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More "Numb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the other games parlor where Alan had had the set-to with the robohuckster; it was dark-windowed and a shining blue robot stood outside, urging passersby to step inside and try their luck. Alan moistened his dry lips; he felt cold and numb inside. He won't be there, he thought; he won't ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... a piece of rope is wrapped around my body. Anyway it hurts like fun, and my arms seem all numb," he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A sudden ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thought, not a feeling of any kind. I sat and stared, with wide-open eyes, at the letters, without coming to any conclusion. Ten minutes went over—perhaps twenty or more. I sat stolidly on the one spot, and did not move a finger. This numb feeling of drowsiness was almost like a brief slumber. I hear some ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... could not sit there beside the man she loved and hear him talk of other days which she had never known and of his love for another woman. In a minute or two the storm passed, but it left her faint and numb, with the beautiful veil which had enveloped her dream of bliss torn ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... of life seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for the room her dead mother had so decorated was now furnished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... first day of the month was kept with burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Vide Numb. x. 10. and xxviii. 11. In imitation of the Jews, the calends, or first days of the month, and the fourth and seventh of the week, were ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... out, and as it were all numb with his loss, Mr. Tebrick got up and went within doors, leaving his dear fox lying near ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... for a space swooned into a numb and desolate silence. Then in the field behind, the last corncrake harshly called; a shepherd whistled on his dogs; a cart rumbled over the cobbles, making for the shed. The sound of the river as it came to him among the alder-trees seemed the sound the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... use was the rudiments. He had kept his head at singlestick, held his own with the foil against other lads, and never before faced a point. The little man had the speed and certainty of a maitre d'armes. So Harry fought, breathing hard, every muscle aching, mind numb and dazed under the strain, expecting—hoping—every moment the thrust that would ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... with the numb unconcern which a prisoner might manifest over an unimportant alteration in his cell; but Dreda, as usual, was afire with enthusiasm, and spent a radiantly happy day playing the part of a charwoman, in apron and rolled-up sleeves. She washed all the ornaments, exulting in the inky colour of the water ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mile I could see no dwelling. The morning was breaking now, and the world looked pallid and dreary. Suddenly my strength failed, I felt faint and dizzy, and sat down upon a heap of stones, drawing my cloak over my face. My thoughts became broken and confused, and my senses numb, I remained, lost in a sort of stupid dream of trouble, I do not know how long, when the touch of a hand on my shoulder made me start, and a voice said, "What is the matter with you, ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... began to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... thought of you often—only not so often lately as at first, because for a long time now I've been numb. I haven't thought much or cared much about anything, or—or any ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a cripple and consigned to my bed, for how long, Heaven only knows. This is written while in a horizontal position, reposing on my right arm, which is almost numb from having supported me for some sixteen hours without turning over. Let me see if I can remember ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... had been taken, tossed over the white pillows, her hands clasped above her head, her dark, large eyes fixed on the opposite wall. So she lay motionless, neither, speaking nor stirring for hours, with a sort of dull, numb aching at her heart. They stole in softly to her bedside many times through the night, always to find her like that, lying with blank, wide-open eyes, never noticing nor speaking to them. When morning broke she awoke from a dull sort of sleep, her head burning, her lips parched, her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... he looked it, which was all that the half-hysterical girl by his side could ascertain by an occasional timid glance. The fact lent her a sort of courage to persevere to the end, and she signed her maiden name for the last time with a numb confidence in the man whom she had, so to speak, bargained for as a ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... worked since I can remembah, hoein', pickin' cotton and othah chohs 'round the fahm. We didden have much clothes, nevah no undahweah, no shoes, old ovahalls and a tattahed shirt, wintah and summah. Come de wintah, it be so cold mah feet weah plumb numb mos' o' de time and manya time—when we git a chanct—we druve the hogs from outin the bogs an' put ouah feet in the wahmed wet mud. They was cracked and the skin on the bottoms and in de toes weah cracked and bleedin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the powers ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... without moving. Moreover he must grip the branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost. The wolves meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on any longer, and the lynx tumbles ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... not matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... think that Charles could have been guilty of that dreadful crime. Ever since then there has been a kind of cloud over my mind, a certain sense of oppression that made everything dim before my eyes. I could not feel, I could not even shed a tear. I seemed to be all numb and frozen, and when the tears came just now, all the ice melted away and I became myself again. Don't you think I look ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... were numb from the long carry, obeyed with alacrity. But returning hurriedly with the water, he was met at the door by his perverse master, who took the glass from his hands with the curt announcement that that ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... How numb and cold he was! Could he hold out until daylight? Yes, he would. He would see the sunlight once more. He dared not move, nor even change his position, for fear lest he should lose sight of the star and not be ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... talking with Mrs. Carstang, the new grief and the old strangely neutralized each other. It was as if they met and grappled, and he had numb peace. The woman of his first love made him proud of that early bond. She was more than she had been then. But Lily moved past him with a smile. Her dancing was visible music. It had a penetrating grace—hers, ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a sickening moment; surprise, disaster, and the possibility that here was some new German devilry fired at us from behind, joined with the fumes to numb the mind and powers. Half-gassed I gave the gas-alarm. By telephone I managed to report what had happened. The Colonel seemed to understand at once; 'I've stopped them,' conveyed everything of which it was immediately necessary ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Tresidder brood face to face. But now a new feeling came to me. Had I not after all been a brute, and had I not acted like a maniac? For the look on her face made me love goodness and beauty. I could do nothing, however; my hands were numb, and my tongue was dry and parched. All I was capable of at this moment was to listen and to look into the fair maid's face, and feel a great longing that she might not despise me as Nick Tresidder ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... of the metal disc, the shin and muscles, which before were numb, regained their normal states, and the return of sensation preceded the cure, and was an indispensable condition. One can obtain exactly the same results with discs composed of inert substances. An old-fashioned ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... pipe and smoked it out; old Captain Merrill, who lived on the opposite bank, came out and hailed me, "Reckon you've got a big one this time, judge;" and still my line pointed to the bottom of the river, and my hands grew numb ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and his mouth were parched as if by a fever. Stiffly he swung himself over the edge of his bunk and went on feet that were numb and uncertain through the door to the deck. He was sore all over from lying on the bare slats of the bunk, and the dregs of the drug still clogged his mind and muscles; but like the flame in a foul lantern there burned in him the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... notwithstanding his skilled and careful treatment, one of my men died the following day, while the number of those who were seriously ill rose to fifteen. The symptoms of this fatal illness are: headache and a numb feeling in all the limbs, accompanied by an unusually high temperature very often rising to 104 and 106 degrees during the first 24 hours, with the blood running from the patient's nose and ears, which is an ominous sign. At other times the first symptom is what ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... sense of peace—numb, silent peace—wholly unlike the satisfaction which had flooded her in her own room or during the earlier ecstasy before the altar. She raised her eyes slowly till they rested on the shrine where the body ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... taxi bore him swiftly back towards Bordeaux, his mind was occupied with the girl to the exclusion of all else. It was not so much that he thought definitely about her, as that she seemed to fill all his consciousness. He felt numb, and his whole being ached for her as with a dull physical pain. But it was a pain that was mingled with exultation, for if she had refused him, she had at least admitted that she loved him. Incredible thought! He smiled ecstatically, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... these words, the princely youth Leaps on the scaly back that slumbers, still Unconscious of his foot, yet not for ruth, But numb'd to dulness by the fairy skill Of that sweet music (all more wild and shrill For intense fear) that charm'd him as he lay— Meanwhile the lover nerves his desperate will, Held some short throbs by natural dismay, Then down the serpent-track ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Sisters: I am wounded, mortally I think. The fight rages round me. I have done my duty. This is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until all had fallen and colors gone. I am getting weak. My arms are free but below my chest all is numb. The enemy trotting over me. The numbness up to my ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... you are in my power and you have no hope of escape. I am unexpectedly provided with more subjects for my experiments. You will...." His words became hazy and unintelligible, for the hapless reporter was drifting off into a numb oblivion. He had long since lost the power to move a muscle. Out of the corner of an eye, just before he lost consciousness altogether, he perceived Handlon lying upon the floor still puffing at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... So, dazed and numb, I hent me up, and lo! coming arm in arm towards me were Otho von Reuss and his newly appointed Chief Justice and assessor—who but mine old friend Michael Texel! The Duke bent a searching look on me as I bowed low before him, but he saw only the tan of my skin and the close bristle of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and above. When he had finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark place was numb. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Then, clapping his numb fingers upon his thighs, the successful champion uttered a melodious crow, which so disgusted the spectator that he was about to retire within doors, when his eyes fell upon a thinly clad, timid-looking woman who was advancing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... with that he caught sight of the golden saddle, and thought that none but it could suit so beautiful a horse, especially as it had golden shoes. But just as he stretched out his hand to take it he received from some invisible being so hard a blow on the arm that it was made quite numb. This recalled to him his promise and his danger, so he led out the horse without looking at the golden ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... back, and the hair chiefly worn off) was frozen stiff round my knees, like a hoop, as were my snow-shoes and shoe clouts to my feet. Thus I marched the whole day without fire or food. At first I was in great pain, then my flesh became numb, and at times I felt extremely sick and thought I could not travel one foot farther; but I wonderfully revived again. After long travelling I felt very drowsy, and had thoughts of sitting down, which had I done, without doubt I had ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... a quickly suppressed cry had escaped the lips of some one behind me, which, while faint enough to elude the attention of any ear less sensitive than my own, contained such an astonishing, if involuntary, note of self-betrayal that my mind grew numb with horror, and I stood staring at the fearful toy which had called up such a revelation of—what? That is what I am here to ask, first of myself, then of you. For the two ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... were rapidly becoming numb with approaching sleep, but he roused himself to face certain details of the country life which till now had escaped him. His earnest concentration on the main plank of his platform, the spiriting away of William Bannister, had caused him to overlook the fact that ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his," exclaims the truth-compelled and reluctant prophet, Numb. xxiii. 10. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... were passing slowly through Juve's mind, he felt an intense desire to sleep come over him, his limbs suddenly became numb and heavy; and then ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... trembled. His legs felt weak, his hands numb. It was with an effort he refrained from dropping the revolver. Like his chums, Frank was a crack shot, for Mr. Temple early had accustomed them to the use of rifle and shotgun, and the previous summer in ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... gentle, and yet so inhumanly regardless! He had no regard for her. Why didn't she revolt? Why couldn't she? She was as if bewitched. She couldn't fight against her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed to her beautiful, so beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must she see him beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the old sacred prostitutes: a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... to show the world That gin is wrong And rye is strong And Scotch to limbo should be hurled. Thus with his spotless flag unfurled He went against the Demon Rum Who snarled, "I vum!" Got sort of numb, Rolled up his eyes, lay down and curled While all the saints of heaven above (Including Mr. Bryan's Dove) Cried "Rah-rah-rah! And siss-boom-ah! Three cheers for Health and Christian Love! But, Andrew dear— Say, now, look here! You're not ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... ** Numb. i. 20, et seq., where the descendants of Levi are not included among the twelve, and Deut. xxxiii. 6-25, where Simeon is omitted from among the tribes blessed by Moses ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... as you want me," he said at length huskily from behind a dense cloud of smoke. A look of intense relief passed over Craven's worn face. He tried to speak and, failing, gripped Peters' hand with a force that left the agent's fingers numb. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... supper were the most interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to get the cold out of their ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... up quick!' The tossing crests are blown into spindrift against the weather yardarm, while a pelting hailstorm stings the wet, cold hands and faces. The men tear at the sail with their numb fingers till their nails are bleeding. They hit it, pull it, clutch at it for support. Certain death would follow a fall from aloft; for the whole deck is hidden under a surging, seething mass of water. ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... where my friend was consuming large cigars; I envied him his occupation, but rejected all his invitations to join him. After a time he came out and wrapped me up in half a dozen rugs on a seat. By the time we reached Dublin I was numb to the heart, and knew I was in for ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... out the tangle in his intellect, and presently he was aware that the back of his head was very sore and ached, so he put up his hand to rub it and found a lump as large as a walnut. His right shoulder was numb and he was unable to move it, although this would not have surprised him had he been aware that a hundred and eighty pounds of Teutonic masculinity had landed on that shoulder with both feet and dislocated it. As it was, the skipper wondered vaguely if ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... being accustomed to that sort of life. By making peace at this juncture, I not only incur the blame of great pusillanimity, but I render the king of Prussia still greater, and the remedy must be prompt. I declare to you, my head whirls and my heart has for a long time been entirely numb." France had refused to engage in the war, but she had contributed to the peace of Teschen, signed on the 13th of May, 1779. On the 29th of November, 1780, Maria Theresa died at the age of sixty-three, weary of life and of that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... slowly closed to crush him into pulp, could have seen the coming of death, resistless and horrible, with clearer vision than was ours as that group of savages pronounced our doom. It was by exercising the greatest effort of will that I conquered the dread sense of utter hopelessness which seemed to numb my every faculty; for, although I was to be tortured to the end, and perish at last in utmost physical agony, yet before that moment came there still remained a duty to be performed for one I loved. For ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a hard shell, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead. This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting shell, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its feeble wings. It drags itself from ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... waiting in the living-room when he, still numb from the shock, went back downstairs. She came up to him and stood a moment, twisting the fingers of one hand within ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, for ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... was full noon when he came in sight of the stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of facing that derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins and their barbed tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had reached the limit of prickly sensations and were numb to his shoulders. He shook his hair back from his beaded forehead, cast a wary glance at the silent stables, set his jaw, and went on up the hill to the mess-house, wishing tardily that he had waited until they were off at work again, when he might intimidate old Patsy into keeping ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... me, like a sea; And like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was comforted, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... back awkwardly to her, and felt the grip of small, cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... occupied much time, for the hands of the sailors were numb with cold, the ropes stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind snatched at the tackle and tore at the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Except for the wavering smoke from the stovepipe, the place might have been deserted. The house was one with the pervading hush of the valley. Hollister grew numb. But he held his post. And at last the door opened and the woman stood framed in ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had done ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... It was not precisely a time when he could afford to let his wits go wool-gathering. And he realised that he had been, in a way, more than half-asleep as he walked; even now he was drowsy, his eyes were heavy, his feet leaden—and numb with cold besides. He had no least notion of what distance he might have travelled or whether he had walked in a straight line or a circle; but when he thought to glance over his shoulder—there was at the moment perhaps more wind with ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... out of the door, and back along the lane to the river where he had left Jimmy. "'A lump of flesh with na vital spark in it,'" he kept repeating. "I dinna but that is the secret. She is almost numb with misery. All these days when she's been without hope, and these awful nichts, when she's watched and feared alone, she has no wished to perpetuate him in children who might be like him, and so at their coming the 'vital ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... was cut in the heavy tanks, the cold had begun to creep into the ship. The men worked desperately, and for a while perspiration dampened their clothing. Then the chill crept deeper—and they shivered. Their fingers grew numb, and they had to warm them over a small electric unit, but the opening slowly enlarged beneath ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... he sighted the hills about Roslyn and began to climb, up to three thousand feet. It was very cold. His hands were almost numb on the control. He descended to a thousand feet, but the machine jerked like a canoe shooting rapids, in the gust that swept up from among the hills. The landscape rose swiftly at him over the ends of the wings, now on one side, now on the other, as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Sick, numb, he glanced at Naida, who was still staring silently, and hitched his rifle half up to his shoulder. But he did not look down the sights yet. Although it was time, and more than time, that he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... horror that had possessed Valentine so utterly began to fade away, making its exit from his body and soul with infinitesimally small steps. At length it had quite gone, and its place was taken by a numb calm, level and still at first, then curiously definite, almost too definite to be calm at all. Gradually this calm withdrew into exhaustion, an exhaustion such as dwells incessantly with the anemic, with those whose hearts beat feebly and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... swung his great grizzled muzzle and his long white beard in the wind. The odor that he once had hated was attractive now. There was a strange biting quality in the air. His body craved it. For it seemed to numb his pain and it promised sleep, as it did that day when first he ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb and empty. His hand brushed against something which fell, to the ground. He brought his dull gaze to bear on it. The object proved to be a black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in the sunshine of Estrella's toys, a potato squeezed to ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... skirmish, lines being perhaps four hundred yards apart, and our vedette posts—we maintained them only at night—being about sixty yards in advance of our pits, and always composed of three men for each post. We found our three men numb with, cold, two lying near the edge oL the woods, in a big hole made by a shell, while the other stood guard. They had seen nothing and heard nothing except the ordinary sounds of the night. The clouds ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... night Edna crouched beside the bed, watching the wan but lovely face of the young widow, and tenderly chafing the numb, fair hands which lay so motionless on the coverlet. Children are always sanguine, because of their ignorance of the stern, inexorable realities of the untried future, and Edna could not believe that death would snatch from the world one so beautiful and so necessary ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that as it may, we escaped. It was our last night under the lynx-eyed watchers. We went about two miles in the woods, and there hid. So far I had no covering for my head, and but scant raiment for my body. The season was very cold in April and May, and many a time I felt numb, chill, and sick, but there was no remedy for it; only "grin and go through." In the last part of my captivity, I suffered from exposure to the sun. The squaws took all my hats, and I could not get anything to cover my head, except a blanket, and I ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... the papers. Surgeon Reyburn told me, as he was passing a corner where a group of secessionists were discussing the subject quite freely, that one man said, "Why don't Savage do something about that soup-house affair, and not be a numb-head, and let that woman wind him around her finger like that?" Another said, "If I'd lied once over that old soup-house, I'd lie again, before I'd hold still and take all that" He changed his soup-house ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge balks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats-of-arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... position, I was growing stiff and weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more I looked over the precipice, and just then ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... de Garnache—the bravest gentleman, the noblest friend she had ever known. For she accounted him dead, and she thought with horror of his body lying in the slime under the cold waters of the moat beneath the window of her antechamber. A change seemed to have come upon her. Her soul was numb, her courage seemed dead, and little care had she in that hour of what might ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... of the nerves. Strike the elbow end of the ulna against anything hard (commonly called "hitting the crazy bone") where the ulna nerve is exposed, and the little finger and the ring finger will tingle and become numb. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... children for the father to feed, some of them go to work in the mine or factory or store or mill near by. In doing this, they not only injure their tender growing bodies, but indirectly, they drag down the father's wage ... The home becomes a mere rendezvous for the nightly gathering of bodies numb with weariness and minds drunk with sleep." And if they survive the factory, they marry to perpetuate and multiply their ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... and now they all came back to him—stories of Chinese mercenaries, and men buried alive, and death by agonizing inches. He felt suddenly very cold and sick, and hung in his bonds, for he had no strength in his limbs. Then the pressure on this throat braced him, and also quickened his numb mind. The liveliest terror ran like quicksilver through ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... having two pots of paint and two sets of brushes. The wind was not blowing in sudden gusts, but swept by in a strong, persistent current that penetrated their clothing and left them trembling and numb with cold. It blew from the right; and it was all the worse on that account, because the right arm, being in use, left that side of the body fully exposed. They were able to keep their left hands in their trousers pockets and the left arm close to the side most of the time. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... night His soul sustained his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... day! There was no opera now! That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it. Ah! the wonderful singers! Gone! He sat watching the old scenes acted, a numb feeling at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... undivided orange, evidence enough of an extraordinary occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she locked her jaws ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... Lord Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... floor of the landing. "My feet are cold and numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily. "The woman struggled and ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... Abigail still hoped that the end of the world for which she had so fondly prepared would come, but as the days wore on she sank into a numb despondency. When she thought of the loss of her property, she groaned and turned her face to the wall. And Samuel Anderson sat about the house in a dumb and shiftless attitude, as do most men upon whom financial ruin comes in middle life. The disappointment ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... both her hands on the harp, which is placed on her right side; her figure is full front, but she looks towards the right; round her this inscription, HIBERNIA, 1722. (Simon, plate 7, Numb. 160) ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... ahead, and endeavored to quicken the pace of the old horse, but the house always transformed itself to a clump of hazel-brush as he drew nearer. About nine o'clock the rain grew colder and the lightning less frequent. Katy became entirely silent—Albert could feel her shiver now and then. Thus, in numb misery, constantly hoping to see a house on ascending the next rise of ground and constantly suffering disappointment, they traveled on through the wretched monotony of that night. The ceaseless plash of the rain, the slow tread of the horse's ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that she did not greatly care whether she lived or died. Her face was blue from the cold; her vitality was sapped. She seemed to herself to have turned to ice below the hips. Outside the misery of the moment her whole attention was concentrated on sticking to the back of the horse. Numb though her fingers were, she must keep them fastened tightly in the frozen mane of the animal. She recited her lesson to herself like a child. She must stick on—she ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... upon the spar and scramble down the rigging; but with us, upon the extreme leeward side, this feat was out of the question; it was, literary, like climbing a precipice to get to wind-ward in order to reach the shrouds: besides, the entire yard was now encased in ice, and our hands and feet were so numb that we dared not trust our lives to them. Nevertheless, by assisting each other, we contrived to throw ourselves prostrate along the yard, and embrace it with our arms and legs. In this position, the stun'-sail-booms greatly assisted in securing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... it's all dark to me," owned Sally Flint. "I guess 'twould puzzle a saint to explain men-folks, anyway, but I've al'ays thought they was sort o' numb about some things. Anyway, Josh Marden was. Well, things went on that way till the fust part o' the summer, an' then they come to a turnin'-p'int. I s'pose they'd got to, some time, an' it might jest as well ha' been fust as last. Lyddy Ann was pretty ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... (Coming back to the present with a murderous look at THE LITTLE DOG.) Death to you, ill-smelling beast, for having evoked these by-gone joys! Aren't you going to disappear, that I may come down from this cold pedestal, where my paws are growing numb? ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the remaining correspondent clambered aboard. Rasmunsen was over the eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb fingers ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... river, with the castellated tops of butte and mountain molten gold in the evening sun. When he reached the brittle strata, the water reflected firelight from the still unseen camp blaze. Enoch, clinging perilously to the breaking rock, half faint with hunger, his fingers numb with the cold, laughed again, to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... leaped past him from he knew not where, and then there was a shout, the report of a pistol, a horrid yell. Something heavy crashed down beside him and writhed. His eyes were closing, his senses were going, he was numb and sleepy. Away off in the distance he heard ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, until there was a crash above them, and the tilted top of the great boom came down. Mattawa, flattened against the rock side, held his breath as the mass of timber ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make supplication to heaven ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... been coming to the post the past few days, some of us wonder if there has not been an earthquake, and can only sit around and wait in a numb sort of way for whatever may ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... carried around at dizzying speed. I could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying! And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against sharp rocks on the seafloor, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... over the stubble of a field, leading Hannibal and Wilkins' mount. There had been no way of bringing the sergeant's body out of town, and Drew had reported the death to Lieutenant Traggart, who officered the scouts. He felt numb as he headed for the spark of fire which marked their temporary camp, numb not only with cold and hunger, but with all the days of cold, hunger, fighting, and marching which lay behind. It seemed to him that this war ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... that you had not accompanied me. If I had seen you shivering as I shivered myself, if I had seen your hands and feet as red and swelled as mine were, my discomfort would just have been doubled. I can do very well under this sort of thing; it does not fret me; it only makes me numb and silent; but if you were to pass a winter in Belgium, you would be ill. However, more genial weather is coming now, and I wish you were here. Yet I never have pressed you, and never would press you too warmly to come. There are privations ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... told her the afternoon was waning, and then indications of darkness and another night of torture, despair filled her. Numb, hungry, her vitality at low ebb, she doubted her ability to weather it. Was she being punished, she wondered, for protesting against the life the Fates appeared to have mapped out for her? Was this ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... worst of it. A squally wind and rain had set in, making the work on deck thoroughly wet and uncomfortable. An hour or so later the small ship was rolling and pitching and everyone was drenched. The lead was kept going by hands numb with cold—a foretaste of the long and bitter days and nights to be ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had done for myself, so far as THOSE people ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... his skilled and careful treatment, one of my men died the following day, while the number of those who were seriously ill rose to fifteen. The symptoms of this fatal illness are: headache and a numb feeling in all the limbs, accompanied by an unusually high temperature very often rising to 104 and 106 degrees during the first 24 hours, with the blood running from the patient's nose and ears, which is an ominous sign. At other times ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... it not chanced that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake presently to find herself ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... were quite numb with the cold. Ah! a little match might do her good if she only dared draw one from the bundle, and strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers at it. She drew one out. R-r-atch! how it spluttered and burned! It was a warm bright flame, like a little candle, when she held her hands over ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... protruding from the deep, and as the light grew brighter I started to wade slowly towards it. This was an extremely tiresome undertaking, as the bed upon which I had been resting was very rocky and uneven and I received many bruises before finally reaching its base. My limbs too were thoroughly numb and almost refused to work, but with each step ahead the water became shallower and my progress less arduous. As I went forward I thought it was by the miraculous hand of God that my life had been saved, for the time being at least. Then, again, it occurred to me, that if it was the hand ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... sheep was steady and continuous. The current was swift and the men's bodies ached and grew numb in the intense cold, but they stood their ground. Only in one place was the water too deep to work, and here they lost a few terror-stricken animals who turned aside from the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... victuals, and asked not counsel of the mouth of the Lord."