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Harrowing   /hˈɛroʊɪŋ/   Listen
Harrowing

adjective
1.
Extremely painful.  Synonyms: agonising, agonizing, excruciating, torturesome, torturing, torturous.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Harrowing" Quotes from Famous Books



... ever a more gentlemanly handling of a raw situation? This woman was going through one of the most harrowing experiences conceivable, exposed to the gaze of a leering and scornful crowd, her good name torn away, her self-respect crushed. Jesus shielded her from stoning by the power of his personality and his consummate skill in handling men. He got inside their guard, aroused their own sense ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... had not spoken the English language for nearly sixteen years. In no public place did he ever allude to his personal sufferings, though fever had brought him to death's door and the years had been crowded with the most harrowing cares. The work he had done and would carry on to the end, the new Africa he alone could describe, the faith that had grown and strengthened in every week of his long pilgrimage that the world needed Africa, its resources and peoples, were the burden of every ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... worth considering, such as the shape of your garden plot, for instance. The more nearly rectangular, the more convenient it will be to work and the more easily kept clean and neat. Have it large enough, or at least open on two ends, so that a horse can be used in plowing and harrowing. And if by any means you can have it within reach of an adequate supply of water, that will be a tremendous help in seasons of protracted drought. Then again, if you have ground enough, lay off two plots so ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... the length of man's life, but the memory of that night ride, and my heart-breaking burden of grief as I stared out unseeingly upon the fast-darkening landscape, allowing Prince to find his own way and travel his own pace while I dwelt upon the harrowing scenes which I had so recently beheld, and began to realise the full extent of my irreparable loss, will never leave me; it is as fresh to-day as it was at that moment, and so I know it will continue to be until I die. Yet, keenly as I suffered, I frequently found myself wondering why ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... questioner curiously. He looked about at the other men. The strain was increasingly telling on them. Old men, all of them, the difference that the last three days had made in their appearance was startling. A furtive, harrowing fear was apparent in ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... you think that that's the end of it? Nay, Charles, there's more to follow; but it's a good thing all the same. Now you've got to go for a walk in a place where you've nothing earthly to do. I've been accustomed all my life to walk a great deal, but then it was doing something, ploughing or harrowing, spreading manure or cutting corn, and there I'd no occupation whatever. While walking you are expected to drink ever so many tumblers of water, ever so many. Some of the people were exactly like sieves, they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of Miss Harding to insure a place in her mind at all times; but not enough to suggest that he was forcing himself upon her. Rightly, he assumed that she would appreciate thoughtful deference to her comfort and safety under the harrowing conditions of her present existence more than a forced companionship that might entail too open devotion on his part. And so he raised his cap and left her, only urging her to call upon him at any time that he might ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... well assured that the people of Otaheite who have the bread tree, the fruit of which serves them for bread, laughed heartily when they were informed of the tedious process necessary with us to have bread;—plowing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... said, "Hamlet went home with his bride, and the royal Danish court of Jutland made an enormous feast for the home-coming of the princely couple. This was the thing that Hamlet had waited for all his life. Saxo hurries over this harrowing episode. Hamlet succeeded in getting all the guests dead drunk, then he pulled the tapestries all down on top of them and set fire to the palace and burned them all up. What do you think ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... of a sort which recalls that soul-harrowing legend of the man hung up in an iron cage above a yawning precipice, from under whose madly shifting feet one plank after another is withdrawn from the cage's bottom, till no spot is left for him to ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... Her harrowing cough scattered a deathly poison about her. White foam came to her lips where it seemed to harden in the corners. Her eyes grew larger, they took on a strange glow as if they saw through persons and things. Oh, those eyes! What a shudder of terror ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... If there were no harrowing memories of Wilford, you could be happy with me. Is that it, Katy?" Morris asked, coming close to her now, and imprisoning her hands, which she did not try to take away, but let them lie in his as he continued: "Wilford was willing at the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... that Mary's help in certain things wherein her maid's incapacity was harrowing, was one of the hopes she mainly cherished in making her proposal: that definition of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... in the Church of England; besides a strange, morbid speculation on the innocence of suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl of Somerset in the dark business of his divorce and re-marriage. And, in a mournful pause in the midst of many harrowing concerns, he writes to a friend: 'When I must shipwreck, I would fain do it in a sea where mine own impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen, weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. Therefore I would ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... absence was noticed, and he was sent for. He was found in the telephone room stiff and unconscious, having fallen forward on the telephone desk. His face was quite white, and his eyes wide open and glazed with an expression of piteous and harrowing terror. When they tried to revive him their efforts were in vain. A doctor was sent for, and he said that Fletcher had died ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... wish indeed!—and it was the last that was ever to close upon the unhappy Peters. The next morning was appointed for his execution. There are scenes of such consummate misery, that they cannot be portrayed without harrowing up the feelings of the reader,—and of these the climax may be found in a fond wife, lying at the feet of her husband during the last twelve hours of his mortal career. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... and icy, the bare hazels wailed about him; and soon the air of the afternoon began to be vocal with those strange and dismal harpings that herald snow. Pain and misery turned in John's limbs to a harrowing impatience and blind desire of change; now he would roll in his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him, was almost pleased; now he would crawl to the edge of the huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw the spiral of the descending roadway, the steep crags, the clinging ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... After the harrowing experience of the previous week, during which we were forced to see our fellow-beings hounded out of their homes, and the homes broken up; their lifelong earnings frittered away by a law of the land, their only crime being the atrocious one of having the same colour of skin as our own, and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... floundering in a sea whitened awfully by the desperate struggles of human beings, clamorous with the distress of cries for help. There was no help. He imagined what would happen perfectly; he went through it all motionless by the hatchway with the lamp in his hand—he went through it to the very last harrowing detail. I think he went through it again while he was telling me these things he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... that we, who have borne the pains, shall also learn the lesson which they were intended to convey. If we do not learn it and proclaim it, then when can it ever be learned and proclaimed, since there can never again be such a spiritual ploughing and harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied and tortured during these dreadful five years of self-sacrifice and suspense, can show no radical changes, then what souls will ever respond to a fresh influx of heavenly inspiration? In that case the ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... turned my eyes aside, not daring to trust myself. Through misty lashes again I looked. Her breast lifted and fell in shaking sobs, the fount of tears touched at last. Together we wept, without shame I admit it, while the Stewart's harrowing strain ebbed to a close. To us it seemed almost as the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... hole made with a hoe, then push back the soil with the foot. One weeding alone is required before the grain comes to maturity. This simple process represents all our subsoil plowing, liming, manuring, and harrowing, for in four months after planting a good crop is ready for the sickle, and has been known to yield a hundred-fold. It flourished still more at Zumbo. No irrigation is required, because here there are gentle rains, almost like mist, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... It was for the most part unfavorable. Especially appalling was the sight of a heart, so lean and withered, that it scarce seemed possible that it should ever have formed a part of a living animal. But more harrowing than all, was the voice of Fronto, who, prying with the haruspices into the smoking carcass of one of the slaughtered bulls, suddenly cried out with horror, that 'no heart was ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... bitter outcry against a certain "fausse Isabelle." I thought he seemed especially to solicit the Queen's sympathy; but, unless I am egregiously mistaken, her Majesty lent her attention rather with the calm of courtesy than the earnestness of interest. This gentleman's state of mind was very harrowing, and I was glad when he wound up his ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... he was busy harrowing, disking and rolling the old race-track; he repainted the weather-beaten poles and reshingled the judge's stand; he repaired the fence and installed an Australian starting-gate, dug a pit for the barbecue and brought forth, repaired and set up under the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... have been so deceived in so careless an impostor; that a few sprinkled 'God willings' should have blinded them to the essence of this venomous letter; and that they should have been at the pains to bind it in with others (many of them highly touching) in their memorial of harrowing days. But the good ladies were without guile and without suspicion; they were victims marked for the axe, and the religious impostors snuffed up the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a grave face. "Isn't that precisely what Bessy is? Isn't she one of the most harrowing victims of the plan of bringing up our girls in the double bondage of expediency and unreality, corrupting their bodies with luxury and their brains with sentiment, and leaving them to reconcile the two as best they can, or lose their souls ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... tone upon recalling the harrowing story of the Chuetas of Majorca. His cheeks flamed and his eyes flashed with the effulgence of hatred. That they might dwell in tranquillity they had been converted en masse in the Fifteenth Century. There was not a Jew left on the island, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... wait until she is composed; the doctor is just administering an opiate," replied Whitney hastily. "Kathleen has been through a most harrowing experience." ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... work for him, and reveled in the excitement of it. Chum also—from watching Link perform the task twice—had learned to drive the chickens out of the garden patches whenever any of them chanced to stray thither, and to scurry into the cornfield with harrowing barks of ejection when a flock of crows hovered hungrily above the ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... beast moaned. The lifting had strained her, and there were patches of hide worn off her the size of breakfast-plates, sore and most harrowing to look upon. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... were put at work in Berlin managed to get away and come to see me. They gave me a harrowing account of how they had been seized in Belgium and made to work in Germany at making munitions to be used probably against their own friends. I said to the Chancellor, "There are Belgians employed in making shells contrary to all rules ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... Sleep, and my soul returned to its accustomed functions. And exceedingly overjoyed I was to see myself still amongst the living. I instantly determined upon reforming myself, as a hundred years of affliction in the paths of righteousness, would be less harrowing to me, than another glance on ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... time in the distance, and then it approached, growing louder, and the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band passed under the window at the solemn pace of Handel's "Dead March." The effect of that requiem, heavy with its own inherent beauty and with the vast weight of harrowing tradition, was to wring the tears from Constance's eyes; they fell on her aproned bosom, and she sank into a chair. And though, the cheeks of the trumpeters were puffed out, and though the drummer had to protrude his stomach and arch his spine backwards lest he should tumble ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... exploit, and exuded admiration. I fully expected to get a Carnegie medal before I got away. And it sounded so funny coming from a lot of Belgian officers who had for the last few weeks been going through the most harrowing experiences, with their lives in danger every minute, and even now with a perfectly good chance of being killed before the war is over. They seem to take that as a matter of course, but look upon our performance ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... Anglo-Saxon literature there are several varieties. First, there is the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus. This is from a Latin version of the Greek "Acts of Pilate," and it is our earliest extant source for that prolific subject, the Harrowing of Hell. The Greek text laid claim ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... arrived crisply cold, bleakly grey. Tess shivered as she broke the ice for water. Would this day bring Waldstricker? Then, as that harrowing thought flitted through her mind, another exultant, smiling flash took its place. Tessibel's head reared with a proud uplift. No human power could set aside the majestic promise of Heaven that she might stay in the hut. Smilingly, she opened the shanty door and cheerfully answered the dwarf's, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... of miles, to clasp once more her children to her heart: but, when she has arrived within a few miles of them, in the same county, is discovered, seized, dragged to jail, and her purchaser told, through an advertisement, that she awaits his order. But we need not trace out the harrowing details already before ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... were Balla, Claremorris, Ballyhaunis, and Hollymount. The scenes he witnessed were, he says, scarcely if at all less harrowing than those which had been reported from the locality of Skibbereen. This writer, a Protestant, conversed, amongst others, with the priests of the districts which he visited, and of them he says: "The Catholic clergy are the only persons who can form a tolerably correct estimate of the numbers ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... stood aside in the small fore-court, to enable the small cortege to pass. Directly Richard Lambert and the old woman disappeared within the gloom of the cottage interior, these four people—each individually the prey of harrowing thoughts—once more turned their steps towards the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... English troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and worship. The tales of the suffering of the Scotch Covenanters at the hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter of the records of the ages ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... his face, a silent fury. He was hollow-cheeked and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, with her serious, conscience-harrowing question tortured him ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... death would have melted a heart of adamant. All we could do was to cut the fences and let them drift, for to halt was to die; and when the storm abated one could have walked for miles on the bodies of dead animals. No pen could describe the harrowing details of that winter; and for years afterward, or until their remains had a commercial value, a wayfarer could have traced the south-line fences by the bleaching bones that lay in windrows, glistening in the sun like snowdrifts, to remind us of the closing chapter in the ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... can stare in stony trance Whose hair can rouse like warrior's lance, 'Tis hard for such to view, unfurled, The curtain of the future world. Yet, witness every quaking limb, My sunken pulse, mine eyeballs dim, My soul with harrowing anguish torn, This for my Chieftain have I borne!— The shapes that sought my fearful couch A human tongue may ne'er avouch; No mortal man—save he, who, bred Between the living and the dead, Is gifted beyond nature's law Had e'er ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... of harrowing woes reveal, Whilst York and Lancaster for mastery tried: When men the ties of nature ceased to feel, When sires beneath their offsprings' sabres died; And sires 'gainst children clad themselves in arms, And England mourned the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various

... The brave knight, Gurnemanz, dragged his master fainting from the garden, his companions of the Sangrail covering their retreat. But, returned to Montsalvat, the unhappy king awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of the sacred spear, and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an incurable ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis

... so vivid an impression of the wisdom of his friend on the mind of Sextus Parker, that in spite of the harrowing fears by which he had been tormented on more than one occasion already, he allowed himself to be persuaded into certain fiscal arrangements, by which Lopez would find himself put at ease with reference to money at any rate for the next four months. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... think that he wanted particularly just then to go poking aboard the brig into all the holes and corners of the Archipelago where Morrison picked up most of his trade. Far from it; but he would have consented to almost any arrangement in order to put an end to the harrowing scene in the cabin. There was at once a great transformation act: Morrison raising his diminished head, and sticking the glass in his eye to looked affectionately at Heyst, a bottle being uncorked, and so on. It was agreed that nothing ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... additionally incumbent on him at this time. When in the course of nature the number of office-seekers abated, they were succeeded, as will be seen, by supplicants of another kind, whose petitions were often really harrowing. The horror of this enduring visitation has been described by Artemus Ward in terms which Lincoln himself could not have improved upon. His classical treatment of the subject is worth serious reference; for it should be realised that Lincoln, who had both to learn his new trade ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... Heart's Desire's desk, whereon the Pratt girl had dropped it; saw the two girls grab for it; heard it crash from the seat to the floor with what seemed to him a deafening roar. Nor is this all that the harrowing tale might disclose. It might dilate upon the horror that wrenched Piggy's spine as he watched the teacher's finger crook a signal for the note to be brought forward. It would be manifestly cruel and clearly unnecessary to describe the forces which impelled the psychic wave of suggestion that ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... delighted that Madame Zattiany has decided to come out of her shell at last," said Judge Trent, shaking vigorously. "I've been urging it for some time. But she has had a long and harrowing experience, and seemed to want only to rest. I think the stir she made at your first-nights, Clavering, had something to do with it. There was a time, you know, when she never appeared without making a sensation—like poor Mary before her—but young as she is all that seems almost ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the door-way, their eyes glared madly at us, and their painted features working into a hundred malignant and fiendish expressions, which, together with their horrid yells, and the more heart-rending cries of women and children, all formed a scene of the most harrowing description. The battle was soon over. By some mishap I was hurled head foremost out of the door; but so intent were the savages upon the battle within, that they did not once notice me, as they rushed forward to the scene of action. Seeing that all was lost, and that ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... extraordinary figure—a thing with a man's body and an animal's head—a dark, shaggy head with unmistakable prick ears. I gazed at it aghast. What was it? What was it doing? As I stared it bent down, lapped the water, and raising its head, uttered the same harrowing sound that had brought me thither. I then saw, with a fresh start of wonder, that its hands, which shone very white in the moonlight, were undergoing a gradual metamorphosis. I watched carefully, and first one finger, and then another, became amalgamated in a long, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... not raised her eyelids; but lay there in self-abandonment, consumed by fever. Her open nightdress displayed her childish breast, where as yet there were but slight signs of coming womanhood; and nothing could be more chaste or yet more harrowing than the sight of this dawning maturity on which the Angel of Death had already laid his hand. She had displayed no aversion when the old doctor had touched her. But the moment Henri's fingers glanced against her body she started as if she had received a shock. In a transport of shame she ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... light of the kerosene lamp in John Lowe's kitchen sat John Lowe reading his favorite volume, harrowing tales of religious persecution centuries agone. And Mrs. Lowe sat rocking herself by the stove. Every once in a while she would hide her head in her skirt, and, on ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... Indian summer, violet, dream-like. By now there had been burning and harrowing in the Valley; war had laid his mailed hand upon the region. It was not yet the straining clutch of later days, but it was bad enough. The Indian summer