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More "Spasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part of this speech my friend nudged me spasmodically, whispering something which was jostled out of intelligent utterance by some inward spasm of laughter. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... bugbear it used to be, when one mighty spasm of cleanliness shook the house from garret to cellar and threw its inmates into a fever of discomfort and dismay. The modern house-cleaning season is one of indolence and ease compared with what it once was, when not only the cleaning and living problem, ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... at the door, leaving aunt and niece alone, and, as the door closed behind them, Sylvia felt a spasm of loneliness and regret. It was hard to part from Jack with that formal shake of the hand, to feel that days might elapse before they met again, and, as she looked round the ugly little dining-room, she felt like a prisoned bird which longs to break loose ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A quick sharp spasm of pain passed over her face. She was silent for a minute before she answered him, and ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... returned his "good-night" with sympathetic cordiality; then turned softly to his own apartment. Having reached it, he gave himself up to a spasm of silent laughter. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... can tell what a day may bring forth, let alone ten year? One autumn day he came home to me, in our shanty at Wild Cats' Gulch, with a hard chill, and in two hours, just as the turn of the cold fit into the hot one, he had a little spasm and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a fever, which seized her next morning. It lasted fourteen days with great violence, and was succeeded by attacks of convulsion and spasm. This was the beginning of that state of bodily suffering and mental exaltation in which she passed the remaining seven ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Frederick Elliots and Marochettis dined with us. There was a frost, and torches on the Serpentine. Mrs. F. Elliot drove round to see it, and went home and died in the night [of a spasm of the heart. The news reached Reeve by a note from Mr. Elliot, dated seven o'clock in ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... pardon, under which his confessions were obtained, was not kept after they were completed; and the execution of Lucan, at the age of twenty-six, while it cut short a remarkable poetical career, rid the world of a very poor creature. Yet the final spasm of courage with which he died, declaiming a passage from his own epic, has gained him, in the noblest of English elegies, a place in the same verse ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... raising the injured foot from the ground, while a spasm of anguish contracted his features. "Did you take my foot ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... back, with his chest heaving. His features were working. The spasm had exhausted him; and the green brilliance gave his gray skin a ghastly pallor. He lifted a small silver hammer and brought it down upon the belly of a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... that of Mrs. Marden's first husband). It was really Polwhistle—either Henry or Ernest Polwhistle; he was not quite sure which. Everything is thus restored to the status quo ante, except that Marden, in a spasm of generous reaction, feels himself morally bound to abide by the new conditions that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... he traveled the campus. He passionately envied the dancers in the fraternity houses but consoled himself with the thought, "Maybe I'll be dancing at the Nu Delt house next year." Then he had a spasm of fright. Perhaps the Nu Delts—perhaps no fraternity would bid him. The moon lost its brilliance; for a moment even the Sanford-Raleigh game ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... two men. Monty sat where Trent had been earlier in the night at the front of the open hut, his eyes fixed upon the ever-rising moon, his face devoid of intelligence, his eyes dim. The fire of the last few minutes had speedily burnt out. His half-soddened brain refused to answer to the sudden spasm of memory which had awakened a spark of the former man. If he had thoughts at all, they hung around that brandy bottle. The calm beauty of the African night could weave no spell upon him. A few feet behind, Trent, by the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there is never gout in the hands or feet, no catarrh, nor sciatica, nor grievous colics, nor flatulency, nor hard breathing. For these diseases are caused by indigestion and flatulency, and by frugality and exercise they remove every humour and spasm. Wherefore it is unseemly in the extreme to be seen vomiting or spitting, since they say that this is a sign either of little exercise or of ignoble sloth, or of drunkenness or gluttony. They suffer rather from swellings or from the dry spasm, which they relieve ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... all that he had to say, so he waited patiently for John to get over his spasm of laughter. Then he looked at him as if to ask what had he to say about such positive evidence as he had brought forth, regarding the Movie girl making the best ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... spoke up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, "If 'twasn't for my cunning ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... a long breath, but curiously it broke, as if a sharp spasm had gripped her heart. She stood, struggling with herself. And then suddenly she dropped upon her knees by the sill with her arms flung wide and her head with its cloudy ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... of spirits, of knowing, and endeavoring after what is morally good, and true, and perfect, and of the yearning after every real disciple of the inner religion of Christians, impels me to suggest to you to tell him from me, that I believe the spasm of his spiritual efforts would sooner be calmed, and the solution of the great problem would sooner be found, if he were to live for a time among us; I mean, if he resided for a time in one of the German universities. We Germans have been for seventy years working as thinkers, inquirers, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... foot, he has taken permanent possession of the country. The ancient religions of the primaeval East or the quaint beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they will help to found ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... heart cried in the intolerable spasm of a swift and mysterious convulsion. 'Why do you thus torture me?' Every step was ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... killed. At last he had to dance." "Sometimes they would be jerked about like a cock with his head off, all about the ground." The dancing I judge to have been an involuntary convulsive movement, which was the close of the general spasm. Of course, the people believed the whole was a "manifestation of the power of God." There is no reason to doubt that McNemar's descriptions are accurate; from what I have heard at South Union, I imagine that ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the other three diseases in that it is a nervous trouble, and probably the germ or the poison formed by the germ attacks the nervous system, and particularly one great nerve connecting the lungs and stomach. This is why the spasm of coughing is frequently followed by vomiting, and the only remedy which is of value in whooping cough is a nerve depressant which will diminish the activity of the nervous system without at the same time interfering with the strength or vigor ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... merely a matter of hours, if not minutes. Over and over again he had had himself propped up by his attendants with the expectation that his command to bring his son had been obeyed. No one knew better than he how impossible it would be to resist another spasm like that which had seized him a little while after his son had ridden off the rancho early that morning. Yet he relied once more on his iron constitution, and absolutely refused to die until he had laid upon his next of kin what ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... of amazement. Quickly he glanced at his chum, to see that Frank had gone deadly white, and his eyes glittered with sudden spasm of pain that ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... opinion of it's effect, some one day, has never altered! However, it is entirely gone off, and I am only quite weak. The good people of England will not believe, that rest of body and mind is necessary for me! But, perhaps, this spasm may not come again these six months. I had been writing seven hours yesterday; perhaps, that had some hand in bringing it upon me." Thus lightly does he speak of his own sufferings, thus good-humouredly ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... was suffering physical anguish at the moment—the old sharp pain at his heart to which he had become more or less wearily accustomed, had dizzied his senses for a space, but as the spasm passed he took Reay's hand and pressed ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... disease of the brain the cry is always sharp, short and piercing. Drowsiness generally follows each spasm of pain. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... squatting on his heels all this time at Shadrach's feet, and his hard fingers, like claws, were picking at the ground. Now he put out a hand, and began fingering the laces of the farmer's shoes with a quick fluttering movement that Shadrach saw with a spasm of terror. It was so exactly the trick of a baboon, so entirely a thing ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and are labelled, "Expenses of [Brighton] Pavilion," of "Furniture," "Drinking expenses." "Aye, this comes," he exclaims, "of your cursed pill economy, which you forced me to take a month back; no one knows what I have suffered from this economical spasm. I am afraid we shall all be laid up together." On the table behind him lie the medicines which have been prescribed for him, certain pills labelled "Petitions against the property tax," and a huge bolus ticketed "economy," "to be taken immediately." On ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... lily, with only a faint dream of rose in the cheeks. She wore her sleek, golden hair in a quaint arch around it. Her forehead was very broad and white. She was fresh and young and hopeful. The mother's heart contracted in a spasm of pain as she looked at her. How like the girl was to—to—to the Spencers! Those easy, curving outlines, those large, mirthful blue eyes, that finely molded chin! Isabella Spencer shut her lips firmly and crushed down some ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to see the child with its fair locks all tumbled upon the pillow, a dimpled hand laid under a dimpled cheek, ease and comfort and well-being in every lovely curve; and then there came a momentary spasm across his face, and he murmured "Poor little beggar!" under his breath. He was not panic-stricken like Lucy. He was a man made robust by much experience of the world, and a child more or less was not a thing to affect him as it would ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... round him at the awakening beauty of the springtide world, and a lump seemed to rise in his throat. His face contracted as though with a spasm of pain, and he spoke in ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cried M. Linders from his bed, in a sudden spasm of rage, "it is that villain, that miserable! Yes, yes, come in; Madelon, light the candles quickly; where are the cards? Ah—I will have ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... retains the impression that bats were made to get on with, while the rest of Callahan's bunch use them solely to get out with, and that was the whole trouble in the last round. The Sox entered that spasm four runs behind, having converted Demmitt's lone hit in the first inning into the only genuine tally of ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... very motionless in the bright illuminations and dancings of the torches. But at the news of delay, through the King of Scots, a spasm of pain and concern came into her face. So that, if her features did not again move they had in them a savour of anguish, her eyebrows drooping, and the corners ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... hotel office was in a spasm of activity, bells were ringing, doors slamming, and guests arriving. The group of loiterers who usually sat facing the fire, criticizing the daily proceedings of the legislature, now stood in a semicircle with their backs to it, watching the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Shadow, striving to find her way out into the sunlight; and sometimes the valley seemed but the entrance to that bottomless pit of shame where Maxime Dalahaide was entombed. She awoke from a dream forgotten, in a spasm of cold fear, before it was dawn, and switching on the electric light near the bed, she drew her watch from under the pillow. It was just six o'clock; and for a few moments Virginia lay still, thinking over the events of yesterday. After all, what did they mean for her? Nothing, said Reason; ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... blood flooded his cheeks. The woman who for him was the sole and only incarnation of the whole race of womankind throughout the ages rose before his mental sight with a surprising clearness; every hair of his body stood on end in an agonizing spasm of desire, and he dug his nails into the palms of his hands. The vision caused him an unspeakable yet delicious pain—Gabrielle in a loose peignoir at a small, daintily ordered table gay with flowers and glasses. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... half-breed's father—a wordless cry, rising and dying away again and again, like the wailing of a dog. Sudden lights flashed into the night, as they had flashed years ago when Cummins staggered forth from his home with word of the woman's death. He gripped Jan's arm in a sudden spasm of horror. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... that preceded the latter part of this speech was not lost upon Molly Healy. It caused her a spasm of pain that was sharp, if it was only short-lived, for she was a girl, if a sensible and healthy one, and she always had greatly admired ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... apoplexy, or sudden spasm of the heart; terrible Ziska,[75] as it were, killing him at second hand. For Ziska, stout and furious, blind of one eye and at last of both, a kind of human rhinoceros driven mad, had risen out of the ashes of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in large doses it acts as a narcotic, abating pain and inducing sleep. In moderate doses it operates as a diaphoretic, diuretic, antispasmodic, increasing the heat of the body, allaying irritation and spasm. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... solitude, is of service at least in this, that it affords an escape for vain regrets, angers, impatience. One puts this and that angry spasm into it, and is delivered from ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... grimed face turned bony, Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony! O sudden spasm, release of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... all diseased: all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heartsick agony, all fev'rous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the necessity of expressing something he has felt not only intensely but definitely. The artist must know what he is about, and what he is about must be, if I am right, the translation into material form of something that he felt in a spasm of ecstasy. Therefore, shapes that merely fill gaps will be ill-drawn. Forms that are not dictated by any emotional necessity, forms that state facts, forms that are the consequences of a theory ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... trouble and everything, I've gone and left that knife at home, and now my whole trip is going to be spoiled for me. I just seemed to feel that something was bound to happen to upset my calculations. I might as well go back, that's what," said Bluff, gritting his teeth in his spasm of disgust. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of nervous irritation. "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything will be made so different for you—so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it. She was never finer than when she knelt at Harold's bedside and laid her hand gently on his forehead. She could not speak for a moment, and when her eyes cleared of their tears and she felt the wide, dry eyes of the man searching her, a spasm of ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... stop mopin' out thar an' come along in, I'll clear off the dishes!" called his mother again in her rasping voice which sounded as if she were choking in a perpetual spasm ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... transept is to be seen a group carved in marble, representing the ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Caesar gazed at it absorbed. The saint is an attractive young girl, falling backward in a sensual spasm; her eyes are closed, her mouth open, and her jaw a bit dislocated. In front of the swooning saint is a little angel who smilingly threatens her with ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... remains at its strongest the normal colours do little more than modify the blue, or appear faintly through a veil of it; but presently the vehemence of the sentiment dies away, and the normal colours re-assert themselves. But because of that spasm of emotion the part of the astral body which is normally blue has been increased in size. Thus a man who frequently feels high devotion soon comes to have a large area of the blue permanently existing in his ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Heaven wandered free. The little bride stepped bravely between the piles of refuse, daintily gathering her dress about her. A dirty sheet on the wall flapped without warning, and we had a glimpse of a gaunt and pallid crucifix, instantly shrouded again in a spasm of wind. Passing under an arch we entered a less demolished chapel. Here all ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... victorious, but no conquered army ever beat such a retreat as ours down the tower stairs and into the refuge of the living-room. There, with the door closed, sprawled on the divan, I went from one spasm of mirth into another, becoming sane at intervals, and suffering relapse again every time I saw Hotchkiss' disgruntled countenance. He was pacing the room, the tongs still in his hand, his mouth pursed ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 'Galileo'?—what of his 'House of Orleans'?—the letter of Catherine II. which he had presented to the Grand Duke?—the letter of Rotrou, which he had solemnly bestowed upon the Academie? What? What? A spasm of energy brought him to his legs. Fage! He ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... promising boy, full [of?] life and vivacity, having inherited much of the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and although he was the light and joy of his home, yet his mother sometimes felt as if her heart was contracting with a spasm of agony, when she remembered that it was through that same geniality of disposition and wonderful fascination of manner, the tempter had woven his meshes for her husband, and that the qualities that made him so desirable at home, made him equally ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... back at the wall, and then closed his eyes, as if with a spasm, of retarded dizziness. "I won't resist you," he said. "But I have made you obey," he added, turning to Christina. "Am I ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... about again my first act is to apologize to you for my rudeness in quitting the table so abruptly as to make it seem like a personal insult to you. Now I hope you will believe me when I say that an insult to you from me is impossible. Something like a spasm passed over my nervous system, and I had to hurry ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim's safety than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. That was upon us in such power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was, his very life in danger, was a ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... marble, while a spasm of pain passed over his features as he said: "Oh, Aunt Lucy, you do not know how you hurt me Why did you speak ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... in July, Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, and in April, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one, Mrs. Taylor and Mill were quietly married. The announcement of the marriage sent a spasm over literary England, and set ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... fast," murmured Mrs. Montgomery, as she noted the livid lips and pallid face that followed the spasm. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... dissatisfaction, yea desolation of my soul—wretched, alone, unfinished, without him! It cannot act from itself, save in God; acting from what seems itself without God, is no action at all, it is a mere yielding to impulse. All within is disorder and spasm. There is a cry behind me, and a voice before; instincts of betterment tell me I must rise above my present self—perhaps even above all my possible self: I see not how to obey, how to carry them ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... the house, lying wrapped up in his blanket on the ground. He was, to all appearance, very ill indeed, and shook and shivered horribly; not as people do from cold, but in a frightful kind of spasm or convulsion, that racked his whole body. Mark's friend pronounced his disease an aggravated kind of fever, accompanied with ague; which was very common in those parts, and which he predicted would be worse to-morrow, and for many more to-morrows. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... a momentary spasm of alarm, her grief was so wild and overwhelming. One hand was flung about her father's neck, and the other pressed itself against her side, as if ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and antispasmodic, but owing to the accidents it may give rise to, its use in therapeutics is very limited. Like all the active Solanace it is effective against neuralgia and spasm of the muscular tissues and is therefore indicated in strangulated hernia and in intestinal obstruction. In these conditions the infusion of 1-5 grams of the dried leaf to 250 grams of water is given ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... was dark, and my blushes were unnoticed. (faintly repeating Rudolph's words) "Your tiny hand is frozen, Let me warm it into life!" It was dark, and my hand then you clasped— (a sudden spasm half suffocates her; she sinks ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... truth was brought home to them so forcibly that they forthwith developed the fighting spirit, and became the most blood-thirsty entities in, the service of the Queen. All were needed, and When afterwards a merchant found himself "officered" by his factotum, he enjoyed (after a fleeting spasm); the humour of the revolution ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... philosopher bend. As the broken heart of a sunset that bleeds pure purple and gold In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west, Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth. The whole world, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Hollingsworth, Bunch Bingham, Buster Brown, Beef McNaughton, and Pudge Langdon, who had been attacked in a fashion similar to Butch's spasm, concealed grins of delight, and made strenuous efforts to appear guileless, as Track-Coach Brannigan approached T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. To that cheery youth, who was brushing the dirt from his immaculate track togs, and bowing to the cheering ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... you think she has gone there?" Richard asked, with a sudden spasm of fear, for which he could not account, and which was not in any wise diminished by his mother's reply: "Ann said she took the six o'clock train for Olney, and as Miss Amsden lives beyond us, it's likely she went there, and is home ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... he held out to her, glanced at it, and choked back a spasm of hysterical laughter. For it wasn't a picture of Aunt Caroline, or even of a departed Spence—it was a picture of ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... I know all about it," said I, hastily, as I passed my handkerchief over my mouth to hide the spasm of pain which ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... could have read or written. The answer seems to be pretty obvious; namely, that after the publication of the Dictionary he wrote very little, and that, when he did write, it was generally in a brief spasm of feverish energy. One may understand that Johnson should have frequently reproached himself for his indolence; though he seems to have occasionally comforted himself by thinking that he could do good by talking as well as by writing. He said that a man should have ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... With a wild spasm of joy William realised that his enemy lisped. It is always well to have a handle against ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... still upon the field of action, but in sad and sorrowful condition; suffering the penalties of past pleasures, and calling to mind the captain's dulcet compound, with many a retch and spasm. It seemed as if the honey and alcohol, which had passed so glibly and smoothly over his tongue, were at war within his stomach; and that he had a swarm of bees within his head. In short, so helpless and woebegone was his plight, that his party proceeded ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... blood-stained hand above his head, shouted, in a heart-piercing cry, "Vive l'Empereur!" The effort was his last. It was the expiring tribute of allegiance to the chief he adored. The blood spouted in cataracts from his half-closed wounds, a convulsive spasm worked through his frame, his eyes rolled fearfully, as his outstretched hands seemed striving to clutch some object before them, and he was dead. Fresh arrivals of wounded continued to pour in; and now I thought I could detect at intervals the distant noise of a cannonade. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... wire-toothed horse rake with its two handles, which when the day was hot and the grass heavy nearly killed both man and horse. The holder would throw his weight upon it to make it grip and hold the hay, and then, in a spasm of energy, lift it up and make it drop the hay. From this rude instrument, through various types of wooden and revolving rakes, the modern wheeled rake, with which the raker rides at his ease, has been evolved. At this season the cows ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... as if he had suddenly felt the prick of a knife, so sharp was the spasm which ran through him. For the moment he had quite forgotten the prospect of an attempt at rescue; now the mention of the soldiery coming to meet the unhappy prisoners and strengthen the escort brought all back, and ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... she ran away with your father," she cried, a spasm of pain crossing her face. "He said I was born before they were married. I have a right to kill him. Do you hear? I ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the folks from over to Jocelyn's, yist'd'y," he said, in a spasm of sharp, crackling speech, "and they seemed to think 't Mis' Mulbridge'd got to step round pretty spry 'f she did n't want another the same name in the house ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... She looked at the handsome Calyste without ill-humor; but a first spasm of jealousy seized her, and she felt the dreadful madness of rivalry when she came in sight of the two Parisian women, and suspected the cause of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... was rather fond of styling himself "Master of Arts in both Universities." Soon after 1585, if not before, he betook himself to London, where he speedily sank into the worst type of a literary adventurer. Thenceforth his life seems to have been one continual spasm, plunging hither and thither in transports of wild profligacy and repentance. He died in 1592, eaten up ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... tears are in her eyes, (we do not forget that it is of marble we are speaking,—there are tears in her eyes,) but they only linger there; she is not weeping now; her chin trembles, and one of her hands is convulsively clenched,—but it is with the anguish of her sore besetting, not the spasm of mortal fear. Though Heaven and Earth, indeed, might join to help her, we yet know that the soul of the maiden will help itself,—that her hope clings fast, and her courage is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... sign or sound he fell down upon the sodden turf, his head striking against the earth with a dull echo, his hands drawing up the rank herbage by the roots, as they closed convulsively in one brief spasm. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... feel twitchings of uneasiness. Fred Massingbird had gone then, and the doctor was out. Lionel looked into the drawing-room, and there found the two elder Misses West, each dissolved in a copious shower of tears. So far, Jan's words were borne out. A sharp spasm shot across his heart. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... An enthusiastic commercial spasm will be worth nothing. There have got to be real efforts, real hard work, the expenditure of money for future and not merely immediate profits, a cheerful readiness to discard old and cherished methods, a new adaptability, a new painstaking attention to details. There has got to be serious ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fashion of southern countries of serenading, which I am very glad is not an English fashion. Music, as long as I am awake, is a pure and perfect delight to me, but to be wakened out of my sleep by music is to wake in a spasm of nervous terror, shaking from head to foot, and sick at my stomach, with indescribable fear and dismay; certainly no less agreeable effect could possibly be contemplated by the gallantry of a serenading admirer, so I am glad our admirers do not serenade us English girls. This picturesque ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... reaction of relief, that the child could speak at all, half horrible spasm of all her own motherly nerves that thrilled through and through with every pang that touched the little frame, hers also. Mothers never do part bonds with babies they have borne. Until the day they die, each quiver ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... blinding spasm of giddiness closed upon and shook him, while the brave words were on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan and sat down, gasping a little, and patting his hand on his heart. There ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... It was as if the Wheat, Nourisher of the Nations, as it rolled gigantic and majestic in a vast flood from West to East, here, like a Niagara, finding its flow impeded, burst suddenly into the appalling fury of the Maelstrom, into the chaotic spasm of a world-force, a primeval energy, blood-brother of the earthquake and the glacier, raging and wrathful that its power should be braved by some pinch of human spawn that dared ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls, Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish in uttermost tension Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh! Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neck And giving that fragile yell, that scream, Super-audible, From his pink, cleft, old-man's mouth, Giving up the ghost, Or screaming in Pentecost, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... text becomes a whole creed to the exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in crowded House thought of these miserable men. HARCOURT made his speech; GORST demonstrated that Motion was indefensible, being both too late and too soon; the Mouse came and went amid a spasm of thrilled interest; GLADSTONE delivered oration in dinner-hour; PARNELL fired up at midnight; House divided, and SPEAKER left the Chair. Then was heard the rattling of keys in the door by OLD MORALITY's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Square, I remember vaguely hearing some one call out. I paid no heed, but pressed on blindly. A moment after, a hand fell heavily on my shoulder, and I thought I had fainted. Certainly the world went black about me for some seconds; and when that spasm passed I found myself standing face to face with the "cheerful extravagant," in what sort of disarray I really dare not imagine, dead white at least, shaking like an aspen, and mowing at the man with speechless lips. And this was the soldier of Napoleon, and the gentleman who intended ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... delicacies were bought, in case Justin might like them; Redge and Zaidee were hurriedly dressed in their best "to see dear papa," and, even though they had to go to bed without the desired result, Redge in a fresh spasm of coughing, it was with the repeated promise that the father should come up-stairs to kiss them as ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and putting her head on one side, looked at her questioner, with a curious kind of spasm about her mouth, but with a cunning aspect ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the ecstasy of relief which Mark felt at her words there was a spasm of sobering jealousy; she only cared to live for the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... sails beginning to shiver as she faced more and more to the wind, and finally flapping to and fro; but almost at once as the spokes turned rapidly through Isaac Gregg's hands, a deep low murmur ran through the crew, while a pang-like spasm seemed to shoot upward to cause a choky sensation in ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... this sudden spasm of business anxiety, but said nothing further, and Drew hastened down to the Jones Lane pier and boarded the Normandy. But again he was doomed ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... and sullen, with eyes as clear and heartless as those of a beast in the wild. Now, without warning, a startling transformation was wrought. His form stiffened to rigidity after one lightning-swift step forward, and his face grayed. The eyes glowed with the fires of a man's heart in a spasm of hate. He was the embodiment of rage, as he spoke huskily, his voice a whisper that was ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... meshed. The slimy touch sent an unpleasant thrill through him, but he had no sense of fear as yet He wrenched off the bloom he had aimed for, and again he went under water. Then he found he could not rise, and a sudden spasm of terror shook him. He struggled madly, and the pulses in his head beat like bells. Just when the case seemed desperate, and he felt as if he must take breath or die, something gave way. He surged upward, and got one great gulp of air. His senses came back to him, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... towards him with approving glances, they saw him standing before them cold, rigid, and voiceless. The next instant his fixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as if torn by an internal spasm—he fell back heavily to the floor. Those around approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms. His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it; the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... difference. Before we go any farther, let it be clearly understood that there was no sentiment involved; at least, no sentimental sentiment. Years before, I, like most of the other town boys of my age, had taken my turn as Agatha's fetcher and carrier; but that was only a passing spasm—a gust of the calf-love which stirs up momentary whirlwinds in youthful hearts. The real reason for the promise-making lay deeper. Abel Geddis had been crabbedly kind to me, helping me through my final year in the High School after my father died, and taking me into his private ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... could not keep me away from that festive board," the colonel vowed. (Another spasm for the groom!) "And how is that good father ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... into the red-lit space of the control room, where the airlock was. Weaver stopped and frantically tugged his arm free of the rubberoid sleeve. The repressed spasm was an acute agony in his nose and throat. He fumbled the handkerchief out of his pocket, thrust his hand up under the helmet—and ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... spinning off at a tangent, out into the void, where all things seemed possible, hurtling through the dark there, groping for the supernatural, clamouring for the miracle. And it was also the human, natural protest against the inevitable, the irrevocable; the spasm of revolt under the sting of death, the rebellion of the soul at the victory ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... let the primus burn on after supper now for a time—it was the only thing which kept us going—and when one who was holding the primus was seized with cramp we hastily took the lamp from him until the spasm was over. It was horrible to see Birdie's stomach cramp sometimes: he certainly got it much worse than Bill or I. I suffered a lot from heartburn especially in my bag at nights: we were eating a great proportion of fat and this was probably the cause. Stupidly I said nothing ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... returning alone, Isabel insisted on accompanying him, declaring that she had no fears, and that her mother would be miserable if her absence should detain them. Perhaps she was somewhat deceived by the cool, almost ludicrous, light in which he placed the revolution, as a sort of periodical spasm, and Miss Longman's predictions that the railway would be closed, only ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our imagination—they seem too much like mere museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... murderous basilisk.—When this began, He shouted on poor Lichas, none to blame For thy sole crime, 'What guile is here, thou knave? What was thy fraud in fetching me this robe?' He, all-unknowing, in an evil hour Declared his message, that the gift was thine. Whereat the hero, while the shooting spasm Had fastened on the lungs, seized him by the foot Where the ankle turns i' the socket, and, with a thought, Hurl'd on a surf-vex'd reef that showed i' the sea: And rained the grey pulp from the hair, the brain Being scattered with the blood. Then the great throng Saddened their festival with piteous ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... and swung my hat and shouted, hoping to attract some brakeman's attention. The train was thundering along at full speed, and none saw or heard me. I knew her stupor would not last long. A slight quivering of the lip, an occasional spasm running through the frame, told me too plainly that the stage of frenzy would soon begin. 'My God,' I exclaimed in despair, as I shut the door and turned toward her, 'must I see you die, Gulnare, when the opening of a vein would ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... made a bodily resistance—I received from an unseen power the most violent thrust which a human being ever felt. The working of terror was acting dreadfully within me; its effect was to close my arms as in a spasm, to seize on what stood unseen before me. I staggered onwards, and fell prostrate on the ground; beneath me on his back was a man whom I held fast, and who now ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... be kept alive at all hazards," I laughed; and this time I did not reject her. But it was a child around whom my arms closed. An inner flash, accompanied by a spasm of pain, revealed it, and changed ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... | discharges |debility. Relapses |mild. Characteristic | from nose |are apt to occur. |"whooping" cough develops | and mouth. |Second attack |in about a fortnight, and the | |rare. Specially |spasm of coughing often ends | |infectious for |with vomiting. | |first week or two. | | |If a child is sick | | |after a bout of | | |coughing, it is | | |most probably | | |suffering from | | |whooping cough. | | | | | |Great variation in | | |type of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... began. Then he seemed to undergo some internal spasm. He dropped his hat, slid his chair to the side of Fanny's, and said, "Ah, Miss Newt, how can you ask me at such ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... is called the Devil's Bridge. With a single arch, from ridge to ridge, It leaps across the terrible chasm Yawning beneath us, black and deep, As if, in some convulsive spasm, The summits of the hills had cracked, And made a road for the cataract That raves and rages down ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... such a death as he had often said would be his choice. Just a dropping to sleep here and an awakening yonder. The doctor said it was heart-failure, resulting from a sudden spasm of pain. But the face bore no trace of pain. The moan that wakened Daisy was probably that sigh with which mortal parts with mortality—the parting breath between life and death, which will scarcely stir a feather and yet will ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and then she kind of trembled and turned white, and the next thing I knew was she was all of a heap on the floor. I remember he looked into her face then and seemed to be seized as if it was with a start or spasm-like,—but I thought nothin' more of it, supposin' it was because he felt so bad at makin' her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Josephine took the glass. "I drink to your health, Camille, and to your glory; laurels to your brow, and some faithful woman to your heart, who will make you forget this folly: it is for her I am saving you." She put the glass with well-acted spirit to her lips; but in the very action a spasm seized her throat and almost choked her; she lowered her head that he might not see her face, and tried again; but the tears burst from her eyes and ran into the liquid, and her lips trembled over ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Visitation of the Sick. Outside, the loons clanged up the waterways, the herons called across the islands, but no human things ventured up the wilds. Inside, the sick man lay, beside him August Beaver holding a rude lantern, while Cragstone's matchless voice repeated the Anglican formula. A spasm, an uplifted hand, and Cragstone paused. Was the end coming even before a benediction? But the dying man was addressing Beaver in Chippewa, whispering and choking out the words ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... tents, and I suppose show-people always expect to travel with shows. I don't know anything about it. But I do know when that child came to me she'd been dosed nearly to death with laudanum, or some sleepin' drug, and didn't really come to her senses till after her spasm." ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... He was leaning on the back of his chair, fighting some spasm of feeling. "I am—faint. I must ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... His eyes grew clear, as his full sense returned after a while: seeing only at first, it so happened, the fire in its square frame; and thinking only of that, as the mind always drowsily absorbs the nearest trifle after a spasm of pain. A bed of pale red coals now, furred over with white and pearl-colored ashes. It was a long time since he had seen any open fire,—years, he believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... together. They are, indeed, not without peril, for the perpetually returning disturbance of the circulation may give rise to an overfilling of the vessels of the brain, or to a stagnation of the blood within them, or the spasm may affect the muscles which open and close the entrance to the windpipe, and the child may die choked as in a paroxysm of whooping cough, or in a fit of spasmodic croup, or lastly the violent and frequently repeated muscular movements may at length exhaust its feeble frame. But still, such ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... a straight thrust to the core of a superstitious heart and a spasm of terror crossed the woman's face. She began ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... memory betrayed her. Just so, she recollected, Leofwine's son was lying, not a hundred yards away. Through the trees, the glow of the King's fire came distinctly; gazing toward it, she could almost convince herself that she could see the murderer, peaceful, secure. She ground her teeth in a sudden spasm of rage. Would that some of those weak-witted thanes would prove the mettle of the knives ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I've been ever since. Well, and what's brought you up—don't answer, I know all about it. I've got to keep on talking until this particular spasm's over, or else I shall scream and disturb the flow of Soane's leader. Well, and now you've come, you'll stop and help me to put the Hour to bed, won't you? And then you can come and put me ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... this general course constantly in mind in all cases of esophagoscopy, but particularly in those cases in which there is marked dilatation of the esophagus following spasm at the diaphragm level. In such cases the aid of this knowledge of direction will greatly simplify the finding of the hiatus esophageus in the floor of ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... of finding himself in the little town, he was in the depths of a great old forest, and in horrible agony. Some accident had occurred—he did not know what. He only knew that he was shot, suffering, dying! He groaned, and even as he writhed in a spasm of pain he saw her sitting on the sward beside him. He turned glazed eyes on her. Her brown ones looked back into his with a great love ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... pain; for she believes that poison is being introduced into her system, and that her bones will be softened, and her flesh turned into dust. She becomes deadly pale; her limbs are stiffened by a sort of tetanic spasm, and her hair is partially erected on the front ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... sold shamrock on St. Patrick's day. She has dressed in rags and sung in the streets for charity. She has hired a van and ridden about the suburbs pretending to sell domestic articles. She has attended revival meetings and thrown herself in a spasm of ecstasy upon what she calls the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... and then he choked and collapsed on the bed in a shaken spasm of grief. After a minute he opened his eyes and regarded ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... struggling and making efforts to escape, but his iron collar held him back. The birds adapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then striking again, scared but desperate. On one side a strange flight was attempted, on the other the pursuit of a chained man. The corpse, impelled by every spasm of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage: it went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The dead man was a club, the swarms were dust. The fierce, assailing flock would not leave their hold, and grew stubborn; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... wan, their movements constrained and timorous. All their efforts at gaiety were impeded by the inertia of fear. At every speech the lips of Lina and Laura quivered, the hands of Leonello and Leonardo were clenched in a nervous spasm. Antonio controlled himself only by the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... aerial wave, the energy of which would not reach a minute fraction of that necessary to raise the thousandth of a grain through the thousandth of an inch, can throw the whole human frame into a powerful mechanical spasm, followed by violent respiration and palpitation. The eye of course, may be appealed to as well as the ear. Of this the lamented Lange ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... absorbed, it is true, in grave thought, but his countenance was neither distressed nor gloomy. With a spasm of fierce annoyance, and a bitter curse on the meddling of old females and young, Rupert had to admit that never had he seen his brother look more handsome, more master of the house and of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... hand on Caroline's arm; and, with an effort that cost her a spasm in her throat, she said, "You have!" Not another word could she get out; but this was enough. Caroline kissed her for the first time in her life, except at the formal partings at bed-time, and there were tears on both their faces. After a time, Caroline broke into the flood of ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with chuckles of joy, and spread them carefully within the shelter of the cave. Except for the very edges, which did not much matter, our blankets and "so-guns," protected by the canvas "tarp," were reasonably dry. Every once in a while a spasm of conscience would seize one or the ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... what you are saying, Berkley"—Colonel Arran choked; turned gray; then a spasm twitched his features and he grasped the arms of his chair, staring at Berkley ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I should see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There was an alien object in view—a figure whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... fool, and worse, She was whiter than driven snow, And so one morning the universe Lost forever its sapphire glow; Across the land, and across the sea, I felt a horrible shadow crawl, A spasm of hell shot over me, Wilmur and darkness, ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... whilst every other tremor, he observes, ceases, when the voluntary exertion for moving the limb stops, or the part is supported, but returns when we will the limb to move; whence, he says, tremor is distinguished from every other kind of spasm[4]. ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... move, and seemed to herself scarce to breathe, such a spasm of various feelings was upon her heart. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... opened her large hazel eyes, and glanced wildly around, a quick spasm passing like an electric shock over her frame at the same instant; for the funeral scene burst upon her view, and reminded her where she was, and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... at his stubbornness vanished in a sudden spasm of pity. The poor fellow was scarcely more than a boy! Though I was completely in the dark as to what he was holding back and why he was doing it, yet I felt instinctively that his motives ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... cried by the watchman, far away, and then close under my window; a fearsome cry like a groan of agony uttered by a madman in a dying spasm. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he was for a moment, and something like a spasm passed across his heavy features. He believed their situation to be desperate, and the vision of his home again rose before him, ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... silence which was growing painful, she plunged into an account of one of the last escapades of her wicked room-mate, whom she pictured as a most fascinating, but a desperately reckless creature. It was funny, the way she told it, and it sent Jimmy off into a spasm of mirth. But she would almost rather have bitten her tongue out than to have caused Jimmy to explode in that wild bray of a laugh. He slapped his knee repeatedly, and doubled up as if he could laugh no longer, only to break out in a second bray, louder than the first. It made the ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... on his haunches, thrusting his nose upward, the mouth opening and closing with jerking movements, each time opening wider. These jerking movements were in unison with the recurrent spasms that attacked the throat, each spasm severer and more intense than the preceding one. And in accord with jerks and spasms the larynx began to vibrate, at first silently, accompanied by the rush of air expelled from the lungs, then sounding a low, deep note, the lowest ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... outside, haranguing. His system was to thrill the audience with horror, till they precipitated themselves in a spasm of terror into his show. Just as when one is on a height, a nervous, uncontrollable impulse fills some men to throw themselves down out of very fear of falling, so did this great artist in horrors work up ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... face swept a swift spasm of pain. So quickly was it gone that I would not have noticed it, had not my eyes happened to rest on her face when Mrs. Lester spoke of her baby. Was there a child in that hectic past of hers? I decided ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... type, but seizures vary in different patients, and in the same sufferer at different times. The cry and the biting of the tongue may be absent, the first spasm brief, and the convulsions mild. Epilepsy of all kinds is characterized by an alteration (not necessarily a loss) of consciousness, followed by loss of memory for events that occurred during the time that alteration of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... my left hand. The cane sang in the air and whistled on to my open palm. A spasm of pain passed up my arm, my hand closed convulsively, my elbow drooped, and that vast array of tears made a tremendous effort to carry everything before them. But with all the strength at my command I got the better ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... they take four deep breaths it will prove fatal: "One breath and you catch the first spasm, two and you are mad, three and you are unconscious, four and you are dead. If you keep your presence of mind and hold your breath you will have six seconds to get on your gas helmet or respirator." The attack, remember, is a surprise in the dark; brain-splitting gas shells are dropping ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... tall and cannot catch his eye. It is like being at a play, watching him! All at once he sees me! Involuntarily a sudden quick spasm of joy passes across his ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... that you have been—" he answered meaningly, with an amused flash of his eyes, though at the very moment a spasm of pain crossed his face, for he was suffering from incurable disease, and went about his great task in daily misery, yet cheerful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... What would it look like, a child of hers and Franklin Kane's? How spare and poor and insignificant were his face and form. Could she love a child who had a nose like that—a