—Josh. ix: 14. This counsel Joshua was expressly commanded to ask, when he was ordained some time before, to be the executor of God's legislative will, by Moses. Here is the proof—Numb. xxvii: 18-23: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thy hand upon him; and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight. And thou shalt put some of thine ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... mix the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was shining ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... something burned that she did not know, save that it was a bad thing, and made even blackness blacker. She heard their voices still. They were happy together, while she was alone outside, her forehead resting against the chill glass, and her hands half numb upon the stone; and so it would always be hereafter. They would go, and take her life with them, and she should be left behind, alone for ever; and a great revolt against her fate rose quickly in her breast like a flame before the wind, and then, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into a passive submission. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to get the cold out ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... negro woman, came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the long constriction of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... were closed while he chanted the dirge. He sang it over and over, pausing between the lines, and straining as it were every sense lest he might not catch the rapt whisper of her spirit, but only the distant howls of coyotes answered him. His body became cold and numb from sheer exhaustion, and at last his knees bent under him and he sank down upon the ground, still facing the teepee. Unconsciousness overtook him, and in his sleep ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... not follow; I cry, "Return"—but he cannot come: We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow; Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dripping hat, hung it on the fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on Darrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, after frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answered cheerfully: "No—luckily I had on my new ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... some property. After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the floor of the landing. "My feet are cold and numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily. "The woman struggled ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... whiskey which he bought in the liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were and nearly ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... upwards into the neck. The radial pulse appeared normal. No swelling or pulsation existed. At the end of three months the condition was unaltered; the patient said he noticed nothing abnormal in his arm, except that it was sometimes 'sort of numb' ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... them, the color suddenly flushed all over her blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sigh ran through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Numb, comatose, insensible, The flunkeys and the chamberlains all slumbered like the dead, And snored so loud and mournfully, That Charming passed them scornfully And came to where a princess lay asleep upon a bed. She was ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... is really harmless to bodies or not, as far as its own nature is concerned. Rain-water, too, is useful to the eyes, but it makes the trachea and the lungs rough, just as oil does, although it soothes the skin; and the sea-torpedo placed on the extremities makes them numb, but is harmless when placed on the rest of the body. Wherefore we cannot say what each of these things is by nature. It is possible only to say how it appears each time. We 94 could cite more examples than these, but in order not to spend too long in laying out the plan of this book we shall ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... of the glorious city scarce affected me. We lay opposite the Doria palace, and the constellation of villas and towers still glittered along the hills; but who, with his teeth chattering and limbs numb and damp, could feel pleasure in ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... rebuff. But Sofia's leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... solitude also began even to numb the powers of his mind. He was fully aware of this, and tried to shake it off, for he shuddered more at the thought of mental than of physical decay. Among other things, he took to talking more frequently to Brownie, but although ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of evading or shirking these obligations of law and custom: whoever failed to fulfil them was doomed to perish or to become an outcast; implicit obedience was the condition of survival. The tendency of such regulation was necessarily to suppress all mental and moral differentiation, to numb personality, to establish one uniform and unchanging type of character; and such was the actual result. To this day every Japanese mind reveals the lines of that antique mould by which the ancestral mind was compressed and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... discomfort, and then intense suffering, to the half-fed travellers. The necessity of frequently wading the Sweetwater chilled the stronger men who were bearing the brunt of the labor, and when morning dawned the occupants of the tents found themselves numb with the cold, and quite unfitted to endure the hardships of the coming day. Chislett draws this picture of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Numb with horror and sick with pity, The heart of each as an iron weight, We crept in the dawn from the awful city, Journeying out of the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Thy repentant creatures." Missy shut her eyes, repented violently, and awaited the miracle. What would happen? How would it feel, when her soul was born anew? Surely it must be time. She waited and waited, while her limbs grew numb and her soul continued to quiver and stretch up. But in vain; she somehow didn't feel the grace of God nearly as much as last Sunday when the Presbyterian choir was singing "Asleep in Jesus," while the sun shone divinely through ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from helmet and coat, high upon the ladder, perhaps incased in solid ice and frozen to the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... St. Agnes' Eve nothing is white but the heroine. It is winter, and 'bitter chill'; the hare 'limps trembling through the frozen grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the beadsman's fingers are numb, his breath is frosted; and at an instant of special and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... in a close embrace, like that of Death, Earth's pulseless heart reposes, mute and chill; Within her frozen breast, her frozen breath, In its forgotten fragrance, slumbereth still: Sapless her veins, and numb her withered arms, That still, outstretched, stand grim mementos drear Of her once gorgeous and full-leaved charms. Of flower and fruit, all increase of the year: Voiceless the river, in ice fretwork chained; Hushed the sweet cadences of ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... had succeeded in pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, for the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... it; and yet she knew she would not keep it. She argued passionately with herself, a prey to an inward dread; for no matter how firmly she forced resolution upon resolution, they all seemed to melt in her soul like snow on a blazing fire. Then, determined to rid herself of a numb sensation of powerlessness, and achieve the end she desired, she said, 'I'll tell you, Emily, what I'll do. I'll not stay here; I will go away. Let me go away, dear, and then ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... attribute my feelings at that time to anything so concrete as a shock. It was a feeling so tranquil. It was as if an immensely heavy—an unbearably heavy knapsack, supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without sensation of life. I tell you, I had no regret. What had I to regret? I suppose that my inner soul—my dual personality—had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper—that she ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... to consciousness with a sickening sensation of nausea and unreality. Only my brain was alive; my entire body was numb and as though paralyzed. Still darkness and silence, for all my senses told me I might have been still in the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... so-called "s'prises." They were many and varied, now a titbit to tempt her palate, or again a native doll which needed a complete outfit of moccasins, cap, and parka, and which he insisted he had met on the trail, very numb from the cold; again a pair of rabbit-fur sleeping-socks for herself. That crude dresser, which he had completed without her suspecting him, was another. Always he was making or doing something to amuse or to occupy ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... impression that the top of the structure, somehow, was not supported by the foundation, but rather the reverse—the floor was suspended from the ceiling. It was the work of the Titans—so high and stupendous that at the first instant Watson felt numb with insignificance. What chance had he against men of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... platforms in the opening hours of the conflict if our response is to be timely and induce shock. Awe is not achieved if the enemy is permitted to gain experience in being attacked; at best you may make them numb. Alternatively, reusable long-range survivable systems provide needed flexibility to alter the Deep Strike plan as it unfolds. The food chain of weapons systems ranges from the most valuable systems such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and stealth bombers, to less valuable, but useful, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Yes, that is without doubt what has happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe reassurance. "He's coming back,—coming back to me—coming ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... desolation. He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully in these days of sorrow. He was never effusive in his sympathy, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sometimes dragged into the trouble. He loved Ursula, therefore he always had a sense of shame, almost of betrayal, when he turned on her. So he turned fiercely and scathingly, and with a wholesale brutality that made Ursula go white, mute, and numb. Her feelings seemed to be becoming deadened in her, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I say, at so late an hour that night, numb with the cold, hungry, ashamed, and disgusted as you can imagine, thinking about my sick old father more than about myself. I should have to write to him for money, and this would astonish as much as it would grieve him, since he thought me in very easy circumstances. Just before reaching ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... please.'... For a long time there was silence.... Then the day-light faded quite, and the Prince got up and lit a small oil lamp. There was a deadly silence.... Ah! She must fight against this horrible lethargy.... Her arm had grown numb.... Strange lights seemed to flash before her eyes—yes—surely—that was Gritzko coming towards her! She gave a gasping cry and tried to pull the trigger, but it was stiff.... The pistol dropped from her nerveless grasp.... She ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... up in him, all the cold hurt went into the effort as he stepped in and snapped his fist into the face of Buck Heath. He rose with the blow; all his energy, from wrist to instep, was in that lifting drive. Then there was a jarring impact that made his arm numb to the shoulder. Buck Heath looked blankly at him, wavered, and pitched loosely forward on his face. And his head bounced back as it struck the ground. It was a horrible thing to see, but it brought one wild yell of joy from the saloon—the voice of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... interval; thirdly, on the seventh day, in memory of the mourning of the Israelites seven days for Joseph (Gen. i. 10); fourthly, on the thirtieth day, in memory of Moses and Aaron, whom the Israelites lamented this length of time (Numb. xx.; Deut. xxxiv.); and, finally, at the end of the year, or on the anniversary day itself (Gavant., Thesaur. Rit. 62). This custom also prevails ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... muffled scream of the storm. When he got no answer, he guided his horse close to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy with snow. To his surprise, it was a girl's despairing face that looked up at him. She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb to serve. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... with its wick black and dull. A cold, gloomy light penetrated through the little window of the sleeping room; the light of dawn. Jaime experienced a sensation of chill. The covers were being withdrawn from his body; agile hands were touching the bandages of his wounds. The flesh, numb a few hours before, now flinched at the lightest touch with the excruciating vibration of the pain, arousing ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dawn was crawling sluggishly over the mountain-tops, as if numb as the animal and vegetable life which had been shrinking all the long hours under the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... work. Then it was the work of but an instant, with the same piece of glass that had served him so well, to sever the ropes about his legs. But when Jack tried to stand up he nearly toppled over, so weak was he, and so numb were his legs. They had gone to sleep from the lack of ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... one paralysed, his eyes reading and rereading the words which changed to mockery all the revived faith in her. His brain grew numb. Like a man upon whose head an unexpected blow had fallen, he was only half conscious of what had happened. Even as he read and re-read the letter he failed to gather all that it meant, all that it revealed. The very simplicity of ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... conducting thee at peep of day I will dispose thee in some safe recess, But from among thy followers thou shalt chuse The bravest three in all thy gallant fleet. And now the artifices understand 500 Of the old prophet of the sea. The sum Of all his phocae numb'ring duly first, He will pass through them, and when all by fives He counted hath, will in the midst repose Content, as sleeps the shepherd with his flock. When ye shall see him stretch'd, then call to mind That moment all your prowess, and prevent, Howe'er he strive ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... came to myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head—was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the pack was doubled, and he rapped them till his hand was numb before he and Ione got by. Their vines drew out thin, but held until they were firmly tied about the safe. They went back ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... dress he became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... coming up the walk, some one very short and fat. No; it was a girl carrying a child. Miss Bell reached the door just in time to catch Tommy in her arms as Lovey Mary staggered into the hall. They were covered with sleet and almost numb ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... lame and numb. Van could only hustle them inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of a gamester came unimpeded to the women's ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... forcible prayer she had ever heard. It struck through to her very soul. She stood motionless, but she felt crushed and numb. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... the walls of the room rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... altitude, the air being very keen. At Khilok station, where we stopped for a few minutes, I got out and ran up and down for exercise, but found the cold so great that I was glad to get on board again for fear of having my ears frost bitten, they having become perfectly numb. ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... I thought the day was ours. The headlong Rupert Swept all before him, like the wind that bends The thin and unkind corn, his men were numb With slaying, and their chargers straddling, blown With undue speed, as they had hunted that Which could not turn again—e'en thus was Rupert, When round to meet his squadrons came a host Like whirlwind to the wind. There was a moment that the blood-surge roll'd Hither ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... bulk of a Spanish lumberman; but there was no refuge there. The grain wharves and the oil wharves were passed; the sniff of the mackerel fisher, the faint odour from the great Alexandrian merchantman loaded with the spices of India, were come and gone. A stone struck Agias in the shoulder, he felt numb in one arm, to drag his feet was a burden; the flight with the Caesarians to the Janiculum had not been like to this,—death at the naked sword had been at least in store then, and now to be plucked in pieces by a mob! Another stone brushed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had strength for both—it was her weakness which had put the strength in him. It was not, alas, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in two; and, though his face did not show it, it must have been surprising to Carse that she wasn't. With one flick of the wrist he wrenched the Star Devil out of her plunge and sent her scudding, a hundred feet up, over the jungle rim. Friday was gaping. Harkness, still numb from the dive, foolishly staring; and then the brigand bared ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fifteen minutes to hide her brandy and send word to the braves, and I counted off the time to myself, trying to numb my anxiety. But among savages news runs underground as well as over, and I had scarcely covered half the space that I had set for myself before the crowd began to disappear. It slipped away like water between the fingers, and in a moment there remained only the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... true indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself suddenly feeling ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sneeringly. "As you were going to the other mansion, you told me to stick them over the door. I was afraid lest any one else should spoil them, as they were being pasted, so I climbed up a high ladder and was ever so long in putting them up myself; my hands are even now numb ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who was to become his second wife—his one real wife, as his friends reckoned—the whole ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... consultation passed on. We again entered the snowy woods, which were dimly lighted up by an aurora behind us—a strange, mysterious, ghastly illumination, like the phosphorescent glow of a putrefying world. We were desperately cold, our very blood freezing in our veins, and our limbs numb and torpid. To keep entirely awake was impossible. We talked incessantly, making random answers, as continual fleeting dreams crossed the current of our consciousness. A heavy thump on the back was pardoned by him who received it, and a punch between the eyes ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... years to come, When he shares of Sorrow's store,— When his feet are chill and numb, When his cross is burdensome, And his heart is sore: Would that he could hear once more The gentle voice he used to hear— Divine with mother love and cheer— Calling from yonder spirit shore: "All, ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... way up to his daughters' room, and approached the bed in which were the seven little boys. All were sleeping, with the exception of little Tom Thumb, who was numb with fear when he felt the ogre's hand, as it touched the head of each brother ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... were painfully marked, and his arms felt numb and helpless, but his first thought, as soon as the ligatures that had held him were ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... calmed her—or probably she grew calm, in spite of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... tea-party seemed to Adam, whose faculties were at their utmost intensity, like a terrible dream. As for poor Mimi, she was so overwrought both with present and future fear, and with horror at the danger she had escaped, that her faculties were numb. However, she was braced up for a trial, and she felt assured that whatever might come she would be able to go through with it. Sir Nathaniel seemed just as usual—suave, dignified, and thoughtful—perfect master ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. "No, I guess I didn't really expect anything. But I believe the facts. ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... on my brain and a despairing numbness at my heart, making everything seem vain and unreal. Please do not blame me. Asking me to feel is like requiring sight of the blind. I've lost the faculty. I have suffered so much that I have become numb, if not dead. The shadows of the past mingle with the shadows of to-day. Only you seem real in your strong, vain effort, and as far as I can suffer any more it pains me to see you thus waste yourself on a hopeless shadow of a woman. I told you I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... believe me if you like, but when a fellow's almost starving it isn't disagreeable to keep quiet. Yes, one gets numb amidst silence; it's like an inside coating that stills the gnawing of the stomach a bit. Ah, that Chaine! You haven't a notion of his peasant nature. When he had spent his last copper without earning the fortune he expected by painting, he went into trade, a petty trade, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... particular Philosophy or Ethic, mostly some passing fashion of the day, which does not reach the deepest laws and standards even of its own domain, and which, if taken as Religion, will gravely numb and mar the power and character of such religious perception as may still remain in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... myself up with blanket and robe as I would, it was impossible to keep the swirling snow from coming in. I called the dogs to me and made them lie on my feet and up against my side, and so long as they lay still I could get a little warmth, but whenever they rose and left me I grew numb again. But Hans in his sleeping-bag was snoring. The bag is the only bedding on the coast. Added to the physical discomfort of that sleepless, shivery night was some mental uneasiness. There was no telling to what height the storm might rise, nor ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... without a fraction of a moment's respite. Add to this the most soul-splitting crash you have ever heard and the sound as of a gale of wind shrieking through the telegraph wires. It will give you a little idea of what it was like under this bombardment. It seemed to numb one's very brain. What it must have been like in the German position is beyond me to conceive. We were certainly giving Fritz ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... rather it shall call forth to the light of heaven a new, richer soul of life out of the ruins of a storm-tossed civilization. It shall, it must, it will conquer new provinces for the majesty of the noble German spirit (Deutschheit) that never will grow chill and numb, as the Roman did. Otherwise—and even though unnumbered billions flowed into the Rhine—the expense of this war would ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... writer of the books in question not only speaks of Moses in the third person, but also bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, "Moses talked with God;" "The Lord spoke with Moses face to face; " "Moses was the meekest of men" (Numb. xii:3); "Moses was wrath with the captains of the host; "Moses, the man of God, "Moses, the servant of the Lord, died;" "There was never a prophet in Israel like unto Moses," &c. (34) On the other ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... conscious that he leaned over the barrier of the bridge watching me, for I saw the point of his cigar, but that was soon swallowed up in the darkness, and I saw nothing more. The cold was so intense that my fingers had grown numb as I talked with Holgate, and I could hardly feel the iron; moreover, my feet were like lumps of ice and seemed to rest on nothing as they met the rungs. This, I imagine, was the reason of my mishap. At any rate, I missed a rung, lost my catch, and tumbled ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved without speaking, and his face assumed a look ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... answered Norris abruptly. "Do you think I have not watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is numb. 'Heavy as frost,' Wordsworth said, and that's the weightiest figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change him. In three months she has him well started. Isn't it a pity that the worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick's very volatility ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... is, only six pages left to read.' But, only fancy, I chanced to glance before me, and, sitting in the front row, side by side, were a general with a ribbon on his breast and a bishop. The poor beggars were numb with boredom; they were staring with their eyes wide open to keep awake, and yet they were trying to put on an expression of attention and to pretend that they understood what I was saying and liked it. 'Well,' I thought, 'since you like ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... slash with his knife from outside. Danny moved quickly—not quick enough. The knife point caught his arm this time. He felt his hand go numb. His own knife clattered to the deck as blood oozed ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... sudden at these words, the princely youth Leaps on the scaly back that slumbers, still Unconscious of his foot, yet not for ruth, But numb'd to dulness by the fairy skill Of that sweet music (all more wild and shrill For intense fear) that charm'd him as he lay— Meanwhile the lover nerves his desperate will, Held some short throbs by natural dismay, Then down the serpent-track ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wholesome flesh decay, And the willing nerve be numb, And the lips lack breath to say, "No, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... plight, and with an effort shook his senses back into his head. It was not precisely a time when he could afford to let his wits go wool-gathering. And he realised that he had been, in a way, more than half-asleep as he walked; even now he was drowsy, his eyes were heavy, his feet leaden—and numb with cold besides. He had no least notion of what distance he might have travelled or whether he had walked in a straight line or a circle; but when he thought to glance over his shoulder—there was ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... passed over half the road, which lay for the most part down the flat along the Chilcoot River. In fact, we crossed this stream again and again. In places there were bridges, but most of the crossings were fords where it was necessary to wade through the icy water above our shoe tops. Our legs, numb and weary, threw off this chill with greater pain each time. As the night fell we could only see the footpath by the dim shine of its surface patted smooth by the moccasined feet of the Indian packers. At last I walked with a sort of mechanical action ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... visual shade of some one lost, But he, the spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb; Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. In Memoriam, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... mine, aged about twenty-five, was mesmerized by Lafontaine, for a full half hour, and, no effect appearing to be produced, I told him he might rise from the chair, and leave us. On getting up, he looked uneasy and said his arms wore numb. They were perfectly paralysed from the elbows downwards, and numb to the shoulders. This was the more satisfactory, that neither the man himself, nor Lafontaine, nor the four or five spectators, expected this result. The operator triumphantly drew a pin and stuck-it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... feel like cold storage. A break in happiness is sometimes hard to mend. The blossom does not return to the tree after the storm, no matter how beautiful the sunshine; and the awful fear of the faintest echo of past sorrow made my heart as numb as a snowball. To the old terror of loneliness was added fear for Jack's safety. But I did not do what you naturally would prophesy. After seeing the look on Jack's face I changed my mind, and my protest was the silent ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... over her a sense of peace—numb, silent peace—wholly unlike the satisfaction which had flooded her in her own room or during the earlier ecstasy before the altar. She raised her eyes slowly till they rested on the shrine where the body of ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... flow, the heavy sobs were stilled, her aching and bruised body felt numb with the pain in her heart. But outwardly she was more calm. She rose from her knees, and hiding the small cross in the bosom of her gown, she drew forth the letter and read it ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb." ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... into a corner and choke at least a portion of the truth out of his unwilling throat. I had hardly reached this decision when the door opened, and he stood there gazing at me with sphinx-like stupidity. I arose to my feet, gripping the back of a chair, but the utter vacancy in that face seemed to numb action. There was no positive expression, no dim glimmer of interest in his features; the shining bald head alone gave him a grotesque appearance, restraining me from violence. I could as easily have warred ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... empty. I heard the water pour into it like a little cataract. The next cell above, and indeed all the cells in that direction were flooded like my own. Of course it was no trouble for me to keep afloat; my only danger was that the intense coldness of the water would numb my body beyond recovery. Still, I had been accustomed to hardships of that kind before now, in the frozen North. At last the gentle roar of the waterfall ceased, and I realized my cell was emptying itself. When I reached my shelf again, I stretched my limbs back and forth as strenuously ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had accepted my representations. I tried to pull myself together, for I felt Mr. Rogers' keen eyes burning into the back of my head, appraising the effect of his words and measuring the degree of my numb terror. He saw, in spite of all my efforts to appear calm, that I knew I had been given ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... held my head, lying on the rim of the basket, was already numb; but the prickling could no longer rouse me, and half-dead with weariness, I fell asleep. Uncle Eb has told me since, that I tumbled out of the basket once, and that he had a time of it getting me in again, but I remember nothing more of that ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... brutality, but there was left in the woman no spark of spirit to resist. With neither tongue nor eye did she make any response, and her shufflings back and forth were neither hastened nor delayed by the pleasure of her lord. Her bearing was that of one who has suffered until the senses are numb, who has drunk the last dregs of bitterness, for whom no possible change of condition can be worse. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... and coming back into the room, sank weak and trembling into a chair. A horror grew upon her until the beads of perspiration stood upon her face. Her hands grew numb and useless, and the skin of her head seemed stiff and frozen. Her ears were strained to catch any sound, and out of the silence there came many strange noises to torment her ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... of his way beyond a numb feeling of pleasure when it grew steeper and rougher. He had left the trail long since, but he was stayed by no obstacle, was arrested by no barrier of Nature's make. A lizard asleep on a tiny ledge of rock, jutting ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 8. Medeba (Numb. xxi. 30), and [Israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years. But there ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold; but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover, to tread on the top end of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... in a whirl of black-and-yellow coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up again and again. "Now! now! now!" said Kaa, making feints with his head that even Mowgli's quick hand could not turn aside. "Look! I touch thee here, Little Brother! Here, and here! Are thy hands numb? Here again!" ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... head, rubbed his eyes, and tried to stretch his limbs, now numb with the damp dullness of the night. Potts had run to him and was asking the "matter," with dilated eyes and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... ran even higher, and at night it became very cold; but still they did not dare to leave off baling for an instant, though their legs and arms were numb ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... was on my nail makes my tongue tingle and feel numb," he remarked, still rubbing. "Let us go back again. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... no existence but in memory) to bring her round out of some wilful mood—and such moods were common enough now! Frequently she was sullenly indifferent to the feelings of others—not from any unkindness, but because her heart seemed numb and stony, and incapable of sympathy. Then afterwards her self-reproach was terrible—in the dead of night, when no one saw it. With a strange perversity, the only intelligence she cared to hear, the only sights she cared to see, were the circumstances ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and as it were all numb with his loss, Mr. Tebrick got up and went within doors, leaving his dear fox lying near where she ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... strong-lunged Cogoran could wind his horn, the hearts of all the company grew numb with fear as across the water the low, clear strains of a warning-song sounded from the haunted gray-stone,—the mystic rock of Carrick-lee, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... mediocre performance. When the curtain went down he felt that he now had a subject to inspire his Muse forever. He quitted the theatre in a state of intense excitement, and rode homeward in a state of numb ecstasy. Notwithstanding his sentimental mood, Pen was so normal in mind and body that he slept as soundly as ever, but when he awoke he felt himself to be many years older than yesterday. He dressed himself in some of his finest ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... n.; stupefy, stun. Adj. insensible, unfeeling, senseless, impercipient[obs3], callous, thick-skinned, pachydermatous; hard, hardened; case hardened; proof, obtuse, dull; anaesthetic; comatose, paralytic, palsied, numb, dead. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of numb wonderment, that it was strange he should feel no more compassion for the object stretched out here, dumb, dead, bruised, and bloody, which so short a space since he had seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and graced with learning and subtle insight; now ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... missed, but he immediately followed it with another. It struck, for my right foot felt as if it had been hit with a club, and grew numb. Four more shots came in quick succession. One of them—which I cannot tell—struck the same foot and broke the bridge, as I knew from the immediate loss of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... slept, and now, though her body was numb with weariness, her mind kept up a feverish activity. She was bent on excusing Godwin, and the only way in which she could do so was by arraigning the world for its huge dishonesty. In a condition between slumber and waking, she seemed to plead for him before a circle ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... A break in happiness is sometimes hard to mend. The blossom does not return to the tree after the storm, no matter how beautiful the sunshine; and the awful fear of the faintest echo of past sorrow made my heart as numb as a snowball. To the old terror of loneliness was added fear for Jack's safety. But I did not do what you naturally would prophesy. After seeing the look on Jack's face I changed my mind, and my protest was the silent kind that says so much. It was lost! Already Jack ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Chester spectators sat with a numb feeling clutching their hearts, though they tried their best to assume a confidence they could hardly feel. Their boys were really novices at the business, and it was to be expected, they reasoned, trying to bolster up their waning courage, that at first things ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... to her, and felt the grip of small, cool, very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had the agitation, the flutter, the tantalization ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... twenty-two years of age, "a jealous Nigger oman" "tricked" her. The "spell" cast by this "bad oman" affected the victim's left arm and hand. Both became numb and gave her great "misery". A peculiar feature of this visitation of the "conjurer's" spite was: if a friend or any one massaged or even touched the sufferer's afflicted arm or hand, that person was also similarly stricken the following day, always recovering, however, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... was far advanced. A cold wind was beginning to moan among the almost leafless trees, and George West's teeth chattered, and his ill-clad limbs grew numb as he walked along the fields leading to Millwood. "Lucky it's a dark night; this fine wind will fan the flame nicely," ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... what he intended to say. Once free from the powerful current, the giant looked at his numb hands, and then, seeming to think that Eradicate was the cause of it all, he sprang at the colored man with a yell. But Eradicate did not stay to see what would happen. With a howl of terror, he raced out of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... homeward march. The sky was low and leaden, and a biting wind blew from the south. It drove the snow-dust into the men's smarting faces and froze their breath on their furs. Their hands stiffened on the sledge-traces and their feet got numb. The cold got worse when snow began to fall and when they camped one night Thirlwell noted that they had used more food than he thought. The transport of provisions is perhaps the main difficulty of a winter journey in the bush, for men who brave the arctic cold must ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... dark and narrow platform. It was a black night with a bitter wind which carried with it a suspicion of dampness, which might have been rain, or might have been the drift of the neighbouring ocean. Kate was numb with the cold, and even her gaunt companion stamped his feet and shivered ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold; the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months; and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... horror crept back into his face but receded when he saw Terry standing by him. Still faint and sick he struggled to his feet, leaning against the trunk of the banyan and stamping his feet weakly to restore the still numb legs. Terry helped him hobble over to where the Bogobos, who had come up at the shots, were grouped about the dead monster. Lindsey, kneeling to examine the head of the great reptile, struck a match to point out the jagged wounds ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, and there he stopped to repair his dress. He was only ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... and custom: whoever failed to fulfil them was doomed to perish or to become an outcast; implicit obedience was the condition of survival. The tendency of such regulation was necessarily to suppress all mental and moral differentiation, to numb personality, to establish one uniform and unchanging type of character; and such was the actual result. To this day every Japanese mind reveals the lines of that antique mould by which the ancestral mind was compressed ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... man followed at his heels. They did not remove their foot-gear, though the water was icy cold—so cold that their ankles ached and their feet went numb. In places the water dashed against their knees, and both men staggered ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... this very room to bid farewell to her dying mother. She could see the white linen, the white muslin, surrounding the pale, wan wistful face, with the large, longing eyes, yearning for one more touch of the little soft warm child, whom she was too feeble to clasp in her arms, already growing numb in death. Many a time when Molly had been in this room since that sad day, had she seen in vivid fancy that same wan wistful face lying on the pillow, the outline of the form beneath the clothes; and the girl had not shrunk from such visions, but rather cherished them, as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the sweet face of Jeanne d'Ys and kissed her, and with all my strength lifted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then bending, I tore the viper from my ankle and set my heel upon its head. I remember feeling weak and numb,—I remember falling to the ground. Through my slowly glazing eyes I saw Jeanne's white face bending close to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out I still felt her arms about my neck, and her soft ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... as sunshine cheers Limbs numb'd by nightly cold, e'en thus my look Unloos'd her tongue, next in brief space her form Decrepit rais'd erect, and faded face With love's own hue illum'd. Recov'ring speech She forthwith warbling such a strain began, That I, how loth soe'er, could scarce have held Attention from the song. "I," ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the crowding people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a great crowd of people behind her, inside ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... you, dear heart—sweet heart loved all these years— Will recognize the passion of the strain: Who eats the lotos-flower of Love with tears, Will know the rapture of that numb, vague pain Which thrills the heart and stirs the languid brain. All day amid the toiling throng we strive, While in our heart these sacred, sweet loves thrive, And in choice hours we show them, white and cool Like lilies floating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... it, and then he lay still, panting. After a while—we both wanted water—I crawled away to where I heard a running stream. It must have been farther than I thought, and I couldn't be quick because so much of me was numb and had to be dragged. But I reached the water and filled a canteen I had found on the way. As soon as I could manage it I went back to him with the water, but I must have been gone a long time. He wasn't there. But as I crawled near where he had ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... hatch or nothing. He thought it was the right one, but couldn't be sure. He could no longer see. His vision had gone completely. The pain was a numb thing now, far away, hardly a part of himself. Maybe Mayhem was absorbing the pain-sensation for him, he thought. Maybe Mayhem took the pain and suffered with it in the shared body so he, Larry, ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... then a hum of exultation ran through their ranks as they realised that their tougher, harder, stronger man held the vantage, after all. Neither of the men showed much sign of punishment. Small gloves crush and numb, but they do not cut. One of the Master's eyes was even more flush with his cheek than Nature had made it. Montgomery had two or three livid marks upon his body, and his face was haggard, save for that pink spot ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lived in garrets? And are not all poets young even if their beards are white? Round and round the poet climbs, up these bare creaking flights to the very top. There is a stove to be lighted—unless the woodbox fails—a sloping ceiling and a window huddled to the floor. The poet's fingers may be numb. Although the inkpot be full, his stomach may be empty. And yet from this window, lately, a poem was cast upward to the moon. And youth and truth still rhyme in these upper rooms. Linda's voice is still the music of a sonnet. Still do the roses fade, and love is always like the constant ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... a long time, and there was no sign of the wolves coming near us. It was very cold, but our furs kept in our warmth. By and by I fell asleep—which was not dangerous so long as I kept warm, and I thought the cold must wake me before it began to numb me. And as 'I slept I dreamed; but my dream did not change the place; the forest, the tree I was in, all my surroundings were the same. I even dreamed that I came awake, and saw everything about me just as it was. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... fly on the seaward side. Then Torode's dark eyes met mine as he peered cautiously round the corner. He fired instantly, and my footing was too precarious to let me even duck. My left arm tingled and went numb, but before he could draw a pistol I stepped to safer ground and launched my rock at him. It caught him lower than I intended, but that was the result of my insecure foothold. I meant it for his head. It took ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... on the hard-beaten track, splashed now in the soft mud and threw the turbid drops over her dripping habit and into her storm-washed face. A quarter of a mile more, and the cold streams poured down her back and chilled her slight frame to the marrow. Her hands were numb and could scarce cling to the dripping reins. Tears came into her eyes despite herself. Still the wild cloud-burst hurled its swift torrents of icy rain upon them. She could scarcely see her horse's head, through the gray, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... and the idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... witch-burner would draw blood with his knuckles; but he drew the line at the sword. The state of public feeling upon duelling Roland very well knew; and as he thought of Aster, with her sunny hair and glorious, yearning eyes, and the exile that lay before him, a numb feeling of despair began to gather about his heart. He was able to persuade himself that she would look upon the unfortunate affair as necessary for the assertion of his honour; but how could he hope for any ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... When he had at first returned to his cell his mind was intensely alive, and a thousand plans were flashing through his brain, a thousand questions occurred to him which demanded an answer. Now, however, that numb, dull feeling which ever follows such experiences possessed him. After all, what mattered? Mary Bolitho could never be his wife, and if Fate had decided upon his death, die he must. Indeed, he did not seem to care very much. It seemed as if, for the time being, his nature had become ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... had a good long talk with her that very afternoon, tellin' her that I had found out a lot o' stuff about the remnant she was thinkin' o' marryin', an' tried to get her to test him out an' find out where he'd come from an' what he was; but she seemed numb, an' told me that she would not think it friendly if I said anything evil against the man she had to marry. I couldn't understand her, she didn't seem like the same old Barbie; but the more I hinted the more froze-up she got, so ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... his door. The man looked cowed, but there was no shame in his face, and no sense of sin. It was unpleasant to be caught by the preacher, and he was frightened by that awful word, which it was the constant effort of his numb, helpless brain ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... again the cards with big coloured birds on them that he had got at Sunday-school for regular attendance, and which were always kept between its pages; and while he mused on these things with sudden tenderness, there came back again the same numb feeling of sorrow that he had had when he came home, a heartbroken boy, from his mother's funeral that day so many years ago, and buried his face in the sweet-mary leaves in the old Bible, and blotted its pages with his tears; for it seemed more like her than ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... aliquot frustra antehac tentatae, cum censura brevi Doctrinae Wallisianae de Motu, London 1671 in 4to. There is an account of this book in the Philosophical Transactions, Numb. 72, for the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... (which was the only garment I had on my back, and the hair chiefly worn off) was frozen stiff round my knees, like a hoop, as were my snow-shoes and shoe clouts to my feet. Thus I marched the whole day without fire or food. At first I was in great pain, then my flesh became numb, and at times I felt extremely sick and thought I could not travel one foot farther; but I wonderfully revived again. After long travelling I felt very drowsy, and had thoughts of sitting down, which had I done, without ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... time I judged we had reached the top of The Mountains, the wind blew a hurricane. Powerful gusts came tearing through the trees, whirling the snow upon us in great smothering heaps. The chaise was full. My hands grew numb, and I began slapping them upon my knees. Margaret threw off the blanket with a jerk, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the intellect moved slower, its functions growing numb, the idea of self dwindled. Annixter no longer considered himself; no longer considered the notion of marriage from the point of view of his own comfort, his own wishes, his own advantage. He realised that in his newfound desire to make her happy, he was sincere. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... speed. I could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying! And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... an hour. A filmy mist rose from the surface of the water, and drifted by their faces like the brushing of cold wings. For lack of motion hand and feet felt numb. Mid the pitch-black shadows, snug in by the bank, no man could see the face of his fellow, though the trio would have given a fortune to read their guide's. Not a word was spoken. Once, when a deep breath of impatience escaped him, Neal heard the folds of his coat rub each other, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the thermometer keeps ranging between 60 deg. and 70 deg., three times a-day. What refreshment in the very sound—Soaking! Old bones wax dry—nerves numb—sinews stiff—flesh frail—and there is a sad drawback on the Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my bridle-hand quite numb.... At a slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable under other circumstances, I would ride about for hours together at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit, and ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... at once, but at first it was with a chastened people. Audrey herself felt numb and unreal. She moved mechanically with the shifting crowd, looking overhead as a captured German plane flew by, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. But by mid-day the sober note of the crowds had risen to a ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the ashes, numb with the cold, all of a sudden a new warmth filled the lodge. The South Wind gently opened the door, and a young chieftain, with a face like the sun, entered. He saw the dying hunter and the boy, and he warmed them back to life. When they were stronger, he helped ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... "I'm still numb," said Cochrane. "Multiple sclerosis of the brain-cells, I suppose. Let me just take your ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "Numb-head!" muttered the sheriff, pounding on the side of the cabin with his whip-stock. "Come out and show yourself! We know you're in there, and it's no ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scarcely pucker up his mouth to whistle. His feet were numb and his fingers tingled, and the wind sang in his ears till he was as ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... I know it well Lord Warwick, blame me not, 'Tis loue I beare thy glories make me speake: But in this troublous time, what's to be done? Shall we go throw away our Coates of Steele, And wrap our bodies in blacke mourning Gownes, Numb'ring our Aue-Maries with our Beads? Or shall we on the Helmets of our Foes Tell our Deuotion with reuengefull Armes? If for the last, say I, and to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... youth's eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of a jaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous weakness and the muscles of his arms felt numb and bloodless. His hands, too, seemed large and awkward as if he was wearing invisible mittens. And there was a great uncertainty about ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark place was numb. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... resentment at the levity with which he had been banished from power, and he put on no airs of theatrical philosophy. He would have been untrue to the sincerity of his character, if he had affected indifference or satisfaction at seeing his beneficent hopes for ever destroyed. But chagrin did not numb his industry or his wide interests. Condorcet went to visit him some months after his fall. He describes Turgot as reading Ariosto, as making experiments in physics, and as having forgotten all that had ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... should be committed to it in the presence of all the brethren, the chief reading the burial service as the live body was sepulchred. Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed in all his extremities, like one newly ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and over, pausing between the lines, and straining as it were every sense lest he might not catch the rapt whisper of her spirit, but only the distant howls of coyotes answered him. His body became cold and numb from sheer exhaustion, and at last his knees bent under him and he sank down upon the ground, still facing the teepee. Unconsciousness overtook him, and in his sleep ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... some who had been wrecked were clinging to a rocky shore, and trying to clamber up out of the cold spray and surf to warmth and safety; would it not be a cruel thing to go along the shore and unloosen the poor numb hands however gently and scientifically it might be done? Loosing that hold means sinking to unknown depths. With complacent self-approval and with learned Athenian airs, many of the savans of the day are virtually guilty of this ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... forth and fight France," he said at last; and with that resolve the sense of numb lethargy and despair fell away from him like a worn-out garment, and his ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... against the balustrade all numb, watching them depart. I saw Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim and graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... magistrates, supreme and subordinate; and discovers, that people are not left to their own will in this matter. It is God's direction, that the person advanced to rule, must be a man in whom is the spirit; Numb. xxvii, 18; which Deut. xxxiv, 9, interprets to be the spirit of wisdom, (i.e.) the spirit of government, fitting and capacitating a man to discharge the duties of the magistratical office, to the glory of ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... to be held at the bungalow that night, at which he was to be asked to deliver over to Rasula's committee the papers, the receipts and the memoranda that he had accumulated during his months of employment in their behalf. She had a feeling of dread—a numb, sweet feeling that she could not explain, except that under all of it lay the proud consciousness that he was a man who had courage, a man who was ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... stable and corrals, and his soul sickened at the thought of facing that derisive bunch of punchers, with their fiendish grins and their barbed tongues. But he was hungry, and his arms had reached the limit of prickly sensations and were numb to his shoulders. He shook his hair back from his beaded forehead, cast a wary glance at the silent stables, set his jaw, and went on up the hill to the mess-house, wishing tardily that he had waited until they were off at work again, when he might intimidate ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the waste area, taking deep breaths, resting, my mind numb. Then gradually it was borne in on me that the Plaza itself looked rather more empty-sided than it should. A cold hand gripped my heart. I began to skirt the smouldering embers of the shanties and wooden warehouses, trying to ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... father so that she could look at him. And at last she saw into his heart. "If I had only known," she said, and sat numb and stunned. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... in the dry reeds That lift their withered arms, a skeleton host, Long after winter and her aching frost Are gone, and rattle in the spring's soft breeze Dry bones, as if to daunt the budding trees And warn them of the summer's wrath to come. Still sat the bird, as fast asleep or numb With cold, her head half-buried in her breast, With close-shut eyes: a dead bird on the nest, Arrow-shot—for behold! a wound she bore Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more, Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one, Light-moving ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Really she had not thought of it that way at all. There was no thinking connected with her decision. The dumb hours she had spent staring up the air-shaft had resolved themselves with the passing years into a strange, numb will to do. There was the light and she must reach it. Indeed the Thing there behind the narrow walls of her chest gave her no alternative. She did not think she wanted to be an actress. It was a long time after that before she knew even what an actress was. She did not know ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head—was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's arm that was ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the steeps with pausing foot she moves, The pitying Dryads shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek succeeds, And pearls of ice bestrew the glittering ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... from the sand, she was so dazed and distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a mile away when ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the same time, each man having two pots of paint and two sets of brushes. The wind was not blowing in sudden gusts, but swept by in a strong, persistent current that penetrated their clothing and left them trembling and numb with cold. It blew from the right; and it was all the worse on that account, because the right arm, being in use, left that side of the body fully exposed. They were able to keep their left hands in their trousers pockets and the left arm ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters's friendship. She had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter's friendship—that was more than love—it would endure, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... as silently as he had come. Wingate cut the knots and released the hands of his two prisoners. Their fingers were numb and helpless, however. Rees picked up the bread with his teeth from the table. Phipps tried but failed. Wingate held the tumbler of brandy and water once more to ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sensitiveness; it was impossible to work so hard and be an adventurer—to be anything, in fact, but a machine. Hal had heard that phrase of contempt, "the inertia of the masses," and had wondered about it. He no longer wondered, he knew. Could a man be brave enough to protest to a pit-boss when his body was numb with weariness? Could he think out a definite conclusion as to his rights and wrongs, and back his conclusion with effective action, when his mental faculties were paralysed by such ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... disappeared, while Ida shivered as she glanced about her. She could no longer see the shelter she had left, and she stood alone in the midst of a tremendous desolation of rock and snow, with the valley yawning, a vast dusky pit, beneath her feet. It was appallingly lonely, and she was numb with cold, while, since she was sure that she could not climb back to her companions unassisted, there was only one person on whom she could rely, and that was the packer, who had insisted on her doing what he thought fit. When he came back she had put on the jacket, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that Carlyle had ever heard from mortals. He admitted that Wordsworth was "a genuine man, but intrinsically and extrinsically a ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a fish, well known elsewhere, and also called elsewhere, the Numb-fish and Cramp fish. For the Australian species, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... would that be? She must have come quite a distance now, and the thought cheered her. The ankle was beginning to give an occasional twinge and growing a little weak; in fact, it was feeling rather numb. Nothing to be alarmed about, she told herself. What else could she expect? It was sure to be hurting before ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... recollections, she lay staring at the dark—Martha's prediction, based on Stephen's, belief, that Felix would kill Dalton at sight, rose up in her mind, and with it came another great fear—one that, for a moment, stopped her heart from beating and left her numb. In the quick succession of blows that Martha had dealt, she had not fully grasped this part of the story. Now she did. That her husband was capable of it she fully believed. Quiet, reticent men like Felix—men ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... relief at Penfield's departure was succeeded by an almost numb dejection. The revelations of Horace in regard to Marcia and the photographs had, to his own horror, occasioned no surprise in him, and the rest of Penfield's news had sunk into insignificance ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... suddenly flushed all over her blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great shivering sigh ran through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of repentance and regret as the darkness fell. She did not stir from her post. The damp of the mist was unnoticed, the chill of the air. She was waiting for that return which was to claim her to an earthly hell, than which she could conceive no greater—waiting like the condemned prisoner, numb, helpless, fearful lest the end ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... hesitated. She knew the danger of the stripes of yellow—the yellow flag, so to speak. The fear of it is upon every insect that lives. At the same time, the queen was undoubtedly yet numb. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... binding on our forefathers who made and took them, yet they can be no way obligatory on us who were never personally engaged therein." But let such for certainty know, that as these solemn vows have their foundation in scripture, Numb. xxx. 7. Deut. v. 3. Josh. xxiv. 25. Psal. lxxvi. 11. Isa. xix. 18. Jer l. 5. Gal. iii. 15. The duties engaged to therein being purely theological and moral, they must have respect unto all circumstances and periods of time, and besides their form being formalis ratio, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, Bursts at the last about you. Clangour. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... "Very numb, but I'll be all right in a very short time. My wrists hurt; your thread is very tight. My arms always swell. Please give me a drink ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... commands the multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though they fight ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... quarter past one the door opened, and the two gentlemen came out; they got into the cab without a word, and told Jerry where to drive, that was nearly two miles. My legs were numb with cold, and I thought I should have stumbled. When the men got out they never said they were sorry to have kept us waiting so long, but were angry at the charge; however, as Jerry never charged more than was his due, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... raised his head, rubbed his eyes, and tried to stretch his limbs, now numb with the damp dullness of the night. Potts had run to him and was asking the "matter," with dilated eyes and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... mole, a few doltish peasants by the landing gaping at the great trireme. No others greeted them, for the terror of Mardonius's Tartar raiders had driven all but the poorest to some safe shelter. The oars slipped from numb fingers; the anchor plunged into the green water; the mainsail rattled down the mast. Men sat on the benches motionless, gulping down the clear air. They had done their part. The rest lay in the hands of the gods, and in the speed of him who two days since ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of the morning a weary commuter, numb from the cold and the cramped position in which he had tried to sleep, crawled out of the train and floundered through the heavy snow-drifts to the nearest telegraph station. This is the message he handed ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... yet she knew she would not keep it. She argued passionately with herself, a prey to an inward dread; for no matter how firmly she forced resolution upon resolution, they all seemed to melt in her soul like snow on a blazing fire. Then, determined to rid herself of a numb sensation of powerlessness, and achieve the end she desired, she said, 'I'll tell you, Emily, what I'll do. I'll not stay here; I will go away. Let me go away, dear, and then it will be ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... numb," he said, in surprised apology to his host. A moment later he shivered violently, beads of sweat burst out on his forehead, and the color swept from his face. He started up, staring wildly about him; he tried to speak, but his words stumbled into incoherent babbling. It was all so sudden, his ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the inconsistencies of her words two salient facts stood out to Ishmael—she was unhappy, and through him. His own pain lay numb, a thing to be realised when he roamed the fields alone, and still more intimately known when he had it for bed-and-hearth fellow in his dreary house. Nature has provided that a great blow shall always stun for a time; ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... grapple with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from helmet and coat, high upon the ladder, perhaps incased in solid ice and frozen to the rungs, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... kinds of feeling had been chasing around inside of me that I had numb spots in my emotional ornaments and intellectual organs. The room cleared out of everybody but Doctor Kirby and Colonel Tom and me. But the sound of the crowd going into the road, and their footsteps ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to flow, the heavy sobs were stilled, her aching and bruised body felt numb with the pain in her heart. But outwardly she was more calm. She rose from her knees, and hiding the small cross in the bosom of her gown, she drew forth the letter and read it ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the fight, stumbled and fell. Before he could rise Jasper had whirled, with one of the Winchesters above his head and his face aflame with fury. Asking no mercy, Rome hid his face with one arm and waited, stricken faint all at once, and numb. One report struck his ears, muffled, whip-like. A dull wonder came to him that the Lewallen could have missed at such close range, and he waited for another. Some one shouted—a shrill hallo. A loud laugh followed; a light seemed breaking before Rome's eyes, and he lifted his head. Jasper was ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... companions. It was the hour when, at home, their fathers would send them lovingly to bed, when their mothers would tuck them comfortably under the covers and kiss them good-night; and here they lay, clad in tatters, numb with cold, pinched with hunger; pictures of misery and woe. Heart-rending were the sighs, bitter the complaints, in which the poor lads gave ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... inn where they had managed to meet and had spent a long rainy day together. She had told him—in a queer little strained voice—about the waiting—and waiting—and waiting. And about the certainty of her belief in his coming. And the tiny foot which grew numb. And the slow lump climbing in her throat. And the rush under the shrubs—and the beating hands—and cries—and of the rose dress and socks and crushed hat covered with mud. She had not been piteous or dramatic. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hour before, and were struggling along the line to the nearest station. Harold got down on the farther side, which was free of snow, and looked into all the carriages. No one was there, till, in a first-class one, he beheld an old gentleman, well wrapped up indeed, but numb, stiff, and dazed with the sleep out of which he ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rosemary never knew, for her senses were dulled. She did not hear their preparations for departure, but saw the boat swinging out into the current, with the sunset making golden glory of the river and of Edith's hair. When the sound of the oars ceased, she rose, numb and cold, and came out into the open space. She steadied herself for a moment upon the rock ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... swerved back into the road two feet clear of a grey pile of stone. Only then did Christopher know her fingers were gripped between his hands and the steel wheel. He brought the car to a standstill and her released hand fell white and numb to her side. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed before her, oblivious even of her ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... yet so inhumanly regardless! He had no regard for her. Why didn't she revolt? Why couldn't she? She was as if bewitched. She couldn't fight against her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed to her beautiful, so beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must she see him beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the old ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... daughter's hand. As a slight hurt will cause a man the greatest pain, and a severe injury produce no greater, so will the apprehensions of a trivial ordeal equal in effect those of a matter of life and death; there being a limit to possible sensation, beyond which nature leaves us happily numb. Sometimes, upon occasion, Tom smiled, but with a stiffness of countenance; when he laughed, it was in a short, jerky, mechanical manner. As for me, I was in different mood from that preceding my own first trial of arms: I was now overcast in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the metal disc, the shin and muscles, which before were numb, regained their normal states, and the return of sensation preceded the cure, and was an indispensable condition. One can obtain exactly the same results with discs composed of inert substances. An old-fashioned ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Hal had not noticed in the machine before, brought his rifle butt down over Hal's head. But the lad's quick eye had seen the descending weapon, and his upraised arm warded off the blow. His left arm, however, fell to his side numb, and he stumbled ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... of how I finally left the house, or of what passed between my uncle and myself on our way home. I was numb with the shock, and neither my intelligence nor my feelings were any longer active. I recall but one impression, and that was the effect made on me by my old home on our arrival there, as of something new and strange; so much had happened, and such changes had taken ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... halls, crouching in fear at the sounds. Eleven o'clock struck, and then twelve with its continued uproar. It seemed a long time before one and then two sounded. Pendleton's limbs were beginning to feel loggy and numb because of the chill and the continued inaction. He had ventured to stir them a little, and was wrapping the heavy blanket more closely about himself, when he felt Ashton-Kirk's ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... productive powers of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled funny; but it ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he doesn't think at all of himself; he always looks out for one still poorer than he is, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... off now, I shall surely be drowned outright!" thought poor Joan, for the pond was deep, she felt her powers were failing her; her hands were numb, her limbs cramped. She knew she could not swim. "Better a dry death than a wet one, it will save my clothes, anyway!" So, letting go her hold of the creature's mane, she was about to let herself slide down, when the wind caught her and carried her right off the ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... along the Chilcoot River. In fact, we crossed this stream again and again. In places there were bridges, but most of the crossings were fords where it was necessary to wade through the icy water above our shoe tops. Our legs, numb and weary, threw off this chill with greater pain each time. As the night fell we could only see the footpath by the dim shine of its surface patted smooth by the moccasined feet of the Indian packers. At last I walked with a sort of mechanical action which was dependent on my subconscious ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... I have been more so." Peter Junior smiled a disarming smile as he looked in his father's face. "I've tramped many a mile on two sound feet when they were so numb from sheer weariness that I could not feel them or know what they were doing. What did you want to ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... veins: he no longer felt numb with the cold. A passion of rage was seething in him, and he longed to attack with fists and heels those curtained windows which now looked like eyes turned mutely and inquiringly ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... to lift at arm's length over the gunwale; that it brings with it considerable water; that the anchor lines carry with them a surprisingly greater quantity of water; that the water is very cold; that said cold water causes the flesh to puff up, the hands to turn numb, and the fingers to ache. This was disagreeable; and Bobby had not been in the habit of continuing to do things after they had ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... not only was he absolutely free from headache, and all the other unpleasant symptoms of which he had complained two hours earlier, but his general condition was also greatly improved, the swelling of the injured limb had subsided, the flesh had recovered its natural colour, the numb feeling had almost disappeared, and now all that remained to remind him of his disagreeable and perilous adventure of the previous night was the smarting and burning sensation of the cauterised wound itself, which he endured with stoical composure, and indeed laughed at as a trifle ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... hot life into you," said the second; "your brain is numb, and your limbs are dead now; but they shall live with a fierce free life. Oh, ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... always. We want to give, to be thanked ourselves, to cheer, to succour, to do some little good ourselves while yet we may. There is a joy in giving generously, just as there is in receiving generously. Yet, there are many moments in each man's life when no gift can numb the dull ache of the inevitable, when nothing, except getting away—somewhere, somehow, and immediately—can stifle the unspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instance can we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men go out into the world to lose their own trouble in administering ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Dr. Chekanhov speaks only of his despair: "A terrible malady beats down on one after another of the inhabitants; it is an epidemic of typhoid caused by the privations which left us numb and weak." In 1892 an epidemic of cholera broke out. In spite of the prayers of his parents, the young man rushes off to the most infected district. One day, he penetrates into an infected hovel. The children are sprawling everywhere, the mother is foolish and ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Ebbo, supporting himself on his elbow, so as to see his brother, who rather dreamily put his hand to his side, and, looking at the fresh blood that immediately dyed it, said, "I do not feel it. This is more numb ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brother has told us, who is as poor as a rat, and yet must read; and so in winter he lies in bed with an empty stomach, until day is far advanced; and he has his book before him, and first he takes out one hand to hold his book, and then, when that is numb with cold, the other. Ah! tongue cannot tell how poorly the man must live; and yet your brother has told me, if he has but a few pounds, he doesn't think at all of himself; he always looks out for one still poorer than he is, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... she slipped away, her arm and shoulder numb, but her heart lighter than it had been for ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... rising higher: forced to keep one position, I was growing stiff and weary, the wind chilled me, and there were ringing noises in my ears: the enthusiasm that had sustained me grew less. Would they ever find me? Glancing downward, I tried to discover lights. In listening I grew numb, the mountains began to reel around me, the moon and the stars danced before me, my senses began to wander. Should I attempt to go forward? Would it not be better to throw myself down? Once more ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... painfully as regarded my wrists; for above them my arms throbbed and burned as if the veins were distended almost to bursting-point, while my hands grew gradually cold and numb, and then became insensible as so much lead. The physical pain, however, was nothing to what I felt mentally. Only an hour or two before I was leading that calm, happy home-life, without a trouble beyond some petty disappointment in the garden or farm or during one ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... mock-Decameron absurd; Boccaccio's garden! how bring that to pass In our bleak clime save under double glass? 70 The moral east-wind of New England life Would snip its gay luxuriance like a knife; Mile-deep the glaciers brooded here, they say, Through aeons numb; we feel their chill to-day. These foreign plants are but half-hardy still, Die on a south, and on a north wall chill. Had we stayed Puritans! They had some heat, (Though whence derived I have my own conceit,) But you have long ago raked up their fires; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... an unequal battle, and I knew they were bearing me down. One of my arms was numb, too; I expect it was from a blow, although I never felt it. I saw the look of murder in their eyes, as little by little they pressed me ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... too faint and dizzy to speak for a moment. His head was numb and he felt certain that several inches of it had been caved in. Putting up his hand, feebly, he was surprised to find the contours of his skull much the same as usual. The stranger propped him against his knee and wiped away a trickle ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she a weak, wretched girl. She raised her face at my touch, and burned in my brain a vision of stricken agony, of horrible soul-pain, which we liken, for want ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... a word that signifies to do—active, it expresses action—transitive, the action passes over from the nominative "printer" to the object "books"—third pers. sing. numb. because the nominative printer is ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... have no quarrel even with the little boys who assist at mass. There is, for instance, a cat in the sacristy of the Frari, which I have often seen in familiar association with the ecclesiastics there, when they came into his room to robe or disrobe, or warm their hands, numb with supplication, at the great brazier in the middle of the floor. I do not think this cat has the slightest interest in the lovely Madonna of Bellini which hangs in the sacristy; but I suspect him of dreadful ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... ashes, numb with the cold, all of a sudden a new warmth filled the lodge. The South Wind gently opened the door, and a young chieftain, with a face like the sun, entered. He saw the dying hunter and the boy, and he warmed them back to life. When they were stronger, he ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... firmly riveted on the goal to be fascinated by any special route leading towards it, and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers' requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy apathy ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one, neither,—down the ledge. I dunno how he done it—he climbs like a cat—seems as if the Old Boy was in it—but half his body he can't move. Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not shakin', ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... rest by the stove, where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do not carry firearms, and during the night, when a lion gave a blood-freezing screech, I wished he were ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... crouched beside him and waited—waited until my legs were cramped, waited until the dampness from the moss struck through the heavy soles of my tenderfoot shoes and chilled my feet; waited until my arm was so numb that it felt like a piece of lead—then, in spite of the danger of incurring Big Pete's displeasure and in spite of my dread of being thought a dude tenderfoot, I changed my position, rubbed life into my arm and assumed an ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... for years and years. The faint, sickly odour of sealing wax must have been distilled from immense sticks of that substance and sprinkled overnight upon the carpets and leather-seated chairs. I breathed and my very limbs felt numb. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... our first meeting, and before it, we were aware of the fate which has overtaken us. We heard it in our hearts, that numb restlessness, that vague disquietude, that prophetic echo which never dies out of ears attuned to the music of destiny ... Love you less, you who are the source of all joy to me? Evelyn, my heart aches and my brain is light with grief, but the terrible certitude persists ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... said nothing; it seemed as if her very life had gone out of her. She was a mere statue now, her mind numb, her heart dead, her very existence a fragile piece of mechanism. But she was looking at Deroulede. That one sense in her had ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the half-mile walk to the Moondaisy. Walk.... Scramble! Uncle Jake seemed to glide from rock to rock, but with two or three stone weight awkwardly perched on my shoulder, the wet running down my neck and an arm going numb, I slithered down the weed-covered slopes in a very breakneck fashion. I rather felt for the bladderheads who refuse to go wrinkling far ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a mile ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... time, and there was no sign of the wolves coming near us. It was very cold, but our furs kept in our warmth. By and by I fell asleep—which was not dangerous so long as I kept warm, and I thought the cold must wake me before it began to numb me. And as 'I slept I dreamed; but my dream did not change the place; the forest, the tree I was in, all my surroundings were the same. I even dreamed that I came awake, and saw everything about me just as it was. I seemed to open my eyes, and look about me ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... uttered or heard. But that inward murmur filled the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary and naked heart dreamed of the warmth of ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... matter. For my restless heart Is numb to sorrow, or to pleasure's touch. Since it must be that we two drift apart, Why, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... him; while my mother slowly bowed down to the ground, slowly rose again, and pressed her fingers firmly to her forehead, her shoulders, and her chest, as she crossed herself. I had not a single idea in my head; I was utterly numb, but I felt something terrible was happening to me.... Death looked me in the face that day and took note ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... terrible look of anguish came; the numb and sickly nausea was upon him, his legs trembled, before his sight was a blurred, whirling mist; all the strength and force and mighty life within him felt ebbing out, yet he struggled bravely. He strained, he panted, he heard the thundering thud of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and lots of landmarks. And then suddenly they drive past some lodge gates, and there—in the middle of the road—stands a dreadful man smoking a cigar with a band round it. All the glory has gone from the drive, and the girl feels numb and sick and mad ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, WITH A HAIR-TRIGGER. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old sensitiveness is becoming numb from want ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... beside the bed, watching the wan but lovely face of the young widow, and tenderly chafing the numb, fair hands which lay so motionless on the coverlet. Children are always sanguine, because of their ignorance of the stern, inexorable realities of the untried future, and Edna could not believe that death would snatch from the world one so beautiful and so necessary to her prattling, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... avowal was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly weary, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... "It's growing rather numb. But it might be worse," I answered mendaciously. If anything in this world could be worse, I had never ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was shining brilliantly and the air was full of the chirping of birds. I felt stiff and uneasy from sleeping in my clothes, and my foot was numb from ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Whitly!—well, never mind the name!—this is Colonel May's house!" She was numb, and fearful of those passionate hands which might any instant drag her from the instrument. "Tell the sheriff to come quick!" she screamed. "Dale Dawson ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... feel very cold: do you think that this is death? It seems to be creeping to my heart. I have no feeling, in my feet, and my thighs are numb." ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... reached the place of Notre-Dame. The archers drove back the crowding people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a great crowd of people behind her, inside the church, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... been used up, and we had to haul from Kennedy's bottom, eight miles away. When we started, the air was still and frozen, with a deep, biting cold unusual to Dakota; the sort that searches you and steals all the heat you own. We were numb by the time we reached the stack, and glad enough to have warm work to do. We fell to it with a rush for that reason, and because a dull grey blink upon the western skyline seemed to promise a blizzard. We were tying down the last load, when I heard the hum of ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... despise the cat for a heavy-handed and bloodthirsty beast, lacking wit and imagination, a creature of simple force-majeure; but that mouse will not advisedly swagger in cat-haunted territory; a blow of the paw is, when all's said and done, a blow of the paw—something to numb the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... once again! The wind was blowing in gusts now. It was reckoning with the near-coming day and was lessening in fury. But the sudden blasts were almost worse than the steady gale. Janet, weakened and numb, was hardly upon her way, before she was knocked from her feet by the cruel force and lay, face downward, upon the icy sand! Hurt and discouraged, she yet managed to rise. The pain roused her dulled senses and in the lull that followed a strange ghostly sound was borne seaward. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge balks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats-of-arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... from a lope to a walk an' then he put his nose to the ground an' fairly shuffled along. I was wearin' sheepskin with the wool on, but after a time the needles began to creep in an' I grew numb as a stone, while my flesh seemed shook loose from my bones, an' it hurt me to breathe. Oh, Lord, but it was cold! If it hadn't 'a' been for the kid I'd have gotten down an' walked alongside the pony, but as it was, he was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... voice like an awful echo to my words—"Go!" It came so suddenly and so imperatively, almost without any previous warning of the usual shudder, that the shock was more than I could bear. I believe I fainted; I know I found myself, when I came to consciousness, in my arm-chair, cold and numb, and my candles had almost burned ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... day and through the night Sabre was numb to coherent thought, numb to any realisation of the meaning to himself of this that had befallen him. The roof had crashed in upon him; but he lay stunned. As one pinned beneath scaffolding knows not his agony till the beams are being lifted from him, so stupefaction inhibited ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... had wandered after reading her sweetheart's letter. There, to the secret ear of the great Mother, instinct had drawn her and her grief; and now the earliest shock was over; a dull, numb pain of mind followed the first sorrow; unwonted exercise had made her weary; and physical hunger, not to be stayed by mental suffering, forced her to turn homewards. Red-eyed and unhappy she passed beside the river, a very picture ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sick child was a restless sleeper. But now she could hear nothing, not even the faint vibration of her sister's breath. The silence was absolute and appalling; it struck tangibly upon her sense, as the darkness struck upon her eye-balls and filled her with a numb, unreasoning terror. She slipped out of bed and struck a match. In another few seconds she was standing by Jeannie's white little bed, waiting for the wick of the candle to burn up. Presently the light grew. Jeannie ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; for the room her dead mother had so decorated was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... their mouths whole floods of impious inventions against me, and lay to my charge things which I am not guilty of, which hath caused some of my friends to forsake me, and look upon me as a stranger: my brother Good-works broke his heart when he heard on it, my sister Charity was taken with the Numb-palsie, so that she ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... that he died.' That is the only way she breaks her almost continual silence. With all that, she is kind, sensible, perfectly reasonable; she thoroughly understands her condition, and even speaks of it. She says she is glad that she has fallen into this numb state, otherwise her sufferings would have been too intense. Some one asked her if she was much moved when she saw her mother: 'No,' she answered; 'but I am very glad to have seen her.' Mention was made of Josephine's surprise at her lack of emotion on seeing her; 'Oh, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... funeral I was writing a business letter, when something seemed to intervene between my hand and the motor centres of my brain, and the hand wrote at an amazing rate a letter, signed with my father's signature and purporting to come from him. I was upset, and my right side and arm became cold and numb. For a year after this letters came frequently, and always at unexpected times. I never knew what they contained until I examined them with a magnifying-glass: they were microscopic. And they contained a vast amount of matter with ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... two leather mail-pouches, a couple of blankets, coffee-pot and frying-pan, and a scant grub-sack. As for the men, so frosted were they, and so numb with the cold, that they could hardly stand. Dave Harney proposed whiskey, and was for haling them away at once; but one delayed long enough to shake stiff hands ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... he drew, was shaking off his dizziness, was regaining his strength. The spirit within him, with all of the battering he had received, was still unbroken. And Conniston himself felt his right arm growing numb to the elbow. In a very few seconds he would be like a rag doll in the other's ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... through the curtained window of her room, and by the light of it she saw that the clock which stood upon the mantelpiece pointed to half-past eleven. She had slept for nearly twelve hours, and felt that, notwithstanding the cold and exposure, save for stiffness and a certain numb feeling in her head—the result, perhaps, of the unaccustomed brandy—she was well and, what was more, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... can make out nothing more than nebulous grotesques. I used to sit down knowing so well what I had to say; now I strive to invent, and never come at anything. Suppose you pick up a needle with warm, supple fingers; try to do it when your hand is stiff and numb with cold; there's the difference between my manner of work in those days and ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... prolonged solitude also began even to numb the powers of his mind. He was fully aware of this, and tried to shake it off, for he shuddered more at the thought of mental than of physical decay. Among other things, he took to talking more frequently to Brownie, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... thither, and who was gently trying to engage her thoughts. Her wan face was wet with tears, and her hands were clasped around her knee as she rocked from side to side in great pain. A large woollen stocking covered her swollen leg and frozen foot which had become numb and fallen into the fire one night at Starved Camp and been badly maimed before she awakened to feel the pain. I wanted to speak to her, but when I saw how lonesome and ill she looked, something like pain ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... fairly out of his mouth, the man called Dave made a kick at the detective's uplifted arm, so swift and accurate and forceful that Nick felt the bones of his wrist fairly crack under the blow, and the fingers of his hand gripping the weapon turned numb and tingling as if from ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... final effort to move up into the vacant niches, though conscious that her fingers and toes were so numb that she could not feel them ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... fall of snow would entice the dwellers therein out of their hiding- places; it made the air milder, and made it possible, too, to earn a few kroner for sweeping away the snow. Then they disappeared again, falling into a kind of numb trance and supporting their life on incredibly little—on nothing at all. Only in the mornings were the streets peopled—when the men went out to seek work. But everywhere where there was work for one man hundreds applied and begged for it. The dawn saw the defeated ones slinking home; they slept ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the old man is ugly and poor. Old and ugly and poor—is not this to be thrice old? Pons' winter had begun, the winter which brings the reddened nose, and frost-nipped cheeks, and the numbed fingers, numb ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... civilian suit and recover the cavalry blouse and trousers left hanging in Rafferty's room. He could hear the lieutenant moving about overhead. He had to strike a light; he struck several matches; found the clothes, slipped out of the "cits" and into his own. He was cold and numb. He knew there was liquor on the sideboard in the middle room. The craze was on him, and he risked it. He struck more matches and threw the burning stumps to the floor, drank his fill, then stumbled ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... covenants were binding on our forefathers who made and took them, yet they can be no way obligatory on us who were never personally engaged therein." But let such for certainty know, that as these solemn vows have their foundation in scripture, Numb. xxx. 7. Deut. v. 3. Josh. xxiv. 25. Psal. lxxvi. 11. Isa. xix. 18. Jer l. 5. Gal. iii. 15. The duties engaged to therein being purely theological and moral, they must have respect unto all circumstances and periods of time, and besides their form being formalis ratio, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... "Numb my hands with palsy, Rack my feet with gout, Hunch my back and shoulder, Let my teeth fall out; Still, if Life be granted, I prefer the loss; Save my life, and give me ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears of the relatives, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... I've got to do my sewing in the barn I live in, I might as well not try at all. My fingers are so numb the minute I take off my mitts that I couldn't ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... become sufficiently numb to permit them to drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused blinking and blear-eyed, arose and stretched cramped, cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the sleepless misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... shrivell'd limbs and palsied head. My Father! throw away this tatter'd vest 5 That mocks thy shivering! take my garment—use A young man's arm! I'll melt these frozen dews That hang from thy white beard and numb thy breast. My Sara too shall tend thee, like a child: And thou shalt talk, in our fireside's recess, 10 Of purple Pride, that scowls on Wretchedness— He did not so, the Galilaean mild, Who met the Lazars turn'd from rich men's doors And call'd them Friends, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... finished her hands were numb and her little feet like frozen marble. But at last two dozen cartridges were ready, and she gathered them up in the skirt of her night-gown and carried them ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... possibly empty. I heard the water pour into it like a little cataract. The next cell above, and indeed all the cells in that direction were flooded like my own. Of course it was no trouble for me to keep afloat; my only danger was that the intense coldness of the water would numb my body beyond recovery. Still, I had been accustomed to hardships of that kind before now, in the frozen North. At last the gentle roar of the waterfall ceased, and I realized my cell was emptying itself. When I reached my shelf again, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... looking at some sheep under the wire saw the flash pass close to him with simultaneous thunder, the sheep being unharmed. Still one or two complained of their legs feeling numb." —Parochial Magazine. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... half-numb with cold by the time we landed at the quay, opposite the Sark office. The place was all alive, seeming the more busy and animated to me for the solitary six days I had been spending since last Sunday. The arrival of our boat, and especially my appearance ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Stark. Thank you ever so much," the girl replied, too numb and worn out to say much, or to notice or care whither she was bound or who was her boatman. She had been swept along too swiftly to reason or fear for herself ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... place, Fred," he said as they came in for their turn at bat. "My arm is numb and ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... the end quite suddenly. He had not even time to open the door for her. Tallente looked out of the window and watched her drive away. His feelings were in a curiously numb state. For Stella he had no feeling whatever. Her confirmation of Palliser's perfidy had awakened in him no new resentment. Only in a vague way he began to realise that his forebodings of the last few days were founded upon a reality. Whether Palliser ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mercenaries, and men buried alive, and death by agonizing inches. He felt suddenly very cold and sick, and hung in his bonds, for he had no strength in his limbs. Then the pressure on this throat braced him, and also quickened his numb mind. The liveliest terror ran like quicksilver ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... in their grimy fingers. Guns and bayonets were propped against the wall. The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—with bare legs that looked blue and numb in the cold—the sans-culottes of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... is jigging it, to the sound of harp and four-stringed fiddle. The hoariest-headed man will tread one other measure, under this nether Moon; speechless nurselings, infants as we call them, (Greek), crow in arms; and sprawl out numb-plump little limbs,—impatient for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest balk bends more ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "Who? numb' elevm? Humph! he ain't too sick to be cross. Say he ain't sleep none fo' two nights. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Dryads shriek amid their groves; 445 She flies,—she stops,—she pants—she looks behind, And hears a demon howl in every wind. —As the bleak blast unfurls her fluttering vest, Cold beats the snow upon her shuddering breast; Through her numb'd limbs the chill sensations dart, 450 And the keen ice bolt trembles at her heart. "I sink, I fall! oh, help me, help!" she cries, Her stiffening tongue the unfinish'd sound denies; Tear after tear adown her cheek succeeds, And pearls ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning. The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Before he could rise Jasper had whirled, with one of the Winchesters above his head and his face aflame with fury. Asking no mercy, Rome hid his face with one arm and waited, stricken faint all at once, and numb. One report struck his ears, muffled, whip-like. A dull wonder came to him that the Lewallen could have missed at such close range, and he waited for another. Some one shouted—a shrill hallo. A loud ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... and mist, and from the eyes of the passers-by that seemed to look so pitilessly at her. The sole of one of her shoes was worn through, and the cold flag-stones of the footway and the mud of the streets made her foot numb, so that she could scarcely lift it. Near Paddington Green—for she had been for some time walking back towards the Edgware Road—she paused at the entrance of a short narrow street, running up to the canal. It had a very squalid appearance, and a number of ragged children were running about ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... that reduced the third stage of a $5,000,000 rocket to junk was evident to him only as a brilliant blue-white flash, a hammer-like shock through the antennae support that left his wrist and forearm numb. Then a violent wrench as a long cylinder, expelled from the split hull, caught the loop of his life line and dragged him in till he clashed hard against it, the suddenly increased tension or a sharp edge parting the line close to the anchored end. He ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time." We sit around the fireside, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... across the room to the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them—all of those who used knives—were unable to wear gloves, and their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed they kept up on the killing beds, and all with butcher ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... or her hands in iced water and the water boiled; snow melted round Saint Peter of Alcantara, and, one day when the blessed Gerlach was crossing a forest in the depth of winter he advised his companion, who walked behind him, and who could not go on, as his legs were numb, to put his feet into his footsteps, and immediately ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor." (Numb., xxv., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... body and indomitable brain of Churchill. They never paused for rest. It was go, go, and keep on going. A crisp wind blew down the river, freezing their hands and making it imperative, from time to time, to beat the blood back into the numb fingers. As night came on, they were compelled to trust to luck. They fell repeatedly on the untraveled banks and tore their clothing to shreds in the underbrush they could not see. Both men were badly ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... unbuckled the bridle and threw it, keeping the end of the rein in his hand. Gilbert tried to grasp it, but his hands were too numb. He managed, however, to get one arm and his head through the opening, and relaxed his hold ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... ask 'what's down?' It's that little lass in yon, down in bed, because some numb-skulls thought they could sail a boat. I told 'em this mornin' what I thought of 'em fer takin' a gal like that out on the water, an' they went ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... and long, Is slowly settling o'er the wave; No wandering blast awakes a song In naked boughs above thy grave. The frozen air is still and dark; The numb earth lies in icy rest; And all is dead, save this one spark Of burning grief, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... nor sought to know why Lord Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
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