wrapped with a soft touch of mourning purple much of desolation, much of untilled earth, and charred roof-tree, and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... of quotable hymns. I had decided to preach on missions, as being a topic more within my grasp than abstruse theological doctrines or evangelical discourses; and, mindful of the need of making an impression, I drew a harrowing picture of the miserable plight of the heathen who in their darkness bowed down to wood and stone. Then I urged our responsibility concerning them, and meant to wind up by reciting, in a very solemn and earnest ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one; this comes from some defenseless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness, which the forest is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. Often, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... was all over. I could remember how big and forbidding and unfriendly the forest had once looked to me in like circumstances, so that I had felt suddenly thrust outside into empty spaces. Almost was I tempted to intervene; but I liked Dick, and I wanted to do him good. This experience was harrowing, but it prepared his mind for the seeds of wisdom. By the following morning he had chastened his spirit, forgotten the assurance breathed from the windy pages of the Boy Trapper Library, and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form, did not exist in Virginia. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... from anxiety and to make them happy. Then can you hope for the approbation of your God, and your heart will be filled with a joy which the ungrateful child can never feel. You can reflect with pleasure upon your conduct. When your parents are in the grave, you will feel no remorse of conscience harrowing your soul for your past unkindness. And when you die yourselves, you can anticipate a happy meeting with your parents, in that heavenly home, where sin and sorrow, and sickness ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... their youthful ruler-elect in sackcloth as the future bride of a business man had more than disconcerted them. The amazing announcement of Quarrier's engagement to Agatha Caithness stupefied the elect, rendering in one harrowing instant null and void the thousand petty plans and plots, intrigues and schemes, upon which future social constructions on the social structure had ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... has tried to do something in Beaumarchais' style. Boulevard audiences don't care for that kind of thing; they like harrowing sensations; wit is not much appreciated here. Everything depends on Florine and Coralie to-night; they are bewitchingly pretty and graceful, wear very short skirts, and dance a Spanish dance, and possibly they may carry off the piece with the public. The whole affair is a gambling speculation. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... these two opposite moods, while it lasted, made the other seem impossible, and as if it never could come back again; yet back it came with the regularity of a tide—the most harrowing seesaw ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... standing afar On the summit place where the wind-torn pine At the battle front of the timberline Knows never an end of the harrowing war Of Life on Death!—and there arrayed In the trappings of battle and unafraid, Painted and feathered in hostile design, Indian chief on ...
— In the Great Steep's Garden • Elizabeth Madox Roberts

... indignation, the libertine who had betrayed her, there was, I think, no one in the theatre who did not recognise that in Miss Terry our stage possesses a really great artist, who can thrill an audience without harrowing it, and by means that seem simple and easy can produce the finest dramatic effect. Mr. Irving, as Dr. Primrose, intensified the beautiful and blind idolatry of the old pastor for his daughter till his own ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... along with the wagon, and before they had gone three miles they took the prisoners from the farmer and strung them up in some timber along the roadside; so when the farmer reached Crabtree he had no prisoners, and he told a harrowing tale to Fred of how the men had taken the prisoners from him and strung ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... compelled to enter the hospital, leaving only six in a condition to carry out the orders of the officer on the bridge, and these unfortunates themselves dropped from sheer exhaustion and fatigue. Between decks, the sick men lay about, and the air was filled with their groans. A picture more harrowing never presented itself to the imagination. The general consternation added to the horror of it. We had nearly reached the point of being unable to control the movements of the ship amidst the fury of the waves; parts of the rigging ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... with each new day. Sad Deanira, bride of battle-wooing[1], I 2 Ne'er lets her tearful eyelids close in rest, But in love-longing breast, Like some lorn bird its desolation rueing, Of her great husband's way Still mindful, worn with harrowing fear Lest some new danger for him should be near, By night and day Pines on her widowed couch of ceaseless thought, With dread of evil destiny ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... the young, hopeful, and loving heart of virtuous woman. His death is only terrible in her future. Go with her, gentlemen, through life; contemplate the wan features of slow decay: see in these the one eternal, harrowing thought; list to the sigh which rives the heart; watch the tear which falls in secret; see her sink into the grave; then turn away, look up into heaven, and from your heart say: 'O God! I did it.' You will not; you cannot; ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... unrivalled prosperity, this distinction of genius, and public and private honor, on the ninth of July, 1861, there came one of the most harrowing tragedies that has ever befallen a man's domestic life. Longfellow was widowed for the second time, and five children were left without a mother. It seemed as if Providence had set a limit beyond which human happiness could not pass. It was ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... his mind, the question of what he should do came up for immediate decision. He had one child, about eighteen months old, around whom his tenderest affections had entwined themselves; but when he remembered that his friend's intimacy with his wife had run almost parallel with their marriage, a harrowing suspicion crossed his mind, and made his heart turn from the form of beauty and innocence ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... him he was beyond the sound of the firing, or else it had ceased. And though he knew well enough that this was no good sign, the silence was less harrowing. He resumed his weary march till the sun reached its full power. There were some stunted bushes a little out of his track, and he made for them, hoping to find water. In this he was disappointed; so taking a sparing pull at his water-bottle, he crawled under one of ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... O'Hara carried the jury back to the point from which he had set out. With tears in his voice he recounted the scene of the parting between the prisoner and his children. He drew a harrowing picture of the unhappy fate of wife and children left defenceless and in poverty to become the prey of such men as Rosenblatt. He drew a vivid picture of that age-long struggle for freedom carried on by the down-trodden peasantry ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... 