neat, flat, sallow little nose? A spasm, half of laughter, half of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger caused; and perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's quavering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall at such times. He opened his lips ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... making efforts to escape, but his iron collar held him back. The birds adapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then striking again, scared but desperate. On one side a strange flight was attempted, on the other the pursuit of a chained man. The corpse, impelled by every spasm of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage: it went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The dead man was a club, the swarms were dust. The fierce, assailing flock would not leave their hold, and grew ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... very night she spited and beat me till I could bear it no longer, and was on my way to my aunt's, who dwells in yonder village, when the shower came on; but as I lay waiting for the rain to stop, I was seized with a spasm, to which I am subject, and was in great pain, when I had the good luck to fall ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... out to the road. She did not dare hire a carriage, now that she was jobless. She wished she had not left paradise. But she dared not try to return. She was not "classy" enough. Suddenly a spasm of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hot real quick! But I'm very easy cooled when de man I'm mad wid is bigger'n me. (He drops into his seat, wiping his face) Man did yo' see how he grabbed up dat check? He done skeered me into a three-week's spasm! ...
— Three Plays - Lawing and Jawing; Forty Yards; Woofing • Zora Neale Hurston
... took you by the throat, unearthly harpings of the wind along the moors; and for centre-piece to all these features and influences, John winding up the brae, keeping his captain's eye upon all sides, and breaking, ever and again, into a spasm of bellowing that seemed to make the evening bleaker. It is thus that I still see him in my mind's eye, perched on a hump of the declivity not far from Halkerside, his staff in airy flourish, his great voice taking hold upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... icy spasm seemed to contract his heart, . . seized by a sudden insufferable anxiety, he stared like one spell-bound into Sah-luma's wide-open, fixed, and glassy eyes. Dead eyes! ... yet how full of mysterious significance! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hollow in the rocks where she and Violet had rested on that summer morning, and again Olga paused with her face to the sea. A curious little spasm passed across it as she looked. Far away a white sail floated over the blue, and the cries of circling gulls came to them over the water. There was no other sound but the long, long roar of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... into the most elephantine convulsions of laughter that I ever heard or witnessed. For half a minute, at least, he shook and shook internally, and then exploded. An explosion was no sooner finished than the internal spasm recommenced, and so he went on until I really feared he might injure himself. After five minutes of such attack, he managed to draw out his bandanna and cover his face with it, and then, whilst we watched his figure shaking and quivering, we heard, like groans, from ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... remains of the golden days of the Irish Church were collected together and publicly destroyed, especially when the staff of St. Patrick, the famous Baculum Cristatum, part of which was believed to have actually touched the hands of the Saviour, was burnt in Dublin in the market-place, a spasm of shocked dismay ran through the whole island. Men who would have been scandalized by no other form of violence were horror-stricken at this. Differences of creed were so little understood that a widespread belief ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... by the disturbance of the Duchy to reacquire his lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried in obscure conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted on this, as on so many other occasions, by a mere spasm of suspicious jealousy, for which he could ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... as though a sharp spasm of pain had convulsed his body. Then he stood as if about ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Later the pony was sent out for exercise with Crean. I passed him twice and seemed to gather that things were well, but Crean afterwards told me that he had had considerable trouble. Every few minutes the poor beast had been seized with a spasm of pain, had first dashed forward as though to escape it and then endeavoured to lie down. Crean had had much difficulty in keeping him in, and on his legs, for he is a powerful beast. When he returned to the stable he was evidently worse, and Oates and Anton patiently dragged ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... take possession. I felt most unexpectedly that I had dashed against something which made a bodily resistance—I received from an unseen power the most violent thrust which a human being ever felt. The working of terror was acting dreadfully within me; its effect was to close my arms as in a spasm, to seize on what stood unseen before me. I staggered onwards, and fell prostrate on the ground; beneath me on his back was a man whom I held fast, and who ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... sudden change, radical change, sweeping organic change; change of state, phase change; quantum leap, quantum jump; clean sweep, coup d'etat [Fr.], counter revolution. jump, leap, plunge, jerk, start, transilience^; explosion; spasm, convulsion, throe, revulsion; storm, earthquake, cataclysm. legerdemain &c (trick) 545. V. revolutionize; new model, remodel, recast; strike out something new, break with the past; change the face of, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tawny or rosy wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It was all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers, straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of magnificent hair, which spread into a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... a racking cough ever since I had known him, but I don't think I ever remembered his having a spasm of this ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... risky as mine, and more so,' I replied, rising with a jerk, for a spasm of cramp took me. 'We must separate,' I added, as we walked on. 'We want, at one stroke, to prove to them that we're harmless, and to get a fresh start. I ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and flung himself back on the bank in a spasm of impotent loathing of Lord Henry. "They're holding hands!" whispered the girl in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness, while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic, which could estimate friendship at nothing, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of the Scout uniforms might even imagine that they had been attacked by a spasm of fear; but at least two members of the group had within recent times proven their valor in a fashion that the people of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... the mountains of Beulah. And by an odd and luminous accident, if there is any page of literature calculated to awake the envy of M. Zola, it must be that Troilus and Cressida which Shakespeare, in a spasm of unmanly anger with the world, grafted on the heroic story of ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passing spasm, mother. I am—I believe I am already better," said the daughter, in an agony of suffering that she dared ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... called "Al" muttered something which sounded like a disclaimer. Then he caught sight of the Doctor's face over Blaine's shoulder, and a spasm of black rage ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... at that moment looked scarcely a subject for congratulation. A spasm, as though of pain, had suddenly passed across his face. He clutched at ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uttered the two last lines, Mihalevitch all but shed tears; a slight spasm—the sign of deep emotion—passed over his wide mouth, his ugly face lighted up. Lavretsky listened, and listened to him—and the spirit of antagonism was aroused in him; he was irritated by the ever-ready enthusiasm of the Moscow student, perpetually ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... bed must have wondered at the eccentricity with which her patient's father attired himself. Bending over the little sufferer, Reardon felt for the first time since Willie's birth a strong fatherly emotion; tears rushed to his eyes, and he almost crushed Amy's hand as he held it during the spasm of his ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... enterprising practitioner, glib in theory, and bold in practice—and it had been mutually agreed between them that "stomach" was the cause of these unhandsome symptoms; acridity of the gastric juice, consequent indigestion and spasm, and generally a hypochondriacal habit of body. Mr. Jennings must take certain draughts thrice a day, be very careful of his diet, and keep his mind at ease. As to Simon himself, he was, poor man, much to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that will be far more amusing than stuffed into one of those plush carriages with the windows closed and forbidden to speak with any one in the corridor. And forced to carry all the hand-luggage off the train (when your father had an economical spasm and would not take a footman) while he stalked out first as if we did not exist. I shall never marry again—Gott in Himmel, no!