will ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... King, had died suddenly,—so suddenly that there was neither help nor hope for him among the hastily summoned physicians. Stricken numb and speechless, he kept his anguished eyes fixed to the last upon his son, as one who should say—"Alas, and to thee also, falls this curse of a Crown!" Once dead, he was soon forgotten,—the pomp of the Royal obsequies merely made a gala-day for the light-hearted Southern populace, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... his whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the willows; his bare hands and wet feet were fast becoming chilled and numb. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... truth out of his unwilling throat. I had hardly reached this decision when the door opened, and he stood there gazing at me with sphinx-like stupidity. I arose to my feet, gripping the back of a chair, but the utter vacancy in that face seemed to numb action. There was no positive expression, no dim glimmer of interest in his features; the shining bald head alone gave him a grotesque appearance, restraining me from violence. I could as easily have ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... it. The size of the pack was doubled, and he rapped them till his hand was numb before he and Ione got by. Their vines drew out thin, but held until they were firmly tied about the safe. They went back after ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... must mean that the Master was close behind; and that the whole Place was in a ferment of anxiety about the wanderer. By stoning Lad away and checking the barks, Cyril might well prevent the searchers from finding him. Too weak and too numb with cold to climb up the five-foot cliff-face to the level ground above, he did not want to miss any ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... a suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has us we are numb to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... her room, as the night wore on. She was pitifully frightened, numb. There was in the room, she dimly noted, a heavy silence that sobs had no power to shatter. Dimly, too, she seemed aware of a multitude of wide, incurious eyes which watched her from every corner, where panels snapped at times with ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... for lost, for the night was extremely cold, and he had neither fire to warm him, nor roof to shelter his head. To sleep thus he knew was certain death. He therefore paced up and down as long as he was able to stand, but his boots were frozen stiff, and his feet numb with the cold. After great difficulty he managed to pull off his boots, and having wrapped up his feet in his woollen cap, he lay down on the path he bad beaten in the snow, for he could no longer resist the inclination ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... know you didn't. But that numb sort of pain is always there. I can't seem to get rid of it, no ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... an impulse to faint. She remembered, with terror, previous sensations, and fought off the vertigo, biting down into her lips. She wanted to smile, but her mouth felt numb, as if it dragged ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... bayonets were propped against the wall. The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—with bare legs that looked blue and numb in the cold—the sans-culottes ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... wait. Either it's all nonsense ... or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!' He waited, waited long ... so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb ... but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed.... He opened them promptly ... at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... of rope is wrapped around my body. Anyway it hurts like fun, and my arms seem all numb," he heard Nuthin reply. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... it? Good thing Rupert isn't here! Put something at the bottom of the door. Lock it. My fingers are numb. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I can't undo ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... fists at him Till they were sore and numb. The bull-frog merely blinked at us, And sang: ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... joy, and sorrow, clinging round its soul; That flowest on in coldness and self-aim O'er the dissolving frames of countless waves, That sink like generations, and so rise, Pausing or stilling never, numb'ring up A myriad selfish interests to make Thy sum of being perfect. Man may read The lore of human nature in thee, writ Not with the pen of flattery, that gilds The base past recognition, but all plain And coloured ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Mr. Reardon's. For fully half an hour he lay there, gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... softly in his ear. Ravdin forced his attention back to the landing operation. He was still numb and shaken from the Warp-passage, his mind still muddled by the abrupt and incredible change. Moments before, the sky had been a vast, starry blanket of black velvet; then, abruptly, he had been ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... up a terrapin and turned it over in his hand. Quite numb and frozen, the animal within made no sign. Then he stirred the shells about in the box with his cane. Still not a show of life. Of a sudden he stopped, reflected a moment, then ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... train rolled on for Portsmouth, leaving them with their trunks upon the dark and narrow platform. It was a black night with a bitter wind which carried with it a suspicion of dampness, which might have been rain, or might have been the drift of the neighbouring ocean. Kate was numb with the cold, and even her gaunt companion stamped his feet and shivered as he ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she was bidden, and Sir Harry's tone was a little peremptory. He had been waiting for her, then; he had not quite forgotten her. Mattie began to feel a little less chilled and numb. If he would only say a kind word to her, she thought, she could ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... there are only six really,' I thought; 'that is, only six pages left to read.' But, only fancy, I chanced to glance before me, and, sitting in the front row, side by side, were a general with a ribbon on his breast and a bishop. The poor beggars were numb with boredom; they were staring with their eyes wide open to keep awake, and yet they were trying to put on an expression of attention and to pretend that they understood what I was saying and liked it. 'Well,' I thought, 'since you like it you shall have it! I'll pay you out;' so I just gave ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fist lashed out and caught the animal face in a lashing blow. His knuckles felt numb as ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... the fiery little coxswain, leaning forward with a tiller-rope in each hand, and bending to every stroke, shouting his warnings, and rebukes, and monitions to Tom, till he drove him to his wits' end. By the time the boat came back to Hall's, his arms were so numb that he could hardly tell whether his oar was in or out of his hand; his legs were stiff and aching, and every muscle in his body felt as if it had been pulled out an inch or two. As he walked up to College, he felt as if his shoulders and legs had nothing to do with one ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season of the year when the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... to find how happy she was at the release. Her feet, unaccustomed to sitting still so long, were numb, and little prickles were running up and down her legs. She hurried as fast as she could into Mamsie's room, feeling in need of all the ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... and then intense suffering, to the half-fed travellers. The necessity of frequently wading the Sweetwater chilled the stronger men who were bearing the brunt of the labor, and when morning dawned the occupants of the tents found themselves numb with the cold, and quite unfitted to endure the hardships of the coming day. Chislett draws this picture of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... both her hands on the harp, which is placed on her right side; her figure is full front, but she looks towards the right; round her this inscription, HIBERNIA, 1722. (Simon, plate 7, Numb. 160) ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... rich securities for years and years. The faint, sickly odour of sealing wax must have been distilled from immense sticks of that substance and sprinkled overnight upon the carpets and leather-seated chairs. I breathed and my very limbs felt numb. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... expendable platforms in the opening hours of the conflict if our response is to be timely and induce shock. Awe is not achieved if the enemy is permitted to gain experience in being attacked; at best you may make them numb. Alternatively, reusable long-range survivable systems provide needed flexibility to alter the Deep Strike plan as it unfolds. The food chain of weapons systems ranges from the most valuable systems such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... sunshine was pouring in through the screening and across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely ever a ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness, cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his ears. He made no sign, in his pride and politeness, both indigenous. But he said to himself, "I don't laugh at her gown,—it is what she likes and what she is accustomed to wear. And why can't she let me dress in peace as I was early ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... mood, Retire o'er all her pensive stores to brood? Shivering and blue the peasant eyes askance The drifted fleeces that around him dance, And hurries on his half-averted form, Stemming the fury of the sidelong storm. Him soon shall greet his snow-topp'd [cot of thatch], Soon shall his numb'd hand tremble on the latch, Soon from his chimney's nook the cheerful flame Diffuse a genial warmth throughout his frame; Round the light fire, while roars the north wind loud, What merry groups of vacant faces crowd; These hail his coming—these ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... to Adam, whose faculties were at their utmost intensity, like a terrible dream. As for poor Mimi, she was so overwrought both with present and future fear, and with horror at the danger she had escaped, that her faculties were numb. However, she was braced up for a trial, and she felt assured that whatever might come she would be able to go through with it. Sir Nathaniel seemed just as usual—suave, dignified, and thoughtful—perfect master ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the room rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... connected it closely with that organ; and the medieval alchemists always stirred their dangerous mixtures with that finger because, in their belief, it would most quickly indicate the presence of poison. So, too, many an ancient declared that whenever the ring-finger of a sufferer became numb, death was near at hand. Thus in twentieth century civilization we hear echoes of the life that Rameses knew ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... of men in extremity? Who shall say whether they thought at all—those men half dead with cold, clinging for dear life with numb hands to a slender rope that might give way at any moment? Would they see ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... "Numb-head!" muttered the sheriff, pounding on the side of the cabin with his whip-stock. "Come out and show yourself! We know you're in there, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... staircase. He turned just in time to parry Colden's sword, which the major had picked up and made shift to hold in his wrapped-up, wounded hand. Harry saw that an opportune stroke might send the sword from his enemy's numb and weakening grasp, and his heart swelled with anticipated triumph, until he ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... her a sense of peace—numb, silent peace—wholly unlike the satisfaction which had flooded her in her own room or during the earlier ecstasy before the altar. She raised her eyes slowly till they rested on the shrine where the body ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... young even if their beards are white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted—unless the woodbox fails—a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, and love is always like the constant ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and no sound on the prairie but the triumphant howl of the wind and the dry crunch of our overshoes on the snow, slipping, stumbling. We were pushing ourselves on, but our feet were so numb it was almost impossible to walk. We had been doing it for hours, it seemed; we had always been fighting our way through the deep snow. The store we had left seemed as unreal as though we had never ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... cave they found five musk oxen. They were huddled together and half numb with cold. They roared dully as the howling dogs assaulted them, and rushed lumberingly from the cave into the moonlight. Five great black hulks, with mighty manes of coarse hair, they ambled over the ice for a space of five hundred feet and then, surrounded by the dogs, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... only that they were revolting and horrible, and threatened her with death and ruin. She had crossed her arms over her bosom, but now she raised her hands to hide her face, for she felt a strong hand snatch away the veil that covered her head. This insolent proceeding turned her numb horror to indignant rage, and, fixing her sparkling eyes on her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to experience this numb surprise. His life, set down as a series of events, would have made what the world considers good reading nowadays. It would have illustrated to perfection; for it had been full of incidents, and Cartoner had acted in these incidents—as ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of blood are mentioned in the law of Moses, Numb. xxxv. 19. In the Roman law also, under the head of "those who on account of unworthiness are deprived of their inheritance," it is pronounced, that "such heirs as are proved to have neglected revenging the testator's death, shall be obliged ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... to his utmost by the powerful body and indomitable brain of Churchill. They never paused for rest. It was go, go, and keep on going. A crisp wind blew down the river, freezing their hands and making it imperative, from time to time, to beat the blood back into the numb fingers. As night came on, they were compelled to trust to luck. They fell repeatedly on the untraveled banks and tore their clothing to shreds in the underbrush they could not see. Both men were badly scratched and bleeding. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted and ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... marry you," she said, in a dead voice. She felt cold, numb. Her body seemed without sensation, but her mind was sharply clear. She wanted to scream, but she ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... and birds to help me. Each time when I came to the end of the rope I threw myself back against it, and pulled hard. The skin of my breast stretched out as wide as your hand, but it would not tear, and at last all my chest grew numb, so that it had no feeling in it; and yet, little by little, as I threw my whole weight against the rope, the strips of skin stretched out longer and longer. All day long I walked in this way. The sun blazed down like fire. I had no food, ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... of the tent had fallen behind Jeanne did power of movement and speech return to Philip. He called her name and straggled to a sitting posture. Then he staggered to his feet. He could scarcely stand. Shooting pains passed like flashes of electricity through his body. His right arm was numb and stiff, and he found that it was thickly bandaged. His head ached, his legs could hardly support him. He went to raise his left hand to his head, but stopped it in front of him, while a slow smile of understanding crept over his face. It was swollen and covered with livid bruises. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... to be done. There was the whole day before her. She could not stay here, because although the day was clear and fine there was a chill wind, and she was not warmly clad. Already her hands were feeling numb in the cotton gloves, and her feet were losing the pleasant tired tingle they had had a short time before. The sense of innumerable hours which had to be filled was strong upon Sally, who had never previously had so much time to herself, alone. So she rose briskly from her seat, walked ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... lamed in the fight, stumbled and fell. Before he could rise Jasper had whirled, with one of the Winchesters above his head and his face aflame with fury. Asking no mercy, Rome hid his face with one arm and waited, stricken faint all at once, and numb. One report struck his ears, muffled, whip-like. A dull wonder came to him that the Lewallen could have missed at such close range, and he waited for another. Some one shouted—a shrill hallo. A loud laugh followed; a light seemed breaking before Rome's eyes, and he lifted his ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... lad," said the doctor, laying his hand upon his patient's forehead. "It feels numb and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. Queer ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... to myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head—was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in the same quiet house, not far from Lafayette Square—Kate with them. Kate counted upon her father's aid, active or passive; but when her messenger returned from Willard's with word that Mr. Boone had gone from the hotel several days before, she was numb with a dreadful foreboding. He was avoiding her deliberately. She drove at once to the hotel. The clerk summoned to her aid could only inform her that her father had given up his room and had left the hotel late ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... patients placed in waggons, which had been put at his disposal for this purpose, but notwithstanding his skilled and careful treatment, one of my men died the following day, while the number of those who were seriously ill rose to fifteen. The symptoms of this fatal illness are: headache and a numb feeling in all the limbs, accompanied by an unusually high temperature very often rising to 104 and 106 degrees during the first 24 hours, with the blood running from the patient's nose and ears, which is an ominous sign. At other times the first symptom is what is ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... about to say, "I never knew you could speak!" when a metallic voice that seemed to come from the ladle at the well remarked to the elm, "I suppose it is a bit coldish up there?" and the elm replied, "Not particularly, but you do get numb standing so long on one leg," and he flapped his arms vigorously just as the cabmen do before they drive off. Maimie was quite surprised to see that a number of other tall trees were doing the same sort of thing, and she stole away to the Baby Walk ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... higher stands the grave For heroes than for men; Not any nearer for the child Than numb three-score ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... The boy seemed numb and twisted like the limb of a tree as the old man following his horse helped him across the market-place and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bitterly envied him—envied his life, envied his approaching death; for was he not wrapped round with that woman's tender love, and is not such love stronger than death? Philip had felt as if his own heart was grown numb, and as though it had changed to a cold heavy stone. But at the contrast of this man's lot to his own, he felt that he had yet the power of suffering left ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... When the thing grows too horrible and I am about to cry out to Westerling that I am false, I hear his boast that he made the war as a last step in his ambition. And there is Dellarme's smile rising before me. He died so finely in defence of our garden! When my brain goes numb and I can't think what to say, can't act, Feller appears, prompting with