'you can omit to mention that black-eye business. That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literary inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carry wood while I recited passages of poem out of that book ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... faces.... You have not seen the battle which preceded, and the bad wounds which so many of my friends got in trying to kill a lot of them. You do not think of the fact that those dead men had parents, brothers, and sisters whom they loved. And you have not seen the harrowing destruction of the villages and towns—how the poor, hunted-down population is running away, leaving everything they had behind them to be consumed by the flames.... And then, remember, we are not fighting in order to cheer you up—we are not lying ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... had won him, early in life, his brilliant position as one of the recognised pioneers of the new School of Surgery, as an admitted authority on Clinical Medicine, whose wedding-bells—the handkerchiefs came out at this—had rung to-morrow but for this harrowing and bitter stroke of adverse Destiny. Which would they have? Let the Jury decide for Christ or Barabbas! He spoke in all reverence, because the upright, innocent, charitable, self-denying life of a diligent healer of men would support the analogy of Christ-likeness beside that of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... following his harrowing experience in the sugar-maple grove Mokwa was a much chastened bear, but the incident soon faded from his memory and he once more trod the forest trails as if they had been presented to him for his sole ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... harrowing were being done chiefly by horses, only a few oxen being used. My host told me that his animals were never worked on Sundays. On week-days they remain longer afield than with us, but a halt of an hour or two is made for food ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... detail how a murder had been committed on the very site the house was built on and how a fierce bewhiskered spirit roamed the premises at night and demanded vengeance. I described in awful words the harrowing spectacle and all I got at the finish was the hoot from ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... cattel till able to defend it self; it would yield excellent stocks to graff and transplant: And thus any larger plot, by plowing and cross-plowing the ground, and sowing it with all sorts of forest-seeds; breaking and harrowing the clods, and cleansing it from weeds with the haugh, (till the plants over-top them) a very profitable grove may be rais'd, and yield magazin of singular advantage, to ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... of Sinope flew through Europe, and every man out of Russia, Austria, and the countries inhabited by Greeks, perused the harrowing story with indignation and disgust. In England and France the popular feeling against the tardiness of their governments rose high. The English ministry never regained the confidence of the public. The Earl of Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and the Duke of Newcastle, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... yielded to such importunities his confidence had been abused by the carrying of supplies and information to the Rebel army, had ordered me invariably to refuse. Ordinarily I succeeded in steeling my heart against these urgent entreaties; but occasionally some story, peculiarly harrowing in its details, seemed to demand a special effort in behalf of the applicant, and I would go to the General, and, in the desperation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of horses, and plunging into ditches, such dismaying paralysis of the engine right in the middle of a neighbour's gateway, such inexplicable excursions onto the sidewalk and through plate glass windows, such harrowing overturning of baby-carriages, that Mrs. Captain Willoughby took an attack of nerves every time he went abroad, and the town fathers finally requested that the captain take out his Juggernaut car only at such hours as the streets were clear. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... now reached a crisis which was to decide her course for life. During the winter of 1839-40, she passed through very deep and harrowing exercises of soul. Her spiritual nature was shaken to its foundation, and she could say with the Psalmist, Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. For several months she was in a state similar to that which the old divines depict so vividly as being ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... of the cut or moulded blocks, and peat as obtained by plowing and harrowing the surface of drained peat-beds—may be used to advantage in the stair grate, fig. 1, which was introduced some years ago in Austria, and is adapted exclusively for burning finely divided fuel. It consists of a series of thin ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... had she been in possession of her accustomed faculties. But between the harrowing suspicion that engrossed her mind and the nervous moisture that gathered in her eyes with each step, she mounted a story too high, and did not perceive her blunder until, happening to think that her apartment ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... crutches, stamping the foot that is not gouty, and blaspheming in a weak, cracked treble, like Capulet and Montague? Hot rooms and cold draughts are dangerous, but not so fatal as the Aqua Tofana, and other pleasant beverages more revolting and rapid in their effects. Could any thing be more harrowing to a well regulated mind than to see, in the midst of a neatly-turned compliment, one's partner literally look black at one, and expire incontinently in ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... Lionel Borridge, the inventor of the most up-to-date calculating machine, and a mathematician of renown. He had a conical brow like a beautifully polished knee, and very sad eyes which seemed to proclaim to the world that the study of mathematics was, on the whole, a most harrowing occupation. With him came his aged wife and spinster daughter. Both appeared to be over fifty, and, like the head of their household, also deeply depressed by mathematics. These three, looking so learned, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... railway, yet it was impossible to carry all the products of the valley by rail. Millions of dollars' worth of merchandise were delayed at the bars. As early as 1726 attempts had been made to deepen the channels through the river's mouths by harrowing. But the first government effort was in 1837, when an appropriation was made for a survey and for dredging with buckets. Again in 1852 another appropriation was made; and a board, appointed ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How

... head-master's cold forehead as he lay dead in his bed, with sprigs of boxwood on his pillow, and above his head a jar of holy water with which we sprinkled him. He looked very serene and majestic, but it was a harrowing ceremony. Merovee stood by with swollen eyes and deathly ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... existence! "The angels might retire in silence and weep, or fly through infinite space seeking some token of the Father they had lost. With unbounded grief and despair they might wing their way farther and farther, with their harps all unstrung, and every song silent, and the soul-harrowing words, 'We have no Father, no God, a blind chance rules,' might be all that would break the awful silence of heaven. Let the glorious words once more be heard, 'God reigns, he lives, he reigns,' and what joy would fill the heavens and the earth." The child of sorrow would lift ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... harrowing narrative, Francine turned her head lazily toward the house. The door was thrown open at the same moment. A lithe little person rapidly descended the steps that led to ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... the earth, Of friendly salutations see there is no dearth. Red phantom figures of the furious fire, For kindly greeting change your usual ire. Grey, grizzly googies from the woods and dells, To gentle