—but I shall gather about me all the interesting men I never have been ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... period of silence and then he felt a thrill, for it came again, a peculiar whimpering that would have given Billy a spasm of fright had he been awake to catch it, instead ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... He lay across the seat, and Jimmie, who had to sit next to him, caught him in his arms and held him. He was quivering, with awful motions like a spasm. He made no sound, and Jimmie was terrified, thinking that he was dying. Before long Jimmie felt a hot wetness stealing over his hands, first slimy, then turning sticky. He had to sit there, almost fainting with horror; he dared not say anything, for maybe the policeman ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... first acute spasm of delight at seeing his own physiognomy reflected in a mirror had passed, I suggested to the king that if he would like to try on his new garments I should be very pleased to instruct him as to the proper method of getting into them, an offer which he instantly accepted; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of community of spirits, of knowing, and endeavoring after what is morally good, and true, and perfect, and of the yearning after every real disciple of the inner religion of Christians, impels me to suggest to you to tell him from me, that I believe the spasm of his spiritual efforts would sooner be calmed, and the solution of the great problem would sooner be found, if he were to live for a time among us; I mean, if he resided for a time in one of the German universities. We Germans have been for seventy years working as thinkers, inquirers, poets, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... that scrap of paper. He wondered still more, whether Duncan might not report the matter to the comptroller of the currency at Washington, and thus bring about a criminal prosecution, even after the sum irregularly borrowed had been repaid. Then he remembered, with something like a spasm round his heart, that the bookkeeper, Leftwich, had heard the whole conversation, and he remembered also that he had been, as he put it, "rather hard on Leftwich" upon several occasions in the past. If Leftwich ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... and intelligence on the other side. Knaves, using bigotry, ignorance and intimidation as their weapons, manage to control municipal affairs, except when expelled from office for periods more or less brief by some sudden spasm of public virtue and indignation, like the revolt in the city of New York against the Tweed Ring a quarter of a century ago, and the reform victory in ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... conventions I tried to feel apprehensive of grave peril. It was no use. I felt safe—not exactly comfortable, but perfectly safe. I could not even muster up a spasm of the spine when a member of our party leaned over and whispered in my ear that any one of these gentry roundabout us would cheerfully cut a man's throat for twenty-five cents. I was surprised, though, at the moderation of the cost; this was ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... on that day. It is stated by Mrs Orr that when they were despatched to the journal in which they appeared, Browning regretted the deed, though afterwards he found reasons to justify himself. Fitzgerald's reference to Mrs Browning caused him a spasm of pain and indignation, nor did the pain for long subside. The expression of his indignation was outrageous in manner, and deficient in real power. He had read a worse meaning into the unhappy words than ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... pointed to a little silken heap which lay outstretched limp upon the floor. "'Tis poor Frisk, who has had some strange spasm, and fell, striking his head. He hath been ailing for days, and howled loudly but an hour ago. Take him away, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me, and a sudden chill seized me and sent me into a spasm of coughing, and the pain of my shoulder shot up into my head like a knife... and I was back—all right—to the ruined church in Belgium, a prisoner of war in the ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... blockhead!" he shrieked, raising the injured foot from the ground, while a spasm of anguish contracted his features. "Did you take ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... sit here," said Mary Fuller, rising from her stool with moist eyes, as she saw a spasm of pain pass over the lad's face. "Perhaps he ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... it possible that you can speak like this of one who gets his living by smuggling?" and a spasm of positive agony passed over Reuben's face as he tried to realize the change of thought and feeling which could induce a calm defence of such iniquity. "What's the difference whether a man robs me or he robs the king? Isn't ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... you?" said Ted, appealing to Margaret. "She isn't a bit grateful—not she. She turns down a real thorough-going opera singer without a spasm. Time was when she groveled—fairly groveled—at Milano's lightest suggestion. At Leeuwarden, ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... said the child, with a last effort, throwing her arms about his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face,—she struggled for breath, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for him just after they were married. She supposed that box beside the queer high chair was where he would sit at table and stuff her baby with all kinds of things he shouldn't eat. Where was her baby? A fresh spasm of longing for Lovin Child drove her from the cabin. Find him she would, and that no matter how cunningly Bud ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... now that a spasm of energy and excitement shot through Frank, as he gazed for a few moments, and then thought of the Hakim and the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... basement to attics. Most of the rooms were unfurnished, but none the less Holmes inspected them all minutely. Finally, on the top corridor, which ran outside three untenanted bedrooms, he again was seized with a spasm of merriment. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seized with the same spasm of mad terror. Again they hurled themselves against the electrified lines, and again they were hurled back, masses of boys and girls tumbling against one another, and screaming in one wail that, could it have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... etc., the Chairman of the Committee took his pencil and expressed to him his wishes in the matter. Amongst other questions, he was asked: "Do you regret having attempted to escape from slavery?" After a severe spasm he said, as his friend was about to turn to leave the room, hopeless of being gratified in his purpose: "Don't go; I have not answered your question. I am glad I escaped from slavery!" He then gave his name, and tried to tell the name of his master, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... spent his days walking about the courtyard, wearing a cigarette tin hung around his neck, into which he used to cough with such terrible effort that it seemed as if he would die every time the spasm shook him. As a matter of fact, he and many others did die before we left the village: the extreme cold was too much for them; or perhaps it was the fact that their quiet had been invaded ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... taking a turn with the rake or in mowing away. I remember the first wire-toothed horse rake with its two handles, which when the day was hot and the grass heavy nearly killed both man and horse. The holder would throw his weight upon it to make it grip and hold the hay, and then, in a spasm of energy, lift it up and make it drop the hay. From this rude instrument, through various types of wooden and revolving rakes, the modern wheeled rake, with which the raker rides at his ease, has been evolved. At this season the cows were brought to the yard by or before ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... disgust, what made them stand up there So cold and grey. After, a spasm took Her face, and all her frame, she caught her hair, All her hair, in both hands, terribly ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... fascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly of reptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies. She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering and the utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, only to experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion, she must have relished the sort of electric mental shock ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire. And if it is impossible to dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible to describe them. To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael's mind succeeded a spasm of the elemental terror; the terror of the animal in us which regards the whole universe as its enemy; which, when it is victorious, has no pity, and so, when ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something in their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything else connected with him: they produced no external signs of distortion, no unusual paleness in his face—you could not guess what pain he was suffering, or where ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of bayonet charges and the corps-a-corps. It was as though they wanted to reveal the savagery of war to the last indescribable madness of its lust. "Pah!" said an old cabotin, after one of these word-pictures. "This war is the last spasm of the world's barbarity. Human nature will finish with it this time. . . . Let us talk of the women we have loved. I knew a splendid creature once—she had golden ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... own soul; she had redeemed the idea of womanhood from gross associations, and set before him a fair ideal of all that female tenderness and purity may teach to man. Her prayers—well he believed in them,—but be set his teeth with a strange spasm of inward passion,—when he thought of her prayers and love being given to another. He tried to persuade himself that this was only the fervor of pastoral zeal against a vile robber who had seized the fairest lamb of the sheepfold; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... now!" Mrs. Frayling's fair face clouded on the instant, and her affectionate heart, which had been so happily expanded the moment before by the kind thoughts about her absent friend that came crowding as she wrote to her, contracted now with a painful spasm of nervous apprehension. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... OF THE BRAIN.—In disease of the brain the cry is always sharp, short and piercing. Drowsiness generally follows each spasm of pain. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the distance, and we shouted and beckoned to hurry him. Agility was no part of that policeman's nature, however, and beyond a sudden agitation of his head and his shoulders, which we guessed to be caused by a dignified spasm of leisurely haste, we saw no ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... when they left the train; and while Aubrey was eagerly devouring the produce of the refreshment room, had to lie on a bench under Dr. Spencer's charge, for Ethel's approach only brought on a dangerous spasm of politeness. How she should get on with him for a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks;—with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below:— And the beard and the hair Of the river God were Seen through ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... the grimed face turned bony, Open mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony O sudden spasm, release of the dead! ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Bob was a varied one. He still felt the consequences of that horror into which he had fallen, that spasm and convulsion of terror which had seemed to turn him to stone, yet the relief that had been found was inexpressibly sweet. In spite of the pain which still lingered about his heart, there came a calmer and happier frame of mind; the pain itself also gradually died ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... How well the two rascals act their part. See the one playing dead. Well, we shall wait long enough to see his imposture exposed. He is sinking fast in the quagmire. His head is almost under now." She had scarce ceased, when the redskin gave a convulsive start, resembling a dying spasm, and got once more safely above the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... vowed!"' When ceased that voice There fell upon the monks a crisis strange; And where that Pilgrim looked for joy, behold, Doubt, wrath, and anguish! Faces old long since Grew older, stricken as by hectic spasm, So fierce a pang had clutched them by the throat; While drops of sweat on many a wrinkled brow Hung large like dewy beads condensed from mist On cliffs by torrents shaken. Mute they sat; Then sudden rose, uplifting helpless hands, As when from distant ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... is struggling for utterance below. Just such flashes of eager sympathetic fire break continually from the cloudy volumes of Rousseau, the result at once and the warning of that convulsion of which Paris was to be the crater and all Europe to feel the spasm. There are symptoms enough elsewhere of that want of faith in the existing order which made the Revolution inevitable,—even so shallow an observer as Horace Walpole could forebode it so early as 1765,—but ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... impression that bats were made to get on with, while the rest of Callahan's bunch use them solely to get out with, and that was the whole trouble in the last round. The Sox entered that spasm four runs behind, having converted Demmitt's lone hit in the first inning into the only genuine tally of ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there, 5 for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of death, and the fear of death—revenge, and the lunacy of revenge—until the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at length 10 averted their eyes in horror. This horror, which seemed incapable of further addition, was, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... oath broke from the gambler, and his face contorted in a spasm. The barkeepers slid out from behind the bar. For a moment the situation was tense and threatening. The dealer with a sweeping glance again searched the faces of those before him. In that moment, probably, he made up his mind that an open scandal must ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Indian gave a last spasm with his hands and feet, and lay rigid, grinning up at the slit ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we should have felt still more uneasy. The house faced Bald Mountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some years ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters. This is, in fact, the famous Shaking Mountain. For a long time it had a habit of trembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion very different from that produced by an earthquake. The only good that came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," and caused them to join the church. It is not reported what became of the church afterwards. It is believed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the remotest quarters. Wherever he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the country. The ancient religions of the primaeval East or the quaint beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they will help to found a new market for ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... handsome," yelled Blinky, in a spasm of glee. "Ride him, you Texas cowpunchin' galoot! You'll shore be the first one who ever forked him ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... muscles of expression are usually the first brought under the continual spasm of tetanus, and when thus affected give the face of the animal a pinched and drawn-in appearance. The other muscles of the head and those of the neck are next attacked. The mouth is closed, the nose poked out, the head elevated. The muscles of breathing, and those ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... to blink rapidly, his jaw dropped, and he slid forward in his chair to writhe in a spasm of what might be weirdly silent laughter. His face was purple, convulsed, but no sound came from his moving lips. The others regarded ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world face that decided her—for it sent the deep spasm ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... trenches straight from his home life the ordinary man would consider himself as undergoing hardships undreamt of. Visiting those trenches straight from the Somme the other day, with their duck-boards and sandbags, and the occasional ping of a sniper's bullet, and the momentary spasm of field guns and trench mortars which appeared in the official summary next day as "artillery and trench mortar activity"—after the Somme, I say, one found oneself looking on it, in the terms of the friend who went with me, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... lamentations, as is usual when colored people are wrought up under excitement, but sobs, groans and whispered petitions. Bless our pastor, Lord, an' save him ef it be Thy will," came from many lips, followed by "Amens" and "Do, Lord." Suddenly the church was thrown into a spasm of excitement that could not be suppressed, for while they were breathing prayers for his deliverance, the pastor, wet, footsore and tired, entered and strode slowly up the aisle. "Why did you, oh, why did you ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... always much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a smile as usual, and I flung ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... apparently. He stooped over it. It was the baby's shoe—white, it had been originally. He remembered it. Now it was stained with blood. That was all that was left—a little baby's shoe, blood spotted. He pressed it to his heart and groaned aloud. A spasm of mortal anguish shook his frame. He lifted his clenched hand toward the sky overshadowing ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... lady could not endure it, and, in a spasm of jealous passion, sprang at Myrtle, snatched it from her head, and trampled it under her feet at the very instant the curtain was rising. With a cry which some said had the blood-chilling tone of an Indian's battle-shriek, Myrtle caught the knife up, and raised her arm against the girl who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... decisions where his own interests were concerned, and it did not take him half a minute to review his position and determine what to do. This plain blonde girl without fortune was not the girl he could marry; she had deceived him, too—he had a sudden and severe spasm of morality; his confidence was broken; he thought it was very poor sport to play with a man's most sacred feelings; he had been deeply disappointed ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mysterious and vexatious to which our nature is liable; both its cause and cure are equally occult, and its modus operandi is scarcely intelligible. A contemporary thus playfully alludes to the subject in terms more funny than precise:—'What is neuralgia? A nervous spasm, the cause of which has, however, not been satisfactorily and conclusively demonstrated; but we may, perhaps, obtain a clearer view of its nature, if we look upon it as connected with "morbid nutrition." Every one knows that the system is, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... quickly for so many years grew perceptibly fainter, the hens cackled less domineeringly, the pigs squealed less insistently, and as for the strutting cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the middle of a crow, and his voice gurgled away in a spasm of astonishment. As for the old farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see it at all! Having thus published abroad my Declaration of Independence, nailed my defiance to the door, and otherwise established myself as a free person, I turned over in my bed and ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... before the fireplace in the library, nervously pacing to and fro across the rug. Would she see him? How much did she know? How much did they all know? How much would she forgive? ... These questions had racked him every hour since in a spasm of nervous terror he had flung the pistol over the bushes and heard it splash in the river, and with one terrified look at the wounded man, whom he had dragged into the thicket, had got himself in some unremembered ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... our child, Bianca, for my sake.' And then, as she knelt beside him in speechless anguish and remorse, he called his little Crystal to him and kissed and blessed me, and while he was still holding my hand a sudden spasm crossed his face and he put his head down upon her shoulder, and in another moment ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have a spasm," Katherine cautioned. "He thinks we are not his friends and are going to do something he doesn't want us to do. Let me ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... contrary, has risen very much refreshed for new practice. The Doctor never compassed so fine a sleight as Sir ROBERT when lately, playing the philanthropist, he struck his breeches' pocket with a spasm of benevolence, and pulled therefrom—fifty pounds! Only a few weeks before, Sir ROBERT had sworn by all his list of former cures, that he would clothe the naked and feed the hungry, if he were duly authorised and duly paid for such Christian-like solicitude. He is called in; he then prorogues ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... stuck his hands behind him, pointed his nose in the air, and walked forward with such a display of offended dignity that Jack Penny doubled up, putting his head between his knees and pinning it firm, while he laughed in throes, each of which sent a spasm through his loose-jointed body. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Estcourt's eyes closed, it seemed to him that with a sudden sharp spasm of pain he tore himself away from that sleeping sentient portion of humanity which was his representation, and then, without effort or consciousness of his own, he seemed floating swiftly along over a dark and misty space. A great sea tossed and moaned ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... clothes were ill-fastened. He threw a glance of contempt, the contempt of the indoor servant, at the sleeping figures, lying here and there in the wet. Thence his eyes travelled on and took in the group by the gate. He started, and wrung his hands in sudden, irrepressible distress. It was as if a spasm ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... bells which seemed to pour through the open window was thus partly silenced. The lantern made its dim illumination with specks of light, swinging from a nail over the window alcove. Maria had not yet unclosed her eyes. Her wasted hand made a network around one of Rice's fingers, and as the coughing spasm seized her she ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
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