ready word and facile change of expression, and I have my wits again. I go ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... away, had done her best to throw a little air of comfort over the forsaken salon. She had kindled the fire, watered the plants, and thrown open the windows to the sunshine, finding in her toil and movement some little relief from her own heart-ache and oppression. When Paul came back, and with numb, trembling fingers had stripped himself of his scarf and his great-coat, he stepped over the threshold into the salon, and it seemed to him as though the sunlight and the open windows and the crackling ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deep breath he drew, was shaking off his dizziness, was regaining his strength. The spirit within him, with all of the battering he had received, was still unbroken. And Conniston himself felt his right arm growing numb to the elbow. In a very few seconds he would be like a rag doll in ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... animal. He climbed the hill to the tomb, but his limbs became numb. Comb your hair, but do not thumb your book. Bombs are now commonly called "shells." The debtor, who was a subtle man, doubted his word, and gave not a crumb of comfort. Take your psalter and select a joyous ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... degrees, and wipes out his deeds of honour. It seizes his failing limbs, chokes his panting utterance, and numbs his nimble wit. When a cough is taken, when the skin itches with the scab, and the teeth are numb and hollow, and the stomach turns squeamish,—then old age banishes the grace of youth, covers the complexion with decay, and sows many a wrinkle in the dusky skin. Old age crushes noble arts, brings down the memorials of men of old, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... home in ease!" Long before we reached home the storm was pelting us: my little jacket was like a white board when I took it off, for the sleet and snow had frozen as it fell. I was wet to the skin, and so numb with cold I could hardly stand when we reached home at last in the dark and down-pour. I could only get my things very imperfectly dried, and had to manage as best I could, but yet no one even thought of making the inquiry next morning when I came out ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Foster's brain was numb with despair as he began to realize the true meaning of those sleeping things out in the cavern. Death in some unknown and horrible form was imminent for himself and his companions, he knew, but his thoughts were going far beyond that, to the ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... with her dying husband. She tenderly supported his head on her bosom, leaned her face against his and kissed the cold, numb lips. She murmured into his already deaf ear the old tender names. He knew her, for he made a feeble effort to pass his arm round her neck. A smile illumined his face. Then death claimed him. With wild, distended eyes and with ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... you, thank you. I was beginning to feel my limbs growing numb and solidifying like Niobe's. Oh, I must have ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... was sailing sunlit seas of bliss, fully embarked at last upon the most magic and immortal of all illusions. Sitting cramped and numb in his narrow quarters, he peered eagerly into the darkness, watching for the first lights of the Sunny South to twinkle through the gloom. And as he watched he chanted in ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he does n't think at all of himself; he always looks out for ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... watch the ebbing tide, and when it had gone out sufficiently to allow of two stout planks being laid across the channel, an active sailor ventured over with a light, and in a few moments stood by Eric's side. Eric saw him coming, but was too weak and numb to move; and when the sailor lifted up the unconscious Russell from his knees, Eric was too much exhausted even to speak. The man returned for him, and lifting him on his back crossed the plank once more in ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... "yesterday, today, and forever." Therefore the apostle speaks of God, that there is no shadow of change or turning in him, James i. 17. He is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it? Numb. xxiii. 19. And shall he decree, and not execute it? Shall he purpose, and not perform it? "I am the Lord, I change not," that is his name, Mal. iii. 6. "The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... thoughts were passing slowly through Juve's mind, he felt an intense desire to sleep come over him, his limbs suddenly became numb and heavy; and then a ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... she had made gave Marie a curious sensation; Julia and the room and the red fire swam around her; her brain was numb and dizzy; she staggered ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... or nothing. He thought it was the right one, but couldn't be sure. He could no longer see. His vision had gone completely. The pain was a numb thing now, far away, hardly a part of himself. Maybe Mayhem was absorbing the pain-sensation for him, he thought. Maybe Mayhem took the pain and suffered with it in the shared body so he, Larry, ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... some regard for me, and had now come to release me from the foul den I was in. Cold water seemed to afford much relief to my tortured body. I made my toilet as quick as I could in such a place. My feet were so numb and swollen that it was difficult for me to get my shoes on. At last the Bishop arrived as I supposed, and I was conducted—not into his presence as I expected, but into that of my bitterest enemy, the confessor. At the very sight of the monster, I trembled like a reed shaken ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... ever more moan and ever it giveth this answer: "My heart it is numb with the cold of the love that was born of the Summer— I come from the garden all white with the wrath and the sorrow of Winter; I have kissed the low, desolate tomb where my bride in her loveliness lieth And the voice of the ghost in my heart is ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... perspective, you see; and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago—I had been there a year then—I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... complete the work which the latter had left unfinished: the complete inventory of the prodigious wealth of vegetation, of the innumerable species and varieties which Fabre and he collected together, on the slopes and summits of Monte Renoso, often botanizing "up in the clouds, mantle on back and numb with ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... anaesthetize^, blunt, pall, obtund^, benumb, paralyze; put under the influence of chloroform &c n.; stupefy, stun. Adj. insensible, unfeeling, senseless, impercipient^, callous, thick- skinned, pachydermatous; hard, hardened; case hardened; proof, obtuse, dull; anaesthetic; comatose, paralytic, palsied, numb, dead. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... winter to come, I shall be glad of a home and a crumb, When my frail form out of doors would be numb, And I in the snow-storm should die. Summer is lovely, but soon will be past. Summer has plenty not always to last. Summer's the time for the ant to make fast Her stores for a ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... solicitous questions as to how she was standing it all, there came from the numb and bleeding lips of the Woman, through an ice encrusted veil, a reply that was something between a groan and a sob. In faltering tones she declared herself "perfectly comfortable; found the scenery glorious, and simply loved traveling by dog team." Had Baldy understood this assurance ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... the Book of Yashar? Rabbi Khyiah bar Abba on the authority of Rabbi Jokhanan says "It is the book of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they being called righteous (yesharim), and concerning whom it is written, Numb, xxiii, 10, 'Let me die the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... vanishing of the gleam of hope, the gloomy desperation that succeeded. The beautiful black brows met in a spasm of pain over eyes that stared at an abyss of ruin; her lips whitened, she wrung her hands unconsciously; and then, as if numb with horror, she leaned back in her chair, and her chin sank until it touched the black ribbon at her throat. When after a while she rallied, and forced herself to listen, a pleasant-faced young man was on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sir. Good sign. Fine, healthy pain. Now, if it had felt numb and dull I shouldn't have liked it, for it would have sounded as if something nasty was on the arrow. There, you keep a good heart, and we'll soon have you back on board. Then you can have a few hours' sleep, and you'll be ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... property. After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary success with a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Duchess that night; but I wrote amidst the preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... her maid were lame and numb. Van could only hustle them inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are now recalled ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was hesitating whether to stay in this rough ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... he dozed off, as did the others. They had become somewhat used to the pain caused by the bonds, for their nerves were numb from the strain ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... rat, and yet must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he doesn't think at all of himself; he always looks out ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... tread of the sorrel's hoof As he bore his lord away; They passed me slowly, keeping aloof, Like spectres, misty and grey. I thought Lord Hugo had left me there To die, but it was not so; Yet then for death I had little care, My soul seem'd numb'd by the blow; A faintness follow'd, a sickly swoon, A long and a dreamless sleep, And I woke to the light of a sultry noon In my ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... while Ida shivered as she glanced about her. She could no longer see the shelter she had left, and she stood alone in the midst of a tremendous desolation of rock and snow, with the valley yawning, a vast dusky pit, beneath her feet. It was appallingly lonely, and she was numb with cold, while, since she was sure that she could not climb back to her companions unassisted, there was only one person on whom she could rely, and that was the packer, who had insisted on her doing what he thought fit. When he came back she ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the long ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... awkwardly to her, and felt the grip of small, cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sez he; "nobody loves to scrooch down flat with their legs under 'em numb as sticks." But right whilst we were talkin' we met a funeral procession. The head one had hard work to git ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... light grew brighter I started to wade slowly towards it. This was an extremely tiresome undertaking, as the bed upon which I had been resting was very rocky and uneven and I received many bruises before finally reaching its base. My limbs too were thoroughly numb and almost refused to work, but with each step ahead the water became shallower and my progress less arduous. As I went forward I thought it was by the miraculous hand of God that my life had been saved, for the time being at least. Then, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... had realised that the sympathy between them was imperfect, but always he had counted upon re-establishing the old complete comradeship when his great task should be at last concluded. This morning he had learned the truth, that Yvonne was with Orlando James, but his brain was still too numb fully to appreciate it. Towards noon he sat down at his writing-table and began to read with close attention the typed pages of The Key. Bassett was becoming anxious and had rung up more than once during the morning. Arrangements had been made to publish simultaneously ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... verb, a word that signifies to do—active, it expresses action—transitive, the action passes over from the nominative "printer" to the object "books"—third pers. sing. numb. because the nominative printer is ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... fury that reduced the third stage of a $5,000,000 rocket to junk was evident to him only as a brilliant blue-white flash, a hammer-like shock through the antennae support that left his wrist and forearm numb. Then a violent wrench as a long cylinder, expelled from the split hull, caught the loop of his life line and dragged him in till he clashed hard against it, the suddenly increased tension or a sharp edge parting the line close to the anchored end. He clawed blindly for a hold, ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead just between the eyebrows and above. When he had finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark place was numb. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... faint, sickly odour of sealing wax must have been distilled from immense sticks of that substance and sprinkled overnight upon the carpets and leather-seated chairs. I breathed and my very limbs felt numb. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nothing before had ever done. The thought tore a great, gaping wound in her sensibilities. She was really low and vile in her—Louise's—eyes, in the world's eyes, basically so in Lester's eyes. How could it be otherwise? She went about numb and still, but the ache of defeat and disgrace was under it all. Oh, if she could only see some way to make herself right with the world, to live honorably, to be decent. How could that possibly be brought about? It ought to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... nights and four days of incessant marching, till the troops were nearly numb with cold, firm ground was reached, and for a while they rested in peace on the hill of ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... lame and numb. Van could only hustle them inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... worn out, and as it were all numb with his loss, Mr. Tebrick got up and went within doors, leaving his dear fox lying near where she ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... of life seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for the room her dead mother had so decorated was now furnished as a bedroom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... glanced at her mother when she heard this. Her knees ached and her fingers felt stiff and numb, ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... sneeringly. "As you were going to the other mansion, you told me to stick them over the door. I was afraid lest any one else should spoil them, as they were being pasted, so I climbed up a high ladder and was ever so long in putting them up myself; my hands are even now numb with cold." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... peoples surge and sigh, And laughters fail, and greetings die: Hopes dwindle; yea, Faiths waste away, Affections and enthusiasms numb; Thou canst not mend these things ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... to flow, the heavy sobs were stilled, her aching and bruised body felt numb with the pain in her heart. But outwardly she was more calm. She rose from her knees, and hiding the small cross in the bosom of her gown, she drew forth the letter and read it ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Petey...." Numb whispers, numb thoughts, over and over, but no longer frightened, no longer binding ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf
... shadows: two red objects that resembled dancing telegraph poles leaped past him from he knew not where, and then there was a shout, the report of a pistol, a horrid yell. Something heavy crashed down beside him and writhed. His eyes were closing, his senses were going, he was numb and sleepy. Away off in the distance ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... for the attack—and yet no word was ever given. No trumpet sounded, though the men were drawn up ready. We all stood to arms; but the sight of that dazzling white figure seemed to close the lips of our commanders, to numb the limbs of our soldiers. I can say no more. When the chance was gone—the hour passed—we gazed into each other's face as men awaking from a dream. We cursed ourselves. We cursed the witch who had bound us by her spells. We vowed to redeem and ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sign. Fine, healthy pain. Now, if it had felt numb and dull I shouldn't have liked it, for it would have sounded as if something nasty was on the arrow. There, you keep a good heart, and we'll soon have you back on board. Then you can have a few hours' sleep, and you'll be all right ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... resembling those of Egypt and India. He renders one of the mysterious inscriptions which abound in the Wady Mokatteb (the Valley of Writings), "the red geese ascend from the sea,—lusting the people eat to repletion;" thus presenting a striking concurrence with the passage in Numb. xi. 31, "there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails (salu) from the sea."—FORSTER'S One Primeval Language, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... sensencajxo. noon : tagmezo. noose : masxo. nor : nek. normal : norma, normala. north : nordo. note : not'i, -o, rimark'i, -o, (music) noto, tono. notice : rimarki, noti, avizo. nought : nulo, nenio. nourish : nutri. novel : romano. novice : novico, novulo. now : nun, nuntempe. numb : rigida. number : (quantity) nombro; (No.) numero; numeri. nurse : (a child) varti, (the sick) flegi. nurseling : sucxinfano. nut : nukso, (of screw) sxrauxbingo. nutmeg ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... judges went into brief executive session in one corner. Then Leighton crossed to Link, for the fourth time that day, and gave him the gaudy rosette which proclaimed Chum "best dog in the show." A roar of applause went up. Link felt dizzy—and numb. Then, with a gasp of rapture, he stooped and gathered the bored Chum in his long arms, in ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... remembered her but Molly from whom the years had taken more than their toll, giving but little in return. He could not think beyond this fact, as yet. And he felt nothing, nothing at all. Both heart and mind lay mercifully numb under ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... punished with destruction by the flesh which they desired; ("And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague."—Numb. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... taxi bore him swiftly back towards Bordeaux, his mind was occupied with the girl to the exclusion of all else. It was not so much that he thought definitely about her, as that she seemed to fill all his consciousness. He felt numb, and his whole being ached for her as with a dull physical pain. But it was a pain that was mingled with exultation, for if she had refused him, she had at least admitted that she loved him. Incredible thought! ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... He did not know whether Tex was dead or alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp claws dug solidly ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... shoulder feels numb, and I can't use my arm," replied Folkner. "But I can use my legs, and I think that is what we had ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... had wandered after reading her sweetheart's letter. There, to the secret ear of the great Mother, instinct had drawn her and her grief; and now the earliest shock was over; a dull, numb pain of mind followed the first sorrow; unwonted exercise had made her weary; and physical hunger, not to be stayed by mental suffering, forced her to turn homewards. Red-eyed and unhappy she passed beside the river, a very picture of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Peter's or the cannon of St. Angelo. . . . But my soul has been iced over, as well as the hitherto flowing fountains of the Piazza, di San Pietro. I have not been able to expand like corn and melons under a summer sun. Nipped have been all my blossoming hopes and enthusiasms, and my hands have been too numb to hold a pen. Added to this, Mr. Hawthorne has had the severest cold he ever had, because bright, keen cold he cannot bear so well as damp; and .Rosebud has not been well since she entered the city. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... going to be hanged on the morrow, she had seen in the papers; and she wondered if, this last night in his cell, the condemned wretch was numb, or was he feeling at ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... her room, and by the light of it she saw that the clock which stood upon the mantelpiece pointed to half-past eleven. She had slept for nearly twelve hours, and felt that, notwithstanding the cold and exposure, save for stiffness and a certain numb feeling in her head—the result, perhaps, of the unaccustomed brandy—she was well and, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... There was that in her mistress's numb acquiescence that terrified her. "Sure, you'll kill her, Sir ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... verdict on them; the very smell of the place, compounded of fog, gaol-fever, the close air, and the dinners eaten earlier in the day by the crowd—all this strikes home upon me as sharply as it then did, after the numb apathy of waiting. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his very senses down. To be sure, when twelve o'clock came, he went up into the loft, ate his bit of dry bread, and said his prayers, as he had not been able to do in the morning, and that made him feel less forlorn and downcast for a little while; but then as he sat, he grew cold, and numb, and sleepy, and seemed to have no life in him, but to be moving like a horse in a mill, when Boldre called him down, and told him not ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe reassurance. "He's coming back,—coming back to ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... weight, for he proceeded very slowly, with a great clumping noise, surmounting one step at a time in the manner of a child. It was Mr. Marple, the cab-driver, and his way of going up to bed was very simply explained by the fact that a daily sixteen hours of sitting on the box left his legs in a numb and practically useless condition. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... day, till his money was mostly gone, and nothing to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his good humor. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... golden saddle, and thought that none but it could suit so beautiful a horse, especially as it had golden shoes. But just as he stretched out his hand to take it he received from some invisible being so hard a blow on the arm that it was made quite numb. This recalled to him his promise and his danger, so he led out the horse without looking at ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... heart—sweet heart loved all these years— Will recognize the passion of the strain: Who eats the lotos-flower of Love with tears, Will know the rapture of that numb, vague pain Which thrills the heart and stirs the languid brain. All day amid the toiling throng we strive, While in our heart these sacred, sweet loves thrive, And in choice hours we show them, white and cool Like lilies floating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... inunctions may produce some improvement. Sprains of the ankle are to be treated by placing the joint immediately in very cold water ad repercussionem spiritus et sanguinis, and the joint is to be kept thus refrigerated until it even becomes numb (stupefactionem); after which stupes of salt water and urine are to be applied, followed by a plaster of galbanum, ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... think. The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up to ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... noise of a great fire licking into dry wood, and things that were not bees humming round about. A distant man in a yellow hunting shirt stumbled, and was drowned in the tangle as in water. Around me men dropped plough-handles and women baskets, and as we ran our legs grew numb and our bodies cold at a sound which had haunted us in dreams by night—the war-whoop. The deep and guttural song of it rose and fell with a horrid fierceness. An agonized voice was in my ears, and I halted, ashamed. It was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was held in a vice of iron. Now his numb arm gave way, slowly, inevitably. He ground his teeth and cursed. His curse was half a prayer. For answer there was the unearthly chuckle just below his ear. His hand was moved back, down, around! He was helpless as a child in the arms of its father—no, helpless as a sheep in ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... from the voyce of God; or by a Vision or Dream: Nor is there any thing in his Law, Morall, or Ceremoniall, by which they were taught, there was any such Enthusiasme; or any Possession. When God is sayd, (Numb. 11. 25.) to take from the Spirit that was in Moses, and give it to the 70. Elders, the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided. The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man, mean ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... some night-bird brushed them. Once a footfall passed the gate, and she shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away and left a profounder quiet. Her eyes were still on Harney's tormented face: she felt she could not move till he moved. But she was beginning to grow numb from her constrained position, and at times her thoughts were so indistinct that she seemed to be held there only by a vague ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Jane Whitly!—well, never mind the name!—this is Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale Dawson has ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to the Poste de Secours, just behind the lines, and laid the stretcher down gently, after which the bearers stretched and restretched their stiffened arms, numb with his weight. For he was a big man of forty, not one of the light striplings of the young classes of this year or last. The wounded man opened his eyes, flashing black eyes, that roved about restlessly for a moment, and then rested ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... good hand Vye thrust his numb and useless left one into the front of his belt. Then, awkwardly he tried to tend Hume. After a close inspection he thought that the mass of blood had come from a ragged tear in the scalp above the temple and the bone beneath had escaped damage. From Hume's own first-aid ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... night of agony. How the long and weary hours at last passed Fred had no conception. There were times when he felt numb as if all power of sensation had entirely left his body. Again he tried resolutely to assure himself that safety would come with the morning light and that soon either he would find his friends or they would discover him. Somehow he was convinced that neither Pete nor John would search together ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... rarefied as to cause us grave injury. He reminded me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that often afflicts aeronauts who have ascended too swiftly, and he spent some time in the preparation of a sickly-tasting drink which he insisted on my sharing. It made me feel a little numb, but otherwise had no effect on me. Then he ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... this girl had merely touched him gently, and he had been made helpless. It was most perplexing; and while the custom-house officials were passing his luggage, he found himself rubbing his arm curiously, as though it were numb, and looking down at it with an amused smile. He did not comment on the incident, although he smiled at the recollection of his prompt obedience several times during the day. But as he was stepping into the cab to drive to Athens, he saw the offending ruffian pass, dripping with water, and ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dogged eyes the brilliant stars. A passing wind turned the windmill, which creaked a forlorn minute, and ceased. He must have gone to sleep and slept soundly, for the next he knew it was the cold air of dawn that made him open his eyes. A numb silence lay over all things, and the tenderfoot had that moment of curiosity as to where he was now which comes to those who have journeyed for many days. The Mexicans had already departed with their freight-wagon. It was not entirely ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... comes the dear Girl! comes with kind arms extended To welcome me!... limbs numb'd with age fain would move. My cheek feels the offspring of rapture warm blended, With answering drops:... this the meed of ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... be held at the bungalow that night, at which he was to be asked to deliver over to Rasula's committee the papers, the receipts and the memoranda that he had accumulated during his months of employment in their behalf. She had a feeling of dread—a numb, sweet feeling that she could not explain, except that under all of it lay the proud consciousness that he was a man who had courage, a man ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... clear day, as I was riving a log, panting and glowing with the labor, yet with fingers numb and feet aching with the cold, I heard a yell from Agathemer. Axe in hand, my left hand making sure that my knife was loose in its sheath, where I wore it stuck in my belt, I raced to the store-house. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... feebly, "I feel very cold: do you think that this is death? It seems to be creeping to my heart. I have no feeling, in my feet, and my thighs are numb." ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... ran even higher, and at night it became very cold; but still they did not dare to leave off baling for an instant, though their legs and arms were numb with fatigue ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... made no complaint about what he had suffered. I told him I would get a stretcher, so I went to some trenches not far away and got a bearer party and a stretcher and went over to rescue him. The men jumped down into the trench and moved him very gently, but his legs were so numb that although they were hit he felt no pain. One of the men asked him if he was only hit in the legs. He said, "Yes," but the man looked up at me and pulling up the boy's tunic showed me a hideous wound in his back. They ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... wolf-pack, and the sinister, man-eating loup cervier, crowded her brain. She must build a fire. She felt through her pocket for the glass bottle of matches, only to find that her fingers were too numb to remove the cork. She replaced the vial and, drawing on her mittens, beat her hands together until the blood tingled to her finger-tips. How she wished now that she had heeded the advice of LeFroy, who had cautioned against venturing into ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... limbs were numb from the long carry, obeyed with alacrity. But returning hurriedly with the water, he was met at the door by his perverse master, who took the glass from his hands with the curt ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... comprehended nor sought to know why Lord Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... exclaimed—"They do not cry, long live the Earl!" Nor, when night came, accompanied by drizzling rain and cold, would I return home; for I knew that each cottage rang with the praises of Adrian; as I felt my limbs grow numb and chill, my pain served as food for my insane aversion; nay, I almost triumphed in it, since it seemed to afford me reason and excuse for my hatred of my unheeding adversary. All was attributed to him, for I confounded so entirely the idea of father and son, that I forgot that the latter ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... robs the warrior of his speech and soul, tarnishes his fame by slow degrees, and wipes out his deeds of honour. It seizes his failing limbs, chokes his panting utterance, and numbs his nimble wit. When a cough is taken, when the skin itches with the scab, and the teeth are numb and hollow, and the stomach turns squeamish,—then old age banishes the grace of youth, covers the complexion with decay, and sows many a wrinkle in the dusky skin. Old age crushes noble arts, brings down the memorials ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the lynx-eyed watchers. We went about two miles in the woods, and there hid. So far I had no covering for my head, and but scant raiment for my body. The season was very cold in April and May, and many a time I felt numb, chill, and sick, but there was no remedy for it; only "grin and go through." In the last part of my captivity, I suffered from exposure to the sun. The squaws took all my hats, and I could not get anything to cover my head, except a blanket, and I would not dare to put one on, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... heart beat so slowly and painfully that she almost felt the pulsation of it in her throat. The kitchen door was open and Janina passed through it like a shadow, but she stumbled against the bed of the servant-girl, which stood very near the door. She grew numb with fear and for a long time stood motionless and breathless, almost in a state of suspended animation, gazing with terrified eyes at the bed whose dim outlines she could scarcely make out in the darkness. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... really very discouraging: I was cold and wet and hungry; my legs and clothes torn by the gorse, my hands scratched and bleeding; the wind brought water to my eyes by its constant buffeting, and my skin was numb from contact with the chill mist. Fortunately I had matches, and after some difficulty, by crouching under a wall, I caught a swift glimpse of my watch, and saw that it was but little after eight o'clock. Supper I knew ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms Pins, wooden ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... I became sleepy after that; or else in a painless state of insensibility. When I woke I was numb all over, and had to rub my dazzled eyes as the bright daylight broke in ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... his wind that was weak, it was his feet—his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... transition, but our own is characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopes have grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be in store for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organic power. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive part of a man's life, which it has been, and will be again. The work of destruction ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... going, no ways are better than this," he mused, presently. "I swear I'm rather comfortable now; a trifle numb—but we—I say, we must all—all go some time, you know. Did you hear me?" he repeated, smiling. "I was just saying that we must all go, one way or another, ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, And all the more when "Butch" Weldy Captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers; And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice. Will some one go to the village newspaper, And gather into a book the verses I wrote?— I thirsted so for love I hungered ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... plight, and with an effort shook his senses back into his head. It was not precisely a time when he could afford to let his wits go wool-gathering. And he realised that he had been, in a way, more than half-asleep as he walked; even now he was drowsy, his eyes were heavy, his feet leaden—and numb with cold besides. He had no least notion of what distance he might have travelled or whether he had walked in a straight line or a circle; but when he thought to glance over his shoulder—there was at the moment perhaps more wind with ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... cool dawn she awoke shivering and hungry. Her hair had tumbled about her face, and sitting up she braided it with numb, sore fingers. She looked at her hands; they well stained with blood from many cuts. Her skirt was torn and soiled; her stockings were in strips; her knees were bruised. But as she rose to her feet and once more searched the riddle of a crag-broken ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... some one lost, But he, the spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb; Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. In Memoriam, XCII. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... vitality was asserting itself. The gray, drawn face was colored to golden tan; the clear eyes were shining with new appreciation of the joy of life. He had not thought much after the very first, during those long, racking hours of tossing on the sea. His brain had become numb. His fancies had run to tender memories of moments spent with Plutina. Often, he had felt her presence there with him, in the dark spaces of the sea. But the idea that most dominated his mind had sprung ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... gone high went numb. She made a gesture, as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made before, of weariness with this thing, "Ah, my ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... some safe recess, But from among thy followers thou shalt chuse The bravest three in all thy gallant fleet. And now the artifices understand 500 Of the old prophet of the sea. The sum Of all his phocae numb'ring duly first, He will pass through them, and when all by fives He counted hath, will in the midst repose Content, as sleeps the shepherd with his flock. When ye shall see him stretch'd, then call to mind That ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the gross blunders that ingenious men have been forced into by endeavouring to reconcile this appearance with the ordinary Principles of optics. Since the writing of which there hath been published in the TRANSACTIONS [Numb. 187. P. 323] another paper relating to the same affair by the celebrated Dr. Wallis, wherein he attempts to account for that phenomenon which, though it seems not to contain anything new or different from what ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... felt the lapse of hours. For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls: 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, And numb the elastic powers. Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn-out life, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... make possible sufficient food and clothing for her natural growth and development. But scores of little girls go shivering to school every morning after a breakfast of bread and tea, they return numb with cold after a dinner of more bread and tea and they go home to a supper of the same with a piece of stale cake or a cookie to help out. Nature calls aloud for nourishment and there is no answer. The girl enters her teens, finds ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... and numb as wood against his palate; no word would come to it; it would not move. The wonder of a new beauty in God's created things was deep upon him; a warm fountain rose in him and played and tossed, with a new and pleasurable thrill. He saw and admired, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... strangely sunk away, though he regarded the man he supported with such an intensity of loathing that he marvelled at himself for continuing to endure the contact. The astounding revelation had struck him like a blow between the eyes. He felt numb, almost incapable ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... As o'er the steeps with pausing foot she moves, The pitying Dryads shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... her, for a moment; then, bent and kissed her. And that kiss is on my lips this instant, and will be until they numb in death. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... will go forth and fight France," he said at last; and with that resolve the sense of numb lethargy and despair fell away from him like a worn-out garment, and his ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... had succeeded in pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they made, They found Miss Jenny sore afraid, Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade, Equally ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... arms were numb with exhaustion, he had lost hope that anything in the world ever could be still, when the announcement was made that the harbour was in sight, and everybody's troubles would soon be over. And sure enough, the rolling gradually became less. The little vessel still quivered from ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... fervently for God's grace upon "these Thy repentant creatures." Missy shut her eyes, repented violently, and awaited the miracle. What would happen? How would it feel, when her soul was born anew? Surely it must be time. She waited and waited, while her limbs grew numb and her soul continued to quiver and stretch up. But in vain; she somehow didn't feel the grace of God nearly as much as last Sunday when the Presbyterian choir was singing "Asleep in Jesus," while the sun shone divinely through the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... the huge lion, its hot breath upon his face, its rough tongue upon his cheek. The ape-man had often been close to death; but never before so close as this, he thought, for he was convinced that death was but a matter of seconds. His brain was still numb from the effects of the blow that had felled him, and so he did not, for a moment, recognize the lion that stood over him as the one he had so ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws. The girl drew out her numb leg. She straightened herself, swayed, and clutched blindly at him. Next moment her body relaxed and she was unconscious in ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, 305 When the frost flowers deg. the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... dress, and deliberately put it on again, in the dark, though her hands were so numb with cold that she could scarcely hook the fastenings. Her teeth chattered as she threw ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swiftly back towards Bordeaux, his mind was occupied with the girl to the exclusion of all else. It was not so much that he thought definitely about her, as that she seemed to fill all his consciousness. He felt numb, and his whole being ached for her as with a dull physical pain. But it was a pain that was mingled with exultation, for if she had refused him, she had at least admitted that she loved him. Incredible thought! ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Conniston's mind: the foreman, with every deep breath he drew, was shaking off his dizziness, was regaining his strength. The spirit within him, with all of the battering he had received, was still unbroken. And Conniston himself felt his right arm growing numb to the elbow. In a very few seconds he would be like a rag doll in the other's ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time." We ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... what he could until the short twilight of the tropics darkened into night, and then, with the idea of saving firewood, climbed a tree. But now the cold became intense. The heat of the day had been followed by sharp frost, and the unfortunate sportsman, with no extra covering, became so numb that he decided to descend from his perch and light his fire. He had clambered down to the lowest bough, and was about to drop to the ground, when something stirred below him. A moving body parted the bushes, and he heard at ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... falls. Light. O villains! K. Edw. And there, in mire and puddle, have I stood This ten days' space; and, lest that I should sleep, One plays continually upon a drum; They give me bread and water, being a king; So that, for want of sleep and sustenance, My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd, And whether I have limbs or no I know not. O, would my blood dropp'd out from every vein, As doth this water from my tatter'd robes! Tell Isabel the queen, I look'd not thus, When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont. Light. O, speak ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... of Sorrow come Only wishing to be numb: Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies, Our breasts are soft as silken roses, And our hands are tenderer Than the breaths that scarce can stir The sunlit eglantine that is Murmurous with hidden bees. Come, ye sorrowful, and steep Your tired ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... more himself, and inclined to joke. And then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz somewhat numb, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... punishment to him, he would have endured any torture before subjecting his child to such a fate; but as a king, he dared not bring ruin on all his people, who trusted him. Psyche, herself, numb with horror, commanded quietly that preparations be made for the procession which should accompany her to the rock described by the oracle. Some days later, this procession set out, the priests in their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... storm-clouds across the desolate mountain top, and drove tiny particles of half-frozen rain into our faces with blinding, stinging force. Drenched to the skin by eight or nine hours' exposure to the storm, tired and weak from long climbing, with boots full of icy water, and hands numb and stiff from cold, we stopped for a moment to rest our horses and decide upon our course. Brandy was dealt out freely to all our men in the cover of a tin pail, but its stimulating influence was so counteracted ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... I could hear the slow ticking of an eight-day clock. The woman was humming to herself as she worked. All these things, which my senses took quick note of and retained, seemed to me to belong to another world. I myself was under some sort of spell. My brain was numb with terror, the fire of life had left my veins, so that I sat there in the warm sunshine and shivered until my teeth chattered. Inside, the woman was singing ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more'n common, but after dark it scares me to pieces. I do' know but I shall be afeared to go home," and she laughed uneasily. "There! when I get through with this needle I believe I won't knit no more. The back o' my neck is all numb." ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... against the Creator's scheme of things. Civilisation on its evil side has frequently perverted woman's natural instinct, so that in numbers of cases the wonderful devotion of the animal to her young has become numb in her, or dead. If only all women would bravely face these facts of nature instincts in themselves and in men, they would approach marriage with much broader-minded views, and would have a much greater chance of happiness, because they would realise that they must be lenient ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... No. 1 and 2; you are in a completely relaxed state. Now give yourself the following suggestions: "As I count to ten and even before I reach the count of ten, I shall feel a light tingling or numb feeling in my right hand." As you slowly begin the count of ten, you keep repeating suggestions to the effect that your right hand is beginning to tingle. Once again, you practice the technique of visual-imagery, tapping your experiential background for this ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... nose! No weather can reach such cattle: it may be a storm of snow twenty feet deep, or an even-down pour of rain, washing the very cats off the house tops; when a weaver is shivering at his loom, with not a drop of blood at his finger nails, and a tailor like myself, so numb with cauld, that instead of driving the needle through the claith, he brogs it through his ain thumb—then, fient a hair care they; but, standing beside a ranting, roaring, parrot-coal fire, in a white apron and a gingham jacket, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... while she failed to realise it; there was a numb sensation in her breast, a dull confusion in her mind. She sat alone in the parlour, in her pretty new gown, looking straight ahead of her, seeing nothing—not even his letter ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... wonted wiles (so tenderly remembered now they had no existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful mood—and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others—not from any unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was terrible—in the dead of night, when no one saw it. With a strange perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... straw, Old Pearson told him flat 'n' plain as if he was n't goin' to marry Tilly, he need n't count on spendin' the winter as their company. Well, he says you can maybe realize what a shock that was. He says his nose was just smashed numb 'n' his sleep was full o' grabbin' at 'em in his dreams 'n' now it looked like all was for nothin' a tall. Still he says he scraped up a smile 'n' a cheerful look 'n' told Old Pearson as he was more 'n willin' to marry Tilly for his winter's board but it ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... his arms were numb, but he did not know it. The tricks of fate are cruel enough, but there scarcely could have been a worse one than that: To care for a woman as he loved Edith Carr and have her given into his arms because ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... lips and head were released. But her hands and feet were numb. Still feeling as if she were in some dreadful dream she saw the beam of the headlights picking out the winding trail, flashing on trees by the wayside, shining on wet rocks, heard the chatter of the creek over stones and the labor ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, for ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... went back to the castle, the saved lying on the sledge, the savior drawing it; the wind was behind them now, and blew them along. And when the old man, weary and numb with cold, reached the ladder at last, helped Waring, lame and irritable, up to the little snow-covered balcony, and led the way to Silver's room,—when Silver, hearing the step, raised herself in the arms of the old slave and looked ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Jack had been overheard bragging of a trick* he had found out to manage the "old formal jade," as he used to call her. "Hang this numb-skull of mine," quoth he, "that I could not light on it sooner. As long as I go in this ragged tattered coat, I am so well known, that I am hunted away from the old woman's door by every barking cur about ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... leaning forward with a tiller-rope in each hand, and bending to every stroke, shouting his warnings, and rebukes, and monitions to Tom, till he drove him to his wits' end. By the time the boat came back to Hall's, his arms were so numb that he could hardly tell whether his oar was in or out of his hand; his legs were stiff and aching, and every muscle in his body felt as if it had been pulled out an inch or two. As he walked up ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the mysterious inscriptions which abound in the Wady Mokatteb (the Valley of Writings), "the red geese ascend from the sea,—lusting the people eat to repletion;" thus presenting a striking concurrence with the passage in Numb. xi. 31, "there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails (salu) from the sea."—FORSTER'S One Primeval ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... she heard him clattering dishes and pans. Daylight waned to twilight, twilight to dusk, to darkness. She did not think; she did not feel, except an occasional dull pang from some bodily bruise. Her soul, her mind, were absolutely numb. Suddenly a radiance beat upon her eyes. All in an instant, before the lifting of her eyelids, soul and body became exquisitely acute; for she thought it was he come again, with a lamp. She looked; it was the moon whose beams struck full in at the uncurtained window and bathed ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... something savours well; We note a numb relief withheld before; Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... stream of sheep was steady and continuous. The current was swift and the men's bodies ached and grew numb in the intense cold, but they stood their ground. Only in one place was the water too deep to work, and here they lost a few terror-stricken animals who turned aside from the chain and were ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were and nearly ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... night His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his way up to his daughters' room, and approached the bed in which were the seven little boys. All were sleeping, with the exception of little Tom Thumb, who was numb with fear when he felt the ogre's hand, as it touched the head of each brother ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... fire at all costs. If mortal, I must kill it, if ghostly, the noise of my rifle might dematerialize it. And, as God is my judge, O'Donnell, at that moment I had not the least idea which of it was—tiger or phantom. It sprang—my brain reeled—my fingers grew numb, and as my wife suddenly bounded forward, the shadowy form of Nahra seemed to rise from the ground and mock me. With a supreme effort I jerked my finger back and fired. Bang! The sound of the explosion acted like a safety-valve ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... He was not afraid of adventure and peril; but the thought of prison and disgrace—to say nothing of a felon's death—seemed to paralyze the beating of his heart with a numb sense of horror. Truly, if this sort of danger dogged his steps, the sooner he was out of the country the better ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... clustering down upon the shore, the little mole, a few doltish peasants by the landing gaping at the great trireme. No others greeted them, for the terror of Mardonius's Tartar raiders had driven all but the poorest to some safe shelter. The oars slipped from numb fingers; the anchor plunged into the green water; the mainsail rattled down the mast. Men sat on the benches motionless, gulping down the clear air. They had done their part. The rest lay in the hands of the gods, and in the speed of him who two days since ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... growing old. It was a glowing ruby that lay upon the breast Of one who had not earned it, who wore it with a sneer; The thief was very weary, he only longed for rest; He was too wan for caring, he was too numb ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... indeed we must, since to sleep might mean to die, yet saw nothing save the lonely stars, and heard nothing in that awful silence, for here even the wind made no noise as it slid across the snows. Accustomed as I was to such exposure, my faculties began to grow numb and my eyes to shut, when suddenly Leo ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... to the next turn!" exclaimed Tom prayerfully. He was sitting waist-deep in water, and his teeth were chattering. He was becoming numb again, but there was no opportunity for exercise now. The old flatboat seemed ready to slide from under him at ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... a lie." Arlee's eyes fixed themselves on the dancing candle flame, swaying in the soft night air. She tried to think very coolly and collectedly, but her brain felt numb and fogged and heavy. The sight of that tortured candle flame hypnotized her. Faintly she whispered, "Then it was all—an excuse," and, at that, sharp terror, like a knife, cleaved her numbness. She turned ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... through all the conversations and melodramatic situations of the mediocre performance. When the curtain went down he felt that he now had a subject to inspire his Muse forever. He quitted the theatre in a state of intense excitement, and rode homeward in a state of numb ecstasy. Notwithstanding his sentimental mood, Pen was so normal in mind and body that he slept as soundly as ever, but when he awoke he felt himself to be many years older than yesterday. He dressed himself ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to her climax her face assumed an expression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Archer's mirth had he not been numb with amazement. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... to the ship's plating, was likewise carried around at dizzying speed. I could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying! And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest objects are smashed, where tree trunks ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... position of safety and shook off the noose. In his rage-maddened heart was no room for gratitude to the ape-man. He recalled only the fact that Tarzan had laid this painful indignity upon him. He would be revenged, but just at present his legs were so numb and his head so dizzy that he must postpone ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to show the world That gin is wrong And rye is strong And Scotch to limbo should be hurled. Thus with his spotless flag unfurled He went against the Demon Rum Who snarled, "I vum!" Got sort of numb, Rolled up his eyes, lay down and curled While all the saints of heaven above (Including Mr. Bryan's Dove) Cried "Rah-rah-rah! And siss-boom-ah! Three cheers for Health and Christian Love! But, Andrew dear— Say, now, look here! You're ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... wished to know nothing about himself anymore, to have rest, to be dead. If there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him dead! If there only was a tiger a devour him! If there only was a wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and sleep, and no awakening from that! Was there still any kind of filth, he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself? Was it still at all possible ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... human or divine that could have any possible hand in his defeat, Leyden gathered superhuman strength out of his desperation and tore loose his knife hand. His other hand, at Vandersee's throat, had grown white and numb from its own efforts that had not changed the Hollander's expression one bit; but now, in a last swift up-stroke of the knife, the cornered rat ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... hairs Hoar with the snowy blast: while no one cares To clothe thy shrivell'd limbs and palsied head. My Father! throw away this tatter'd vest 5 That mocks thy shivering! take my garment—use A young man's arm! I'll melt these frozen dews That hang from thy white beard and numb thy breast. My Sara too shall tend thee, like a child: And thou shalt talk, in our fireside's recess, 10 Of purple Pride, that scowls on Wretchedness— He did not so, the Galilaean mild, Who met the Lazars ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Scriptorium had been uninhabitable by night, the hands of authors growing too numb there to write. On this night, conditions were worse than ever; the usual valiant essay was defeated with more than the usual case. Queed fared back to his dining-room, as was now becoming his melancholy habit. And to-night the necessity ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thank you. I was beginning to feel my limbs growing numb and solidifying like Niobe's. Oh, I must have you. What's ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... my hot life into you," said the second; "your brain is numb, and your limbs are dead now; but they shall live with a fierce free life. Oh, ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... for a winter to come, I shall be glad of a home and a crumb, When my frail form out of doors would be numb, And I in the snow-storm should die. Summer is lovely, but soon will be past. Summer has plenty not always to last. Summer's the time for the ant to make fast Her ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... securely locked and the boy turned disconsolate to his companions. It was the hour when, at home, their fathers would send them lovingly to bed, when their mothers would tuck them comfortably under the covers and kiss them good-night; and here they lay, clad in tatters, numb with cold, pinched with hunger; pictures of misery and woe. Heart-rending were the sighs, bitter the complaints, in which the poor lads gave utterance to ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... EARLY (12th-13th), Bridge, the Four Pontoniers, with Officers and numb soldiers doing their best, is got built;—Browne waiting for us, on thorns, all day; Prussians extensively beginning to strengthen their posts, about the Lilienstein, about Lichtenhayn, or where risk is; and in fact pouring ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Everett plantation," he relates, "I worked since I can remembah, hoein', pickin' cotton and othah chohs 'round the fahm. We didden have much clothes, nevah no undahweah, no shoes, old ovahalls and a tattahed shirt, wintah and summah. Come de wintah, it be so cold mah feet weah plumb numb mos' o' de time and manya time—when we git a chanct—we druve the hogs from outin the bogs an' put ouah feet in the wahmed wet mud. They was cracked and the skin on the bottoms and in de toes weah cracked and bleedin' mos' o' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the delicious weight of her limp body as she leaned against him. He had sat so still, in his fear of waking her, that his arm had been numb for an hour. Then, later on, when she did wake up, he had got her some cold water to bathe her face, and persuaded her to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk. After that she had felt much better, and even cheered up enough to laugh at the way he looked ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and he manages to pass the brush gently under the beds without waking his sleeping comrades, and without disturbing those who are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins or towels, and he is as gentle as a woman when he helps to dress Vossaert, whose limbs are numb and painful. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... within him his wits were working, and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, "Boatswain ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... to overwhelm them, there was a strange exhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shooting down its green side in a cloud of spray. One—two—three—each one seemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms were numb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wished at last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible aching weariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm had blown, roaring, past them, but the seas were still heavy and nothing—nothing, Nashola thought, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... With strange, numb hands Stanton searched the pockets of her dressing-gown, to find, at length, a little account-book with pencil attached. Then, with stiffened fingers, but acute mind, she began to write to Neale. As she wrote into ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... is quite different from the medicinal aloes. The word is used in the Bible (Numb. xxiv. 6), but as the trees usually supposed to be meant by this word are not native in Syria, it has been suggested that the LXX. reading in which the word does not occur is to be preferred. Lign-aloe is a corruption of the Lat. lignum-aloe, a wood, not a resin. Dioscorides ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... passion.... The ravages of time made no difference. Could not Love work miracles! He loved her more than he had ever loved her in the olden days. He felt a mad hunger for her. Passion would give them back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap to branches grown numb in the winter's cold. Let her say "Yes," and on the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their slumbering past, the awakening of their souls ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a lope to a walk an' then he put his nose to the ground an' fairly shuffled along. I was wearin' sheepskin with the wool on, but after a time the needles began to creep in an' I grew numb as a stone, while my flesh seemed shook loose from my bones, an' it hurt me to breathe. Oh, Lord, but it was cold! If it hadn't 'a' been for the kid I'd have gotten down an' walked alongside the pony, but as it was, he was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... have possessed no inconsiderable share of wit, and humour; and, besides a translation of Don Quixote, several Songs, Prologues and Epilogues, together with a Poem on Tea, dedicated to the Spectator, (see Vol. VII. Numb. 552) he is author of the following ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... known elsewhere, and also called elsewhere, the Numb-fish and Cramp fish. For the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... but his feet would not rise from the ground; his limbs were numb as in a nightmare; he could not get there. His body would not obey his will. In reality he did move, but more slowly than when he walked. By degrees approaching the canoe his alarm subsided, for although it burned it was not injured; the canvas ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... fingers. Guns and bayonets were propped against the wall. The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—with bare legs that looked blue and numb in the cold—the sans-culottes of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... "It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her nose as he strove, with numb fingers, to repair the damage. The bells were still, and the silence of the winter night was oppressive. The dry rustle of some dead leaves that still clung forlornly to a ghostly beech by the wayside sounded loud and startling. All ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... cold on the ground. It was bitter at 5000 feet. It is damnable at 10,000 feet. I lean over the side to look at Arras, but draw back quickly as the frozen hand of the atmosphere slaps my face. My gloved hands grow numb, then ache profoundly when the warm blood brings back their power to feel. I test my gun, and the trigger-pressure is painful. Life is worse than rotten, it ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... not been beautiful or happy before he invaded it, but it had been calm, and now serenity seemed the worthiest gift of the gods. It was not that she loved him less, but that she had so long reflected upon him that her imagination was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful as the desert, turned from him to the problems that beset her, and from them back to him again, in dull, subconscious yearning. She could no longer project an anguished ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... banks on either side were the home of great numbers of crocodiles which lay there like logs. I saw, further, that a little lower down where the water seemed to narrow, jagged boughs projected from its surface as though great trees had fallen, or been thrown into it. I recalled in a numb sort of way that old Babemba had told us that when he was a boy he had escaped in a canoe down this estuary, and reflected that it would not be possible for him to do so now because of those snags. Unless, indeed, he had floated ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... for a daughter's hand. As a slight hurt will cause a man the greatest pain, and a severe injury produce no greater, so will the apprehensions of a trivial ordeal equal in effect those of a matter of life and death; there being a limit to possible sensation, beyond which nature leaves us happily numb. Sometimes, upon occasion, Tom smiled, but with a stiffness of countenance; when he laughed, it was in a short, jerky, mechanical manner. As for me, I was in different mood from that preceding my own first trial of arms: I was now overcast in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... at no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear, only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it does to others of ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... darkness fell. She did not stir from her post. The damp of the mist was unnoticed, the chill of the air. She was waiting for that return which was to claim her to an earthly hell, than which she could conceive no greater—waiting like the condemned prisoner, numb, helpless, fearful lest the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... please.'... For a long time there was silence.... Then the day-light faded quite, and the Prince got up and lit a small oil lamp. There was a deadly silence.... Ah! She must fight against this horrible lethargy.... Her arm had grown numb.... Strange lights seemed to flash before her eyes—yes—surely—that was Gritzko coming towards her! She gave a gasping cry and tried to pull the trigger, but it was stiff.... The pistol dropped from her nerveless grasp.... She gave ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... him securely with a sennit cord about the neck and untied the cords that bit into his legs. So numb was Jerry from lack of circulation, and so weak from lack of water through part of a tropic day and all of a tropic night, that he stood up, tottered and fell, and, time and again, essaying to stand, floundered and fell. And Lamai understood, or tentatively guessed. He caught ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... as she recognized him. "My arms are numb, and my feet feel as if strips of wood were nailed to my soles," she answered, wearily, "and my head is aching dreadfully; ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... at the window-pane thinking of her lover when the stranger passed; and she opened the door to the clergyman's knock. There could be no mistaking who this girl was, and the clergyman's heart was numb as ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... he immediately followed it with another. It struck, for my right foot felt as if it had been hit with a club, and grew numb. Four more shots came in quick succession. One of them—which I cannot tell—struck the same foot and broke the bridge, as I knew from the immediate loss of strength in ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... wished to drink from Calling Brook, and to lie down, here alone and high above the sea, and to sleep, without dreaming, for a long, long time. I lay me down on the gray moss. I did not think of Judith and John Cather. I had forgotten them: I was numb to the passion and affairs of life. I suffered no agony of any sort; 'twas as though I had newly emerged from unconsciousness—the survivor of some natural catastrophe, fallen by act of God, conveying no ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more than she could bear. A trembling took her, an access of trembling which she could not check. At such times, if others were about her, she would sit vacant and speechless, smiling ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... accordingly quails were sent them, but they were punished with destruction by the flesh which they desired; ("And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague."—Numb. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... likes, to despise the cat for a heavy-handed and bloodthirsty beast, lacking wit and imagination, a creature of simple force-majeure; but that mouse will not advisedly swagger in cat-haunted territory; a blow of the paw is, when all's said and done, a blow of the paw—something to numb the wits of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... one moment I wished I was back in the old Vallambrosa, starving and hoping. And then I got numb, and didn't care. And then I felt that somebody else was in the water close by me, holding me up. He had followed me, and jumped ...
— Options • O. Henry
... intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... might have been Mr. Reardon's. For fully half an hour he lay there, gradually straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated it. As it was, the skipper ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of agony. How the long and weary hours at last passed Fred had no conception. There were times when he felt numb as if all power of sensation had entirely left his body. Again he tried resolutely to assure himself that safety would come with the morning light and that soon either he would find his friends or they would discover him. Somehow he was ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... tossed her bundle of clothes out of the window and, closing her eyes, dropped from the sill. There was a wild moment of suspense as she sank downward through the gloom, and then she struck the water and it rolled over her head. It was icy cold and for a minute she felt numb. Then the waves parted over her head and she felt the wind blowing against her face. A great splash beside her terrified her for an instant, and then she remembered that it was Nyoda jumping in after her. In a moment a head came up nearby and Nyoda inquired calmly how ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she was a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... I have to, we're so nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one, neither,—down the ledge. I dunno how he done it—he climbs like a cat—seems as if the Old Boy was in it—but half his body he can't move. Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... hardly slept, and now, though her body was numb with weariness, her mind kept up a feverish activity. She was bent on excusing Godwin, and the only way in which she could do so was by arraigning the world for its huge dishonesty. In a condition between slumber and waking, she seemed ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... all numb, watching them depart. I saw Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim and graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there with my misery until the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, Why, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... if we stay here!" cried Alessandro. "Come, my Benito, come!" and he took him by the head, and pulled him by main force back into the road, and led him along. It was terrible. Ramona's heart sank within her. She felt her arms growing numb; how much longer could she hold the baby safe? She called to Alessandro. He did not hear her; the wind had risen again; the snow was being blown in masses; it was like ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... life seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for the room her dead mother ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... stiff and numb with cold and weak from an illness of some duration, did not raise an arm to ward off the blow, nor was he even prepared to dodge. The iron rod crashed down upon his head. His legs crumpled up; he dropped in a heap ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek succeeds, And pearls of ice bestrew the glittering ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... now she could hear nothing, not even the faint vibration of her sister's breath. The silence was absolute and appalling; it struck tangibly upon her sense, as the darkness struck upon her eye-balls and filled her with a numb, unreasoning terror. She slipped out of bed and struck a match. In another few seconds she was standing by Jeannie's white little bed, waiting for the wick of the candle to burn up. Presently the light grew. Jeannie was lying on her side, her white face resting on her white ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... to the little cascade, and held it under the icy cold water as it fell. The numb chill seems to have done it no ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... nothing to say or do. How think that she could serve—mitigate these numb horrors of pain and self-reproach? ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not felt the lapse of hours. For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls: 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of strongest souls, And numb the elastic powers. Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn-out life, and are—what ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked over the precipice, and ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... anything but interfere all her life! Think I haven't watched you? Think I, with my heart raw in my breast, and too numb to resent it openly, haven't seen you and Mag Sinton trying to turn Elnora against me day after day? When did you ever tell her what her father meant to me? When did you ever try to make her see the wreck of my life, and what I've suffered? ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Bess's isms that she brought home from college—civic purity, and all that impractical rot that these intellectual women get, and he says he began hunting for some one to run in to fill the vacancy caused by the declination of E. Brassfield. He was knocked numb when he found out that you were out for the place. You must have said something to him, you know. Now what in the name of Dodd ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... at nothing. As an event, it was preposterous, and yet it was wholly natural. When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... these fall across the grasses there grow triangles of silence which travel fast. Oftentimes as the point of one of these progresses you may locate a chirper by the sudden ceasing of his chirp and find him in the tip of shadow, already numb. The black crickets keep up their tune longest, singing from beneath sheltering stones and bark or fallen leaves. With the direct sun vanish also other summer pasture people who have made the warmth of the day beautiful. Under an old apple ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... way she breaks her almost continual silence. With all that, she is kind, sensible, perfectly reasonable; she thoroughly understands her condition, and even speaks of it. She says she is glad that she has fallen into this numb state, otherwise her sufferings would have been too intense. Some one asked her if she was much moved when she saw her mother: 'No,' she answered; 'but I am very glad to have seen her.' Mention was made of Josephine's surprise at her lack of emotion on seeing her; ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... to my words—"Go!" It came so suddenly and so imperatively, almost without any previous warning of the usual shudder, that the shock was more than I could bear. I believe I fainted; I know I found myself, when I came to consciousness, in my arm-chair, cold and numb, and my candles had almost burned ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... did not find fast days hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it seems. You are only hungry on the first days of the fast, and then you get used to it; it goes on getting easier, and by the end of a week you don't mind it at all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as though you were not on earth, but in the clouds. And, besides that, I laid all sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in the night and pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones from place to place, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... occupied much time, for the hands of the sailors were numb with cold, the ropes stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind snatched at the tackle and ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Abigail still hoped that the end of the world for which she had so fondly prepared would come, but as the days wore on she sank into a numb despondency. When she thought of the loss of her property, she groaned and turned her face to the wall. And Samuel Anderson sat about the house in a dumb and shiftless attitude, as do most men upon whom financial ruin comes in middle life. The disappointment of his faith and the overthrow of ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... out of the question; it was, literary, like climbing a precipice to get to wind-ward in order to reach the shrouds: besides, the entire yard was now encased in ice, and our hands and feet were so numb that we dared not trust our lives to them. Nevertheless, by assisting each other, we contrived to throw ourselves prostrate along the yard, and embrace it with our arms and legs. In this position, the stun'-sail-booms ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Greek sunedrion, signifying "a council." In English it is sometimes though inaccurately, written "Sanhedrim." The Talmud traces the origin of this body to the calling of the seventy elders whom Moses associated with himself, making seventy-one in all, to administer as judges in Israel (Numb. 11:16, 17). The Sanhedrin in the time of Christ, as also long before, comprized seventy-one members, including the high-priest who presided in the assembly. It appears to have been known in its earlier period as the Senate, and was occasionally so designated ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... I was numb with horror, but still struggled towards the door... In vain! Like iron hooks the ringers of Semyon Matveitch ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon followed it. The ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Isn't it myself that's suffered the seven pangs of love and I a young girl? But it's easy on a man, avick. He can go into the foreign countries, and put it out of his mind, or take to the drink and numb the great pain. But for a woman it's different. It's the like of a disfiguration that all can see. And when you're gone away, sure all will remember, for men do be minding long. The marrying time will come, and they'll look at my grand young daughter: strong farmer, and merchant ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... make no effort to learn of his whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the willows; his bare hands and wet feet were fast becoming chilled and numb. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... not a thought, not a feeling of any kind. I sat and stared, with wide-open eyes, at the letters, without coming to any conclusion. Ten minutes went over—perhaps twenty or more. I sat stolidly on the one spot, and did not move a finger. This numb feeling of drowsiness was almost like a brief slumber. I hear some one come ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... slipped off. He held it tight between his hands. He was too numb and stupefied even to think of Francey, but there was magic in that dirty, blood-stained handkerchief. It might have been a saint's relic, or a Red Indian's totem, preserving him from evil. He knew nothing about saints or totems, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... think I never scanned A girl's face with such sunny smiles upon it Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet— I went into the house to have a cry. A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife. Between housework and hoeing in the garden I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life. My heart was numb and still I had to harden All memory or die. And just the same As when you sat beside the window, passed Larson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, lamed. He did not die till late November came. Things did not come as Doctor Jones forecast, 'Twas ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... noise, and went to bed at once. His moral and physical lassitude was certain to bring him sleep. In a very short time after laying his head on his mattress, he fell into that first fantastic somnolence which precedes the deepest sleep. The senses then grew numb, and life is abolished by degrees; thoughts are incomplete, and the last quivering of our consciousness seems like a sort of reverie. "How heavy the air is!" he thought; "I seem to be breathing a moist vapor." He explained ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... Cleigh felt oddly numb. For days now he had denied to himself the reason for his agitation whenever the telephone or doorbell rang. Hope! It had not served to crush it down, to buffet it aside by ironical commentaries on the weakness of human nature; the thing was ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... natives would make the decision about working for the Earthmen's settlement. If they approved of the gifts, they probably would. There was nothing to do now but wait—and shiver. His hands were getting numb and his feet weren't ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... seemed to Adam, whose faculties were at their utmost intensity, like a terrible dream. As for poor Mimi, she was so overwrought both with present and future fear, and with horror at the danger she had escaped, that her faculties were numb. However, she was braced up for a trial, and she felt assured that whatever might come she would be able to go through with it. Sir Nathaniel seemed just as usual—suave, dignified, and ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... bite is touched. The good that such a regulation would work upon their faulty skins and pale faces, their lasting strength and health, would be incalculable. I did not want wholesome food, exhausted as I was. I craved sours and sweets, pickles, cake, anything to excite my numb taste. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... that be? She must have come quite a distance now, and the thought cheered her. The ankle was beginning to give an occasional twinge and growing a little weak; in fact, it was feeling rather numb. Nothing to be alarmed about, she told herself. What else could she expect? It was sure to be hurting before ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... us but a little while Methought I sensed her spirit here and there About my house: upon the empty stair Her robe brusht softly; o'er her chamber still There lay her fragrant presence to beguile Numb heart, dead heart. I knelt before her chair, And praying felt her hand laid on my hair, Felt her sweet breath, and ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... thought to speak thus. Since daylight dawned her heart had felt too numb, too dead; barely to tell him that she had no answer to his words was the purpose with which she had set out. The moment prompted her utterance, and words came without reflection. It was a noble speech, and nobly delivered; the voice was uncertain at times, but it betrayed no weakness of resolve, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... o'erwhelmd me, like a sea; And like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was comforted, and bless'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... half a mind to give to physical senses. Though the wind howled all night long, he scarce was conscious of it; though the cold increased, he did not know that he was cold before he had grown numb. He had given to Gloria all of their bedding, save alone the one blanket he had wrapped about him; he had kept on all his clothing, buttoned up his coat, and forgotten that he was not warmly covered. Now he got up and walked up and down; he made the fire ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... into the steaming hot carcass of the steer, or darting across the room to the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them—all of those who used knives—were unable to wear gloves, and their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed they kept up on the killing beds, and all with ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a state where he seemed numb. He was past caring what happened. After a hot drink, however, he braced up a little and prepared to face his ordeal. He did not know what it was to be. For all he knew, he would be taken to Leavenworth. It was agony to think that soon someone would go to his father and mother and ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... when weary with all the worry, numb'd, dead, Sank my body, upon the bed reposing, 15 This, O humorous heart, did I, a poem Write, my ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... roof, in the chill September dawn, his fingers numb on the frosty nails, stopped hammering, and leaned his chin on his fist, and thought: "She's sick. She almost killed herself to save me; so her nerve has all gone. That's why she talked—that way." He put a shingle ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... I warrant; and who's the old 'un, who?' she asked eagerly, in a stage whisper, which made my ear numb for five minutes after. 'Oh, oh, the maid! and a precious old 'un—ha, ha, ha! But lawk! how grand she is, with her black silk, cloak and crape, and I only in twilled cotton, and rotten old Coburg for Sundays. Odds! it's a shame; but you'll be tired, you will. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... the first puff dropped off again. It was most vexing. I got up and walked around the room. It was most annoying. My cramped position had almost put both my legs to sleep. I could hardly stand. I felt numb, as though with cold. There was no longer any sound from the other rooms, nor from without. I sank down in my window seat. How dark it was growing! I turned up the lantern. That pipe again, how obstinately it kept going out! and my last match was gone. The lantern, too, ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... quite close to her ear—the same kind of laugh that she had heard in the dream. She fancied she was about to die. Never had she felt such a sense of terror; her heart stopped, and her whole body became numb and cold ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... to be in the ordinary sense of the word an invalid; for she was rosy, her eyes were bright, her appetite was good, and she had plenty of strength. Nevertheless there was a certain part of her being which was numb and cold and half-dead. She was not frightened about anything; but she knew that she had behaved as no right-minded or honorable girl should have done. Verena's words that afternoon had roused ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... unleavened bread, or the Passover day. It is also known as "the feast of weeks" (Exo. 34:22; Deut. 16:10), because according to the Hebrew style, it fell seven weeks, or a week of weeks, after the Passover; as "the feast of harvest" (Exo. 23:16); and as "the day of the first-fruits" (Numb. 28:26). Pentecost was one of the great feasts in Israel, and was of mandatory observance. Special sacrifices were appointed for the day, as was also an offering suitable to the harvest season, comprizing two leavened loaves made of the new ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... effect was altogether distressing. He had borne the trying week with singular fortitude, having stood there in the place of shame hour after hour, and day after day, expecting his doom. It had been to him as a lifetime of torture. He had become almost numb from the weariness of his position and the agonising strain upon his mind. The gaoler had offered him a seat from day to day, but he had always refused it, preferring to lean upon the rail and gaze upon the Court. He had almost ceased to hope for anything ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... at Betty while slowly the color drained from their faces. It was true they had been dreading just this news for a long, long time, yet now that it had come they felt strangely quiet and numb. They had much the same feeling as one who had received a stunning blow. Until the paralysis had passed there could be no pain. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... characteristically and cardinally an epoch of transition in the very foundations of belief and conduct. The old hopes have grown pale, the old fears dim; strong sanctions are become weak, and once vivid faiths very numb. Religion, whatever destinies may be in store for it, is at least for the present hardly any longer an organic power. It is not that supreme, penetrating, controlling, decisive part of a man's life, which it has been, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... to show for it but a somewhat pleasure-beaten face and a deep hatred of the crowded, scrambling East. So he suddenly bought a ticket for Green River, Wyoming, and escaped from the city that seemed to numb his good humor. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath their very eyes, and they cannot understand,—cannot realise that ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night's cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow- jackets. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Proverdunce and your grit that has saved us, sir. I have come out of my numb condition and sense it ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... reading very fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb with every word.] ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... forced to keep one position, I was growing stiff and weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked over the precipice, and just then a horn rang ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... and roaring and ringing in my ears; and then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was promise of restfulness ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... eyes of the passers-by that seemed to look so pitilessly at her. The sole of one of her shoes was worn through, and the cold flag-stones of the footway and the mud of the streets made her foot numb, so that she could scarcely lift it. Near Paddington Green—for she had been for some time walking back towards the Edgware Road—she paused at the entrance of a short narrow street, running up to the canal. It had a very squalid appearance, and a number of ragged children were running about shouting ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... at Chillicothe. Patricia was believed to be in touch with the manito, and was feared and respected accordingly. The days that followed were not unhappy for me; and Patricia appeared to be contented in a numb sort ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... strange. For neither Moses, nor Abraham pretended to Prophecy by possession of a Spirit; but from the voyce of God; or by a Vision or Dream: Nor is there any thing in his Law, Morall, or Ceremoniall, by which they were taught, there was any such Enthusiasme; or any Possession. When God is sayd, (Numb. 11. 25.) to take from the Spirit that was in Moses, and give it to the 70. Elders, the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided. The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man, mean a mans ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... closing with a slam roused Jean from the deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... it seemed as if her very life had gone out of her. She was a mere statue now, her mind numb, her heart dead, her very existence a fragile piece of mechanism. But she was looking at Deroulede. That one sense in her ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape There came, with lips that stammer'd, eyes aslant, Distorted feet, hands maim'd, and colour pale. I look'd upon her; and as sunshine cheers Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look Unloos'd her tongue, next in brief space her form Decrepit rais'd erect, and faded face With love's own hue illum'd. Recov'ring speech She forthwith warbling such a strain began, That I, how loth soe'er, could scarce have held ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... a new palette, before you use it take a little trouble to carve out the thumb-hole to fit your thumb. Make it large enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and set easily on the top of the hand. When the hole is too small the thumb gets numb after working a little while, ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... be terrific; he pictured appalled criminals on their way through the dark halls, crouching in fear at the sounds. Eleven o'clock struck, and then twelve with its continued uproar. It seemed a long time before one and then two sounded. Pendleton's limbs were beginning to feel loggy and numb because of the chill and the continued inaction. He had ventured to stir them a little, and was wrapping the heavy blanket more closely about himself, when he felt ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio was in order, save a chair or two. Brian . . . would . ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... now prithee is divine Eryx, thy master of fruitless fame? where thy renown over all Sicily, and those spoils hanging in thine house?' Thereat he: 'Desire of glory is not gone, nor ambition checked by fear; but torpid age dulls my chilly blood, and my strength of limb is numb and outworn. If I had what once was mine, if I had now that prime of years, yonder braggart's boast and confidence, it had taken no prize of goodly bullock to allure me; nor heed I these gifts.' So he spoke, and on that flung down a pair of gloves of giant weight, with whose hard hide bound about ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... with her nose as he strove, with numb fingers, to repair the damage. The bells were still, and the silence of the winter night was oppressive. The dry rustle of some dead leaves that still clung forlornly to a ghostly beech by the wayside sounded loud and startling. All at ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... were now unbound, and he was thrust inside, the guards holding themselves in readiness to frustrate any attempt at escape. But the prisoner was by this time far too stiff and numb after the constriction of the ropes to make any such attempt; it was as much as he could achieve to stagger to the apology for a bed, upon which he flung himself at full length. He was utterly exhausted, and his body had scarcely touched ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... anger had died away as suddenly as it had come. She felt numb and yet excited. She leaned forward and once more laid her face ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... deep doorway to the east hall, and took position on the staircase. He turned just in time to parry Colden's sword, which the major had picked up and made shift to hold in his wrapped-up, wounded hand. Harry saw that an opportune stroke might send the sword from his enemy's numb and weakening grasp, and his heart swelled with anticipated triumph, until he heard Colden's ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... faint and dizzy to speak for a moment. His head was numb and he felt certain that several inches of it had been caved in. Putting up his hand, feebly, he was surprised to find the contours of his skull much the same as usual. The stranger propped him against his knee and wiped away a trickle ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... own wife had said to him, in accents almost of reproach, "Oh, David, David, how could you take such a time as this to be sick, with all the worry of moving and furnishing and Rosy's wedding and everything else?" he felt as bare and chill and numb as a naked sailor cast ashore on some ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the straw near where I stood stopped me suddenly. My skin prickled and began to stir on my head and my feet and hands felt numb with a new fear. I heard stealthy footsteps in the darkness. I stood my ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... added to the fatigues of the day, produced a sort of paralysis of my whole system without quite losing consciousness. I could feel my circulation become slower and finally stop; my nerves and energies became suspended, and my hands grew numb and powerless. Even my heart ceased to beat, and the little cry of alarm which I gave just before my powers left me failed to bring me any help. I was ill, very ill indeed; to me it seemed as if my last moment had come, and I could not bear the thought ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... finished her hands were numb and her little feet like frozen marble. But at last two dozen cartridges were ready, and she gathered them up in the skirt of her night-gown and carried them ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... telegrams from her husband before, but this time for some reason she felt numb with terror. With shaking hands she opened the ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was suffering torments, being convinced that Barbara was dead and buried in that new-made grave beneath the trees. He could not speak, he could scarcely stand, and yet a picture began to form in his numb mind. He saw himself seated in the dark in the Treasure-house at Bonsa-Town; he saw a vision in the air ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... of the door, and back along the lane to the river where he had left Jimmy. "'A lump of flesh with na vital spark in it,'" he kept repeating. "I dinna but that is the secret. She is almost numb with misery. All these days when she's been without hope, and these awful nichts, when she's watched and feared alone, she has no wished to perpetuate him in children who might be like him, and so at their coming the 'vital spark' is na in them. Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, have ye Mary's happiness ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... answered, was I satisfied? For a time I gazed, and drew a deep delight from the gratification of my vain and impious craving. But at length the still, cold presence of forms no longer of this earth began to oppress me. I grew cold and numb beneath their moveless aspect; and constant gazing upon eyes lighted up by no varying expression, pressed upon my tired senses with a more than nightmare weight. I felt a sort of dull stagnation through every limb, which held me bound where I sat, pulseless and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... don't slip off now, I shall surely be drowned outright!" thought poor Joan, for the pond was deep, she felt her powers were failing her; her hands were numb, her limbs cramped. She knew she could not swim. "Better a dry death than a wet one, it will save my clothes, anyway!" So, letting go her hold of the creature's mane, she was about to let herself slide down, when the wind caught her and carried her right off the ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... rulers." This counsel of Jethro, was God's counsel and command to Moses, in the choice of magistrates, supreme and subordinate; and discovers, that people are not left to their own will in this matter. It is God's direction, that the person advanced to rule, must be a man in whom is the spirit; Numb. xxvii, 18; which Deut. xxxiv, 9, interprets to be the spirit of wisdom, (i.e.) the spirit of government, fitting and capacitating a man to discharge the duties of the magistratical office, to the glory of God and the good of his ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... judged we had reached the top of The Mountains, the wind blew a hurricane. Powerful gusts came tearing through the trees, whirling the snow upon us in great smothering heaps. The chaise was full. My hands grew numb, and I began slapping them upon my knees. Margaret threw off the blanket with a jerk, and seized ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... straightening out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated it. As it was, the skipper ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... had hardly reached this decision when the door opened, and he stood there gazing at me with sphinx-like stupidity. I arose to my feet, gripping the back of a chair, but the utter vacancy in that face seemed to numb action. There was no positive expression, no dim glimmer of interest in his features; the shining bald head alone gave him a grotesque appearance, restraining me from violence. I could as easily have ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... not come, And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... course it must! He had certainly not gone more than fifty or sixty feet, and they had said something about three hundred feet? Where could the rope be? It must have got caught somehow on his coat! Or perhaps his right leg was getting numb and he could not feel anything with it. But no! His leg was all right. He felt out with his left leg. It did not even touch the wall of the shaft. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing at all! Nothing there? Nothing in all the universe, but this bit of rope he was ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... they all came back to him—stories of Chinese mercenaries, and men buried alive, and death by agonizing inches. He felt suddenly very cold and sick, and hung in his bonds, for he had no strength in his limbs. Then the pressure on this throat braced him, and also quickened his numb mind. The liveliest terror ran ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... dry; he longed for a drink of water, even though he knew that no water could quench this kind of thirst. His fingers grew numb as he worked, and moment by moment the sense of utter hopelessness grew stronger in his mind. Tiger worked stolidly across the table from him, inexpert help at best because of the sketchy surgical training he had ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... don't believe in 'em 'less it's something creepy more'n common, but after dark it scares me to pieces. I do' know but I shall be afeared to go home," and she laughed uneasily. "There! when I get through with this needle I believe I won't knit no more. The back o' my neck is all numb." ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... dark, the tattered canvas is thrashing with a noise like thunder, the ship burying her decks under angry black seas every few minutes. The men's hands are numb with the cold and the wet, and the hard, dangerous work aloft. There is no chance of going below when their job is done, to "turn in" between warm, dry blankets in a snug berth. Possibly even those who belong to the "watch below" may have to remain on deck. Or, if they have the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... I waste standing with that green rag betwixt my fingers, and I grew sick and numb in body and in mind. She was gone! Carried off by a man I had reason to believe she hated, and whom God send she might have no motive ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... thought quickly. It would never do for Her to come out and see him talking there with them. Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark- eyed one and walked with her. There was no awkwardness on his part, no numb tongue. He was at home here, and he held his own royally in the badinage, bristling with slang and sharpness, that was always the preliminary to getting acquainted in these swift-moving affairs. At the corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to edge out into ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... safety and shook off the noose. In his rage-maddened heart was no room for gratitude to the ape-man. He recalled only the fact that Tarzan had laid this painful indignity upon him. He would be revenged, but just at present his legs were so numb and his head so dizzy that he must postpone the gratification of ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pausing foot she moves, The pitying Dryads shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... began his homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a winter journey ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ever done anything but interfere all her life! Think I haven't watched you? Think I, with my heart raw in my breast, and too numb to resent it openly, haven't seen you and Mag Sinton trying to turn Elnora against me day after day? When did you ever tell her what her father meant to me? When did you ever try to make her see the wreck of my life, and what I've suffered? No indeed! Always it's been poor little abused ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... darker my mind was soon brought back to thoughts of action, especially as the tide rising on the beach where I was lying began to lap against my body. Crawling on my hands and knees, for I was still unable to rise to my feet and walk, my limbs being perfectly numb from the thighs downward, I managed to get out of the way of the water for a while; but as it yet continued to rise, and I thought it might possibly cover the whole sand-bank at high tide, I determined to attempt to swim across the intervening channel that lay between the little islet ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... an hour. A filmy mist rose from the surface of the water, and drifted by their faces like the brushing of cold wings. For lack of motion hand and feet felt numb. Mid the pitch-black shadows, snug in by the bank, no man could see the face of his fellow, though the trio would have given a fortune to read their guide's. Not a word was spoken. Once, when a deep breath of impatience escaped him, Neal heard the folds of his coat rub each other, and clenched ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... and the silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... though I could not then read that long chapter of repetitions; that I must turn to some chapter that would feed my soul. And yet I was not happy in leaving my regular portion; so after a little conflict I resolved to read it, praying to GOD to bless me, even through Numb. vii. I fear there was not much faith in the prayer; but oh! how abundantly it was answered, and what a feast GOD gave me! He revealed to me His own great heart of love, and gave me the key to understand ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... departure on the score of some forgotten business which had to be overtaken before the inquest, so he was free to go direct to a certain legal office in the city. As for Doris, she went home in that numb condition of mind and spirit which comes upon some of us while we wait for a great surgeon's verdict. Her mother informed her that Mr. Bullard had telephoned, postponing his call till the afternoon, also that she had received and accepted Mr. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... three blasts of the whistle he stirred his numb feet and edged nearer to the stage door. A big limousine came rumbling up the alley from behind, almost running him down. The fur-coated chauffeur called him unspeakable names as he passed him with the emergency ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... filled at once, but at first it was with a chastened people. Audrey herself felt numb and unreal. She moved mechanically with the shifting crowd, looking overhead as a captured German plane flew by, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. But by mid-day the sober note of the crowds had risen ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the stubble of a field, leading Hannibal and Wilkins' mount. There had been no way of bringing the sergeant's body out of town, and Drew had reported the death to Lieutenant Traggart, who officered the scouts. He felt numb as he headed for the spark of fire which marked their temporary camp, numb not only with cold and hunger, but with all the days of cold, hunger, fighting, and marching which lay behind. It seemed to him that this war had gone on ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... grew too wonderful to resist. Even Fanny's numb heart and flayed spirit was warmed with the golden heat. She had some money that she wanted to deposit in the bank for John. For Fanny was saving now as only Fanny knew how when she set her mind to it. And she had set not only her mind but her very soul on making good. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... hourly, and we were obliged to distribute our stock of clothing among the men, in order to protect them better against the frost, yet in spite of every precaution, hands and feet which were wrapped up in thick furs and cloths, became stiff and numb, when only a few paces from the fire. The best protection against the cold, we found to be heated stones. We felt the want of spirituous liquors sadly; those we had, froze, and when thawed lost both strength and flavour. Our health, however, was much better than we had reason ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... the open road. Through the low west window a cold light flows On the floor where never my numb feet trode Before; onward the ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... During the afternoon a lean hare limped twice across the lawn, and there was not a creature stirring to chase it. Now the night is bitter cold, with no sounds outside but the cracking of the porches as they freeze tighter. Even the north wind seems grown too numb to move. I had determined to convert its coarse, big noise into something sweet—as may often be done by a little art with the things of this life—and so stretched a horse-hair above the opening between the window sashes; but the soul of my ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... them, there was a strange exhilaration, a mad thrill in rising to every giant wave and shooting down its green side in a cloud of spray. One—two—three—each one seemed the last, and yet there were ever more. Nashola's arms were numb and heavy, his head reeled, but still he struggled on. He wished at last that death would come quickly, to still the terrible aching weariness that possessed his whole being. The worst of the storm had blown, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... saw that the tops of the highest mountains were covered with snow. It might be a week or two yet before the snow fell over the country as a whole, or it might be only a day or two; for the wind was blowing from the north, biting cold, and making us feel numb and drowsy. So my father decided that it was time to make our homes for the winter. He had already fixed upon a spot where a tree had fallen and torn out its roots, making a cave well shut in on two sides, and blocked on a third by another fallen log; and here, without thinking, ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... my mother slowly bowed down to the ground, slowly rose again, and pressed her fingers firmly to her forehead, her shoulders, and her chest, as she crossed herself. I had not a single idea in my head; I was utterly numb, but I felt something terrible was happening to me.... Death looked me in the face that day and took note ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... sound Moves in the wind, and from another wound That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth, That blossoms underground, And sallow poppies, will be dear to her. And will not Silence know In the black shade of what obsidian steep Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep? (Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home, Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago, Reluctant even as she, Undone Persephone, And even as she set out again to grow In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam). She will love well," I said, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... blood are mentioned in the law of Moses, Numb. xxxv. 19. In the Roman law also, under the head of "those who on account of unworthiness are deprived of their inheritance," it is pronounced, that "such heirs as are proved to have neglected revenging the testator's death, shall be obliged ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... glad. He thanked me for finding it, and then he lay still, panting. After a while—we both wanted water—I crawled away to where I heard a running stream. It must have been farther than I thought, and I couldn't be quick because so much of me was numb and had to be dragged. But I reached the water and filled a canteen I had found on the way. As soon as I could manage it I went back to him with the water, but I must have been gone a long time. He wasn't there. But as I crawled near where ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... small hours of the morning a weary commuter, numb from the cold and the cramped position in which he had tried to sleep, crawled out of the train and floundered through the heavy snow-drifts to the nearest telegraph station. This is the message he handed ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... I've been to the little cascade, and held it under the icy cold water as it fell. The numb chill seems to have done it no end ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... nothing. He thought it was the right one, but couldn't be sure. He could no longer see. His vision had gone completely. The pain was a numb thing now, far away, hardly a part of himself. Maybe Mayhem was absorbing the pain-sensation for him, he thought. Maybe Mayhem took the pain and suffered with it in the shared body so he, Larry, could still ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... I was so numb from having shocks that I let her and the Colonel lead me down the street, while Tony went in to keep Lovelace Peyton from fretting for the diphtheria lesson until ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... before that look, the most dreadful thing he had ever seen. It made him numb and sick, and when he rose he staggered; for, though tall, he was slender and had little strength. The weight on his chest became a pain and fixed on his throat, to choke and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... he waited. Except for the wavering smoke from the stovepipe, the place might have been deserted. The house was one with the pervading hush of the valley. Hollister grew numb. But he held his post. And at last the door opened and the woman ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lighted up by an aurora behind us—a strange, mysterious, ghastly illumination, like the phosphorescent glow of a putrefying world. We were desperately cold, our very blood freezing in our veins, and our limbs numb and torpid. To keep entirely awake was impossible. We talked incessantly, making random answers, as continual fleeting dreams crossed the current of our consciousness. A heavy thump on the back was pardoned by him who received it, and a punch between the eyes would ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... it not chanced that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... morning. When he had at first returned to his cell his mind was intensely alive, and a thousand plans were flashing through his brain, a thousand questions occurred to him which demanded an answer. Now, however, that numb, dull feeling which ever follows such experiences possessed him. After all, what mattered? Mary Bolitho could never be his wife, and if Fate had decided upon his death, die he must. Indeed, he did not seem to care very much. It seemed ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... from whom the years had taken more than their toll, giving but little in return. He could not think beyond this fact, as yet. And he felt nothing, nothing at all. Both heart and mind lay mercifully numb under ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... mother!" The ashen face smiled; then the light faded from it; and the lips, grown cold and numb, murmured softly, "It is growing ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... years. He is said to have possessed no inconsiderable share of wit, and humour; and, besides a translation of Don Quixote, several Songs, Prologues and Epilogues, together with a Poem on Tea, dedicated to the Spectator, (see Vol. VII. Numb. 552) he is author of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... hands were numb or the sea-water had penetrated these wraps and damped the tag of the leathern case, making it difficult to open. When at length he tugged the binoculars free and sighted them, it was to catch one glimpse, and the last, of the child waving from ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were a few rifle-pits in the open, the opposing skirmish, lines being perhaps four hundred yards apart, and our vedette posts—we maintained them only at night—being about sixty yards in advance of our pits, and always composed of three men for each post. We found our three men numb with, cold, two lying near the edge oL the woods, in a big hole made by a shell, while the other stood guard. They had seen nothing and heard nothing except the ordinary sounds of the night. The clouds reflected the peculiar glow of many fires in front. It was not long till ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... fellow-craftsmen. His description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. He admitted that Wordsworth was "a genuine man, but intrinsically and extrinsically ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "They are numb," he said, in surprised apology to his host. A moment later he shivered violently, beads of sweat burst out on his forehead, and the color swept from his face. He started up, staring wildly about him; he tried to speak, but his words ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... in a deep swoon, his colorless face drooping on his shoulder. Now, while we did all in our power to revive him, and while one serving-man ran for the leech and another for the friar, meseemed that the old man's left side was strangely stiff and numb; yet the low flame of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... terribly long night, and when old Blanca's southern peak began to gleam out of the purple receding waves of the night the man's brain was numb with speculation and suspense. Hovering over the little heap of broken rock which he had scooped out with his hands, he waited in almost frenzied ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... daughter debt depot forehead gnaw hatchet hedge hiccough hitch honest honor hustle island itch judge judgment knack knead kneel knew knife knit knuckle knock knot know knowledge lamb latch laugh limb listen match might muscle naughty night notch numb often palm pitcher pitch pledge ridge right rough scene scratch should sigh sketch snatch soften stitch switch sword talk though through thought thumb tough twitch thigh walk watch whole witch would write written wrapper wring wrong ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... pour my hot life into you," said the second; "your brain is numb, and your limbs are dead now; but they shall live with a fierce free life. Oh, let me ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... estray by the arm, and hurried her along. Poor little Jennie! her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground, they were so cold and numb. She didn't much care even if she was being taken to the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... good-night and went on up to his room. Even while he undressed the effects of the doctor's narcotic were perceptible. His eyes had grown heavy, his brain a trifle numb. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear, only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it does to others ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... understood his wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was hesitating whether to stay in this ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... has told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he doesn't think at all of himself; he always looks out for one still poorer than he is, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... and gibbered. There was that in her mistress's numb acquiescence that terrified her. "Sure, you'll kill her, Sir Eustace!" ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... these words! Had the oracle but threatened punishment to him, he would have endured any torture before subjecting his child to such a fate; but as a king, he dared not bring ruin on all his people, who trusted him. Psyche, herself, numb with horror, commanded quietly that preparations be made for the procession which should accompany her to the rock described by the oracle. Some days later, this procession set out, the priests in their white robes preceding Psyche, who, in mourning garments, with bowed head and clasped hands, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... are in my power and you have no hope of escape. I am unexpectedly provided with more subjects for my experiments. You will...." His words became hazy and unintelligible, for the hapless reporter was drifting off into a numb oblivion. He had long since lost the power to move a muscle. Out of the corner of an eye, just before he lost consciousness altogether, he perceived Handlon lying upon the floor still puffing at the fateful ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... and a severe injury produce no greater, so will the apprehensions of a trivial ordeal equal in effect those of a matter of life and death; there being a limit to possible sensation, beyond which nature leaves us happily numb. Sometimes, upon occasion, Tom smiled, but with a stiffness of countenance; when he laughed, it was in a short, jerky, mechanical manner. As for me, I was in different mood from that preceding my own first trial ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... but be that as it may, we escaped. It was our last night under the lynx-eyed watchers. We went about two miles in the woods, and there hid. So far I had no covering for my head, and but scant raiment for my body. The season was very cold in April and May, and many a time I felt numb, chill, and sick, but there was no remedy for it; only "grin and go through." In the last part of my captivity, I suffered from exposure to the sun. The squaws took all my hats, and I could not get anything to cover my head, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... she. In fact, she scarcely felt at all. Her heart was palsied, and lay in her bosom like a block of stone—heavy, numb, and ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... know yet. It feels quite numb and free from pain. I don't think I'm hit. I half fancy the poor pony has it, for he gave a tremendous start. All right; keep on! The bullet struck my rolled-up blanket, and it has gone into the saddle. I can feel ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into a passive submission. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... with their own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots. Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are now recalled ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... lope to a walk an' then he put his nose to the ground an' fairly shuffled along. I was wearin' sheepskin with the wool on, but after a time the needles began to creep in an' I grew numb as a stone, while my flesh seemed shook loose from my bones, an' it hurt me to breathe. Oh, Lord, but it was cold! If it hadn't 'a' been for the kid I'd have gotten down an' walked alongside the pony, but as it was, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... us, Heb. ii. 14. And besides, he hath right to redemption, as the Church's husband, because he must mediate between her and all others; none can reach her, except he please, or prosecute a plea against her, as in the case of the wife's making a vow, if her husband consented not, it was void, (Numb. xxx.,) but if he heard of it and held his peace, it was confirmed. Now the Lord Jesus hath known this deplorable estate in which we are captives, and he hath testified his utter dislike of our binding over ourselves to death, and resigning ourselves to Satan; and therefore this ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... flat 'n' plain as if he was n't goin' to marry Tilly, he need n't count on spendin' the winter as their company. Well, he says you can maybe realize what a shock that was. He says his nose was just smashed numb 'n' his sleep was full o' grabbin' at 'em in his dreams 'n' now it looked like all was for nothin' a tall. Still he says he scraped up a smile 'n' a cheerful look 'n' told Old Pearson as he was more 'n willin' to marry Tilly for his winter's ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... we're so nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one, neither,—down the ledge. I dunno how he done it—he climbs like a cat—seems as if the Old Boy was in it—but half his body he can't move. Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not shakin', like Adam's." ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... last to the next turn!" exclaimed Tom prayerfully. He was sitting waist-deep in water, and his teeth were chattering. He was becoming numb again, but there was no opportunity for exercise now. The old flatboat seemed ready to slide from under ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... "I will wait. Either this is all nonsense ... or she is here. She will not play with me like a cat with a mouse!" He waited, waited a long time ... so long that the hand on which he was propping his head became numb ... but not a single one of his previous sensations was repeated. A couple of times his eyes closed.... He immediately opened them ... at least, it seemed to him that he opened them. Gradually they became riveted on the door and so remained. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... could not find what I sought. The stream in the ravine slid down a long slope like a mill-race, and the sides were bare and stony. Still I plodded on, helping myself with a hand on Colin's back, for my legs were numb with fatigue. By-and-by the gully narrowed, and I came to a flat place with a long pool. Beyond was a little fall, and up this I climbed into a network of tiny cascades. Over one pool hung a dead tree-fern, and a bay from it ran into a hole of the rock. I slipped the jewels far into the ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... feel like cold storage. A break in happiness is sometimes hard to mend. The blossom does not return to the tree after the storm, no matter how beautiful the sunshine; and the awful fear of the faintest echo of past sorrow made my heart as numb as a snowball. To the old terror of loneliness was added fear for Jack's safety. But I did not do what you naturally would prophesy. After seeing the look on Jack's face I changed my mind, and my protest was the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the grief which had been piling up in him, all the cold hurt went into the effort as he stepped in and snapped his fist into the face of Buck Heath. He rose with the blow; all his energy, from wrist to instep, was in that lifting drive. Then there was a jarring impact that made his arm numb to the shoulder. Buck Heath looked blankly at him, wavered, and pitched loosely forward on his face. And his head bounced back as it struck the ground. It was a horrible thing to see, but it brought one wild yell of joy from the saloon—the voice of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... with his right hand, crooked his index finger. There was a sudden, smashing pain against his hand and a loud roar. The gun was in his hand—half the fingers were numb—and smoke curled up ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... draw blood with his knuckles; but he drew the line at the sword. The state of public feeling upon duelling Roland very well knew; and as he thought of Aster, with her sunny hair and glorious, yearning eyes, and the exile that lay before him, a numb feeling of despair began to gather about his heart. He was able to persuade himself that she would look upon the unfortunate affair as necessary for the assertion of his honour; but how could he hope for any further happiness, a criminal in the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the shoulder of a mountain. The stones beneath them shone as brightly as diamonds, and both their hearts beat with joy at beholding a tiny old man approaching them. The sight awoke all manner of recollections; the numb feeling that had taken possession of them fell away as if by magic, and it was with glad voices that they greeted the new-comer. 'Where are we, my friend?' asked they; and the old man told them that this was the mountain where the sultan's daughter sat, covered ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... whirled faster and faster, and Pierre's legs found it harder and harder to move themselves through the great drifts. They seemed heavy and numb, and he was growing oh, so tired! If he could but lie down to sleep until Christmas Day! But he knew that he must not do that. For those who choose this kind of soft and tempting bed turn into ice-people, and do not wake up in the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The pain of his torture dulling as overcharged nerves refused to carry the growing load, Morgan still clung to his feet, pounding along in the dark. He was growing numb in body and mind, as one overwhelmed by a narcotic drug, yet he clung to the desperate necessity of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... darting across the room to the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them—all of those who used knives—were unable to wear gloves, and their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed they kept up on the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... uncertain time between night and morning she awoke; her face and the pillow were damp with the tears of sleep. She was numb from the drawing of tight clothing, and with a great mental pain and a confused sense of sadness, that weighed on her like a tangible thing. Her mind groped uncertainly for a moment; then, with a great rush, the past night and the things ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was suddenly drowned in delight when, his sleep-numb faculties clearing, he realised that the Autocratic was resting without way, and a glance out of the stateroom port showed him the steep green slopes of Fort Tompkins glistening in ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... then, when the last one had gone, Cuffy crawled out of the brook and started toward home. His little round body and his sturdy little legs were not warm now, as they had been when he sat down beneath the tree to get cool. For the mountain brook was ice-cold; and Cuffy felt quite numb from standing in it so long. But cold as he was, his face felt like fire. And for some reason, which Cuffy couldn't understand, he could hardly see to pick his way through the ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him. Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... looking at the glimmering lamp in the sorrowful place of death until he became painfully aware of the terribly damp, cold wind searching out and chilling life, even to the very marrow of the bones. Then he remembered that he had come out in his dress boots, consequently his feet were wet and numb, and he had a fierce pain under his shoulder. A sudden, uncontrollable fear went to his ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... his legs into play and swam upward furiously. Would he ever get there? It seemed an eternity as he battled through the mass of the sea. His arms and legs were getting numb now; his lungs seemed torn to shreds and his head throbbed with ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for want of a better simile, to the anguish ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... with such sunny smiles upon it Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet— I went into the house to have a cry. A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife. Between housework and hoeing in the garden I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life. My heart was numb and still I had to harden All memory or die. And just the same As when you sat beside the window, passed Larson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, lamed. He did not die till late November came. Things did not come ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... the gathering dusk. Some one was coming up the walk, some one very short and fat. No; it was a girl carrying a child. Miss Bell reached the door just in time to catch Tommy in her arms as Lovey Mary staggered into the hall. They were covered with sleet and almost numb from the cold. ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... attack be sustained indefinitely? Grim as were results of sun-fishing on the rider, they were hardly less vitiating for the horse. The forelegs of Alcatraz began to grow numb below the shoulder; his knees bowed and refused to give the shock its primal snap; to the very withers he was an increasing ache. He must vary the attack. As soon as that idea came, he reared and flung ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... sighs, And staring, thus bespoke: "What mean'st thou, Caesar? Whither goes my standard? Romans if ye be, And bear true hearts, stay here!" This spectacle Struck Caesar's heart with fear; his hair stood up, And faintness numb'd his steps there on the brink. He thus cried out: "Thou thunderer that guard'st Rome's mighty walls, built on Tarpeian rock! Ye gods of Phrygia and Ilus' line, Quirinus' rites, and Latian Jove advanc'd 200 On Alba hill! O vestal flames! O Rome, My thoughts sole goddess, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... platform she stood a minute trying to get used to her feet, they felt so numb and empty from long sitting. Her head swam just a little, too, and the lights on the station and in the houses near by seemed to dance around her weirdly. She had a feeling that she would rather wait until the train was gone before she began to search for her new home, and then ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... gentleman, the noblest friend she had ever known. For she accounted him dead, and she thought with horror of his body lying in the slime under the cold waters of the moat beneath the window of her antechamber. A change seemed to have come upon her. Her soul was numb, her courage seemed dead, and little care had she in that hour of what ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the Governor waited upon her at her house with a brief note to inform her that her husband would be hanged upon the morrow. Incredulity was succeeded by a numb, stony, dry-eyed grief, in which she sat alone for hours—a woman entranced. At last, towards dusk, she summoned a couple of her grooms to attend and light her, and made her way, ever in that odd somnambulistic state, to the gaol of Middelburg. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a long time, and there was no sign of the wolves coming near us. It was very cold, but our furs kept in our warmth. By and by I fell asleep—which was not dangerous so long as I kept warm, and I thought the cold must wake me before it began to numb me. And as 'I slept I dreamed; but my dream did not change the place; the forest, the tree I was in, all my surroundings were the same. I even dreamed that I came awake, and saw everything about me just as it was. I seemed ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... first day of the month was kept with burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Vide Numb. x. 10. and xxviii. 11. In imitation of the Jews, the calends, or first days of the month, and the fourth and seventh of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... him to return until late in the evening, and they would probably make no effort to learn of his whereabouts until after midnight. The night, too, was already growing very cold, with a raw, gusty wind that soughed drearily among the willows; his bare hands and wet feet were fast becoming chilled and numb. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... not matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... closing his eyes exhaustedly. After a long time he went on in a faint voice, "I suppose if I had lived long ago that would have been a vision of God's heaven; and yet there was not an instant of it—even when I fell down upon the ground and when I struck my hands upon the stones because they were numb and burning—when I did not know just what it was, the surging passion of my soul flung loose at last! It was like the voices of the stars and the mountains, that whisper of that which is and which ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... was numb with the sudden dropping of Life's big responsibilities upon her shoulders. She could not even summon energy enough to call Vic to an accounting of his absences from the house. Until after the funeral Vic had been subdued, going around on his toes and looking at Helen May with wide, solemn ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... soon it seemed as though every one was intoxicated. I took my first drink because every one seemed to be drinking and to be happy as well. The minutes passed quickly and my brain grew numb. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... time the sun was well up, and the warmth of the hour, season, and latitude, was shed on the sufferers. There was an old sail in the boat, and in this the party dried their limbs and feet, which were getting to be numb by their long immersion. Then the mate produced the bag and opened it, in quest of bread. A small portion was given to each, and, on looking farther, the mate discovered that a piece of boiled ship's beef ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the world. Once more the mighty Fletcher doth arise, Roab'd in a vest studded with stars and eyes Of all his former glories; his last worth Imbroiderd with what yet light ere brought forth. See! in this glad farewel he doth appear Stuck with the Constellations of his Sphere, Fearing we numb'd fear'd no flagration, Hath curl'd all his fires in this one ONE: Which (as they guard his hallowed chast urn) The dull ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... cast down by this unforeseen obstacle the Marshal took the bold decision to force a passage, and ordered the 48th of line, commanded by Colonel Pelet, to attack with the bayonet. At Ney's command, the French soldiers, although tired, hungry and numb with cold, rushed the Russian batteries and captured them. They were regained by the enemy and captured once more by our men but in the end they had to yield to the superiority in numbers. The 48th, shattered by grape-shot, was largely destroyed. Of the six hundred and fifty men who entered ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... when, somewhere in the pile of Prosper's mail, there lay a small gray envelope. Joan drew his attention to it, calling it a "queer little letter," and he took it up slowly as though his deft and nervous fingers had gone numb. Before he opened it he looked at Joan and, in one sense, it was the last time he ever did look at her; for at that moment his stark spirit looked straight into hers, acknowledged its guilt, and bade her ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the officer that he had not been mistaken, but it was not his own voice that reached his ears, and when his caller had gone he found himself sitting limply in his chair, numb with horror ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... she failed to realise it; there was a numb sensation in her breast, a dull confusion in her mind. She sat alone in the parlour, in her pretty new gown, looking straight ahead of her, seeing nothing—not even his letter in ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... white-stuccoed houses of Oropus clustering down upon the shore, the little mole, a few doltish peasants by the landing gaping at the great trireme. No others greeted them, for the terror of Mardonius's Tartar raiders had driven all but the poorest to some safe shelter. The oars slipped from numb fingers; the anchor plunged into the green water; the mainsail rattled down the mast. Men sat on the benches motionless, gulping down the clear air. They had done their part. The rest lay in the hands ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... be presumed to be, (though we read not the instinct clearly recorded:) as, Elias's calling for fire from heaven, 2 Kings i. 10; which the very apostles might not imitate, not having his spirit, Luke ix. 54, 55; Phinehas's killing the adulterer and adulteress, Numb. xxv. 7, 8; Samson's avenging himself upon his enemies by his own death, Judges xvi. 30, of which, saith Bernard, if it be defended not to have been his sin, it is undoubtedly to be believed he had private counsel, viz. from ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... a Farmer found a Viper frozen and numb with cold, and out of pity picked it up and placed it in his bosom. The Viper was no sooner revived by the warmth than it turned upon its benefactor and inflicted a fatal bite upon him; and as the poor man lay dying, he cried, "I have only got what ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... long minute there was a tomb-like silence. He never moved a muscle of his face. The chill of the smile in his eyes deepened, and seemed, as it was bent upon her, to numb ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
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