whisperings change your harrowing yells. Flagae, Devas, Mara Rupas,[19] hie to the Plane, the Astral Plane, And to these three poor fools, explain, explain The secrets that they wish to learn, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... her music in a song recital, is a much discussed question. Many come on with nothing in hand. What then happens? The hands are clasped in supplication, as though praying for help. This attitude becomes somewhat harrowing when held for a whole program. Other singers toy with chain or fan, movements which may be very inappropriate to the sentiment of the song they are singing. For myself I prefer to hold in hand a small book containing the words of my songs, for ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... scar,—a relic of one of the gentleman's many personal difficulties. He who made the sear, Honora reflected, must have been a strong man. The Honourable Dave, indeed, had fought his way upward through life to the Congress of the United States; and many were the harrowing tales of frontier life he told Honora in the long winter evenings when the blizzards came down the river valley. They would fill a book; unfortunately, not this book. The growing responsibilities of taking care of the lonely ladies that came in increasing numbers to Salomon City from the effeter ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... famous book, The Jesuits in North America, the historian Parkman gives many harrowing details of Indian cruelty toward prisoners; harmless women and children being subjected to the same fiendish tortures as the men. On one occasion he relates of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... a prey to the most harrowing thoughts. Here he was anchored to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rose to his feet. 'Run! Cut, quick! Keeper!' There was no time to say more. He ran. Another second and he was at the top, over the railing, and in the good, honest, public high-road again, safe. A hoarse shout of 'Got yer!' from below told a harrowing tale of capture. The stranger had fallen into the hands of the enemy. Very cautiously Barrett left the road and crept to the railing again. It was a rash thing to do, but curiosity overcame him. He had to see, or, if that was impossible, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... great storehouse. Perhaps I should put some down now, for the continuance of memory is not to be trusted. 1. In the winter of 1837, Psalm 128. This came in a most singular manner, but it would be a long story to tell. 2. In the Oxford contest of 1847 (which was very harrowing) the verse—'O Lord God, Thou strength of my health, Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle.' 3. In the Gorham contest, after the judgment: 'And though all this be come upon us, yet do we not ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Sufficient misery remained, at all events, for her, without adding the misery of making her rival cognizant of her mortification. The deed must be done, and done promptly; but, at least, there should be no unnecessary witnesses to its harrowing achievement. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... of opinion recommends for bedtime reading short stories, volumes of pithy anecdote, swift and sparkling stuff that may keep one awake for a space, yet will advantage all the sweeter slumber in the end. Even ghost stories and harrowing matter are maintained seasonable by these pundits. This class of reading comprises O. Henry, Bret Harte, Leonard Merrick, Ambrose Bierce, W. W. Jacobs, Daudet, de Maupassant, and possibly even On a Slow Train Through Arkansaw, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... the implements of these man-of-war barbers out of keeping with the rude appearance of their shops. Their razors are of the simplest patterns, and, from their jagged-ness, would seem better fitted for the preparing and harrowing of the soil than for the ultimate reaping of the crop. But this is no matter for wonder, since so many chins are to be shaven, and a razor-case holds but two razors. For only two razors does a man-of-war barber have, and, like the marine sentries at the gangway ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... lines verged into the texture of his face, disappearing; and with them went care and seeming years. Canby had casually taken him to be about forty, but so radical was the transformation of him that, as the distance from his harrowing overlord increased, the playwright beheld another kind of creature. In place of the placative, middle-aged varlet, troubled and hurrying to serve, there stepped out of the elevator, at the street level, a deep-chested, assertive, manly adventurer, about thirty, kindly eyed, picturesque, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington

... of opposition; had he possessed the energy of his queen, the Reign of Terror had perhaps never existed. Throughout her misfortunes, in every scene of flight, of opprobrium, and desolation, her magnanimity and courage won, even from the ruffians around, occasional expressions of sympathy. A harrowing and melancholy history is hers, and one which has been often vividly narrated; its details, also, are sufficiently recent to be still fresh within the recollection of many. For these reasons, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... compact when left unstirred. The air cannot enter freely, plant-roots cannot extend in every direction for food, the water from rains cannot enter easily, there is escape of the moisture in the ground, and weathering of the soil proceeds too slowly. The methods used in plowing, harrowing, and later cultivations fix the productive power of a soil for the season ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... mustering in our vicinity, we hung a leg bone of the heifer from the branch of a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where we could see it plainly by daylight from our bank—about sixty yards distant Again we had a harrowing night, but stood it without firing a shot, though one brute came within a few yards of our camp fire, attracted by the smell of the salted meat, but he was off before any one of us could cover him. However, in ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... questions, talked with great politeness to Aunt Margaret—who, they instinctively felt, liked him no better than they did—and then disappeared, whereupon every one was immensely relieved. Even the fact that he generally brought them a packet of expensive sweets was as nothing beside the harrowing knowledge that they must kiss him, thereby having their faces brushed with a large and scrubby moustache. Aunt Margaret and nurse did not have to endure this infliction—which seemed to Bob and Cecilia obviously unfair. But the visits did not ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... pup, because in connection with the days of his puppyhood there hangs a tale. This peculiar dog may thus be said to have had two tails—one in connection with his body, the other with his career. This tale, though short, is very harrowing, and, as it is intimately connected with Crusoe's subsequent history, we will relate it here. But before doing so we must beg our reader to accompany us beyond the civilised portions of the United States ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... two travelers were transported across the Gulf of Friedland in three-quarters of an hour, and descended at Krasnoe-selo, twenty-five versts from St. Petersburg. The fourth trial took place at Moscow, and Garnerin ascended more than four thousand toises [24,000 ft.] He had many harrowing experiences, and at the end of seven hours descended three hundred and thirty versts [200 miles] from Moscow, in the neighborhood of the old frontiers of Russia. This same balloon was again used at the ascension which Madame Garnerin made at Moscow with Madame Toucheninolf, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... quickly life swings back to the normal after even so harrowing an experience as had come to the Flying U. Tragedy had hovered there a while and had turned away with a smile, and the smile was reflected upon the faces and in the eyes of everyone upon whose souls had fallen her shadow. The Kid was safe, and ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... to the accounts of that harrowing incident, and although he realized that death must have ended the old man's sufferings within a few hours after he dropped by the wayside, he could not but feel deeply the bitterness of such ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... looking at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,—the geese especially. One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a spring token ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... this morass of troubles. It is believed that the shock destroyed his reason. At any rate, the fact remains that that term (the summer term, mark you) he won two prizes. In the following term he won three. To recapitulate his outrages from that time to the present were a harrowing and unnecessary task. Suffice it that he is now a Regius Professor, and I saw in the papers a short time ago that a lecture of his on 'The Probable Origin of the Greek Negative', created quite a furore. If this is not Tragedy with a big T, I should ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... seat at table, the return of their usual hour of arrival, all places and all things remind us of the departed one, and bring up harrowing remembrances of the past, that add deeper pangs to our sorrow, and fill our hearts with more unendurable anguish, and suffuse our cheeks with more scalding tears, as the stern reality presses upon us, that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... stimulating atmosphere in which it seemed once more possible for it to grow into a true manhood. The spiritual hypothesis of things was for the first time presented in such a way as to take imaginative hold without exciting or harrowing the feelings; he saw the world reversed, in a pure light of thought, as Berkeley saw it, and all the horizon of things ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Burnham. "You have said enough. If you have any object in repeating this harrowing story, let me know what it is at once; if not, I have no time to listen ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... course of this debate we have listened to some senators, as they conjured up before our eyes once more all the horrors of the Rebellion, the wickedness of its conception, how terrible its incidents were, and how harrowing its consequences. Sir, I admit it all; I will not combat the correctness of the picture; and yet if I differ with the gentlemen who drew it, it is because, had the conception of the Rebellion been still more wicked, had its incidents been still more ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... about was dead; Love's still recurrent jubilees, The days that she was born, won, wed; The duties of my life the same, Their meaning for the feelings gone; Friendship impertinent, and fame Disgusting; and, more harrowing none, Small household troubles fall'n to me, As, 'What time would I dine to-day?' And, oh, how could I bear to see The noisy children at their play. Besides, where all things limp and halt, Could I go straight, should I alone Have kept my love without default, Pitch'd ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... with his doubled fists. At length the united strength of several succeeded in overpowering him by throwing him on the floor and binding him. His cries passed into a brutish bellow that was awful to hear; and thus raging with the harrowing violence of madness, he was taken away to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... the business. Dairying, building, horseshoeing, repairing of machinery, are all done on the place. "As soon as the spring rains are over, eleven gang ploughs, four ploughs to a gang, each gang drawn by six horses, plough about seven acres per day." Then the harrowing and planting in the same big way. During the entire summer these vines grow without a drop of water, freshened daily by the heavy sea fogs. Harvesting and threshing all done by machinery. The steam thresher would amaze some of our overworked, land-poor farmers. About one hundred and twenty ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... heart." This poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance existing between the literary and personal dispositions of an author. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, delighted to strike on the most harrowing string of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus the father drinks the blood of his son; in his Rhadamistus the son expires under the hand of the father; in his Electra, the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... ended in the blood and slaughter of His Majesty's good subjects." The popular leaders, who repelled, as calumny, the Loyalist charge that they were engaged in a scheme of rebellion, said that to quarter among them in time of peace a standing army, without the consent of the General Court, was as harrowing to the feelings of the people, and as contrary to the constitution of Massachusetts, as it would be harrowing to the people of England, and contrary to the Bill of Eights and of every principle of civil government, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... night, and Khalid on the following morning moves to a Hotel which, by good or ill chance, is adjacent to the lupanars of the city. His window opens on another yard in which other cats, alas!—of the human species this time—are caterwauling, harrowing the soul of him and the night. He makes a second remove, but finds himself disturbed this time by the rut of a certain roebuck within. Nature, O Khalid, will not be cheated, no more than she will be abused, without retaliating soon or late. True, you got out of many ruts ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... her story, hoping to make the children forget their hunger. She took her cue from Harry's bear story and added harrowing incidents and thrilling experiences, as many as she could think of, trying to remember some of the stories of adventure she ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... that morning I could have sworn I heard the bells, and yet they were miles out of earshot. When Alec and I and the camels were all here together I thought this a very pretty place, but oh, how hideous did it appear while I was here alone, with the harrowing thought of the camels being lost and Alec returning without them. Death itself in any terrors clad would have been a more welcome sight to me then and there, than Alec Ross without the camels. But Alec Ross ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... obliging divinity relieved her from many of the cares and troubles of this wearyful world. For how could she submit to any discomfort or privation (the family were not very well off for their station in life); or how could she receive objectionable visitors, or investigate cases of harrowing distress, or remonstrate with careless livery-stable keepers, or call to account extortionate milliners when this precious nervous system had to be considered? Lady Beresford turned away from these things and ordered round her bath-chair, and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... greatest extent in soils whose particles are compacted together, capillary action in this case taking place more freely, and effecting evaporation from a greater depth of soil. The stirring of the surface portion of the soil, as for example by hoeing or harrowing, has for this reason an important influence in lessening the amount of evaporation, and minimising the risks of drought, by breaking the capillary attraction. The amount of evaporation which takes place from a soil covered with a crop, depends largely on the nature ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... discouraged by their brown-stone airs, retired, much demoralized, into a shady by-way, and there fell from grace into a kind of dissipated cross between Poor-House and railroad depot. To reach this amazing edifice, with too much haste for more than a momentary glimpse of its harrowing exterior, and to get away from it, with a speed as little complimentary to the charms of its shadow, are, apparently, the two great and exclusive objects of the thousands swarming down and up the narrow street all through a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a thief taken red-handed, but quite another, and a much more harrowing one, to have him slip through your fingers, precipitate himself into mid-air, and drop four stories to the pavement, scattering his brains far and wide. There was not a vestige of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... forthwith settled to buy an ass to carry the necessary portmanteau and Mary when unable to walk; and so they started on their journey in 1814, across a country recently devastated by the invading armies of Europe. They were not to be deterred by the harrowing tales of their landlady, and set out for Charenton on the evening of August 8, but soon found their ass needed more assistance than they did, which necessitated selling it at a loss and purchasing a mule the next day. On this animal Mary set out dressed in black silk, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... upbraiding Basset with his haste and carelessness. Gladding insisted on being landed in order to prevent, by exercise, taking cold, threatening in his turn the constable, that if his clothes were spoiled he should come upon him for the damage. Poor Basset, quite confounded by these harrowing events, had not a word to answer, and replied only by shrugging and twisting his shoulders with pain. The departure of Tom made it necessary for him to assist the negro in rowing back the boat, which he did with a handkerchief tied about his head, which ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... believe that the deep and harrowing emotion he exhibited was mere acting, or at least a passing spasm of wounded vanity, or even of love in its dying throes. It was comfortable to suppose that he had endeavored to impose upon me to the last, to gull and outrage me. I wanted some such apology to myself ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... my friends, and you shall hear A dreadful poem which I have here. 'Tis about the class of '91, And a harrowing tale when once begun. A tale that will make you all shiver and shake; The thought of it now ...
— Silver Links • Various

... promise." And he told the story in all its abominable details, sparing the writhing man on the bed nothing. He drew upon his imagination for scenes between Madeleine and the doctor, of whose misery he gave a harrowing picture. He described the episode on the boat after her drinking bout at Blazes', of the futile attempts of Sally Abbott and Talbot to cure her. He gave graphic and hideous pictures of the dives she had frequented alone, the risks she had run in the most ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... and a cousin of the Vali at Angora. He said a report had gone out that two devils were passing through the country. The dinner was one of those incongruous Turkish mixtures of sweet and sour, which was by no means relieved by the harrowing Turkish music which our host ground out from an ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... naturalised in our circulating libraries by the title of the Ghostseer, two volumes of which were published about this time. The king of quacks, the renowned Cagliostro, was now playing his dextrous game at Paris; harrowing-up the souls of the curious and gullible of all ranks in that capital, by various thaumaturgic feats; raising the dead from their graves; and, what was more to the purpose, raising himself from the station of a poor Sicilian lacquey to that of a sumptuous and extravagant count. The noise of his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... miracle-plays may be found in Marriott's Collection of English Miracle-Plays, 1838; in Hone's Ancient Mysteries; in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play, edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell, London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, p. 42): "In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... The realization of the harrowing experiences upon which He was about to enter, and particularly the contemplation of the state of sin, which made His sacrifice imperative, so weighed upon the Savior's mind that He sorrowed deeply. "Now is my soul troubled," He groaned; "and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten? And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with such an old blade, as, after the wear and harrowing of so many years should yet continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment as he had at any time been in his middle-age; and therefore it is great kindness of me that old men grow fools, since it is hereby only that they are ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... Chester awoke from her slumber, which had been one wild and harrowing dream, she inquired of the children, who were early to her bed, if their father had not come back, and if there was yet no tidings from the Mayor's office. They answered that he had but just left the house, and that he had been with her nearly an hour as she slept. She smiled gently, and ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... This harrowing picture has the modicum of truth that makes it insidiously dangerous. But this last extravagance betrays the denunciator. One would be interested to have this past-master of overstatement mention the names of these distinguished ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... baulked; it is when, after having had the human heart revealed to us, we have the first opportunity to think; it is then that the whole truth lights upon us; it is then that we ask of ourselves whether it be wise to endure such anxiety of mind, such agitation of spirit, such harrowing of the soul, to gain what may cease to interest to-morrow, or for which, at the best, a few years of enjoyment can alone be afforded; it is then that we waken to the hollowness of all human things; it is ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... have won her O good brown earth, Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring; Make merry; my love is doubly worth All worship your fields can bring! Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth At the early harrowing," ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... After that harrowing experience in the Hollis driveway, he had seen Ruth Nelson but twice. She had spent the winters at boarding-school, and in the summers she traveled with her aunt. She was still the divinity for whom he shaped his end, the ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... when he returned to find that a visitor had called, and that this visitor was the mother of the little boy that Harry Lossing had saved from the car. The two women gave him the accident in full, and were lavish of harrowing detail, including the mother's feelings. "So you see, 'Raish," urged Mrs. Ellis, timidly, "there is some reason ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... dull repertoire after all, for whether the piece be melodrama, farce, genteel comedy, or harrowing tragedy, it has to be ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... my foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to my secret soul. I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the remainder of the winter. I was given to understand that Belle Marigold was actually engaged to Fred Hencoop. And she might have been mine! Alas, that ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor



Words linked to "Harrowing" :   painful, torturing



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