"Prostration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain-soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague. [Footnote: There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock companies ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was. Keekie Joe had heard some wonderful stories about stalking; from all accounts rendered by Pee-wee that scout of scouts had hoodwinked every creature in the animal kingdom, stealing up behind them unawares, and subjecting every variety of bird to nervous prostration. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in all Places, and possess our Minds with a perpetual Awe and Reverence. It should be interwoven with all our Thoughts and Perceptions, and become one with the Consciousness of our own Being. It is not to be reflected on in the Coldness of Philosophy, but ought to sink us into the lowest Prostration before him, who is so astonishingly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... put forward which the Entente could not entertain? Quite apart from questions of direct interest and gain, other factors must be taken into account. There is the danger to Italy in case of the success of her late allies, which would mean the prostration of France, the annexation of Belgium to Germany, the arrival of Austria at Saloniki, British naval hegemony replaced by German, the revival of Turkey, and the consequent ambition to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... messenger be bid to go, in the thunder-tones of Mirabeau,—and tell his master that "we sit here to do the will of our constituents, and that we will not be moved from those seats but by the point of the bayonet?" Shall Ireland bound upward from her long prostration, and cast from her the last links of the British chain, and shall she advance "from injuries to arms, from arms to liberty," from liberty to glory? Shall the thirteen Colonies become, and be free and independent States, and come unabashed, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... become significant of disease when they depart decidedly from the average, either in the frequency of the illness, its duration, the amount of the discharge, or the character. More or less pain, more or less prostration and general disturbances at these epochs, are universal and inevitable. They are part of the sentence which at the outset He pronounced upon the woman, when He said unto her, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.' Yet ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... unprecedented, the display of activity and of sustained energy made by him at such an advanced period of life is unusual; and the severity of the strain upon the mental and physical powers at that age is evidenced by the prostration of Farragut himself, a man of exceptional vigor of body and of a mental tone which did not increase his burdens by an imaginative exaggeration of difficulties. He never committed the error, against which Napoleon cautioned his generals, "de se faire un tableau." On the other hand, the study ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Capital never seeks a country from which men are flying as they now fly from India. The English houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble bursts, the poor Hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. "The consequence ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... with the ghastly image which our consciences and our fears frame, the heathen notion of an avenger and cruel. We do not need to seek to avert His anger. This mighty word shatters all cowering terror and abject prostration. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the recent reduction in the tariff of duties on imports, but because there was no demand at any price for their productions. The people were obliged to restrict themselves in their purchases to articles of prime necessity. In the general prostration of business the iron manufacturers in different States probably suffered more than any other class, and much destitution was the inevitable consequence among the great number of workmen who had been employed in this useful branch of industry. There ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... through the school; but the doctor had never seen one of the kind before, and was at a loss to account for it. The cases were all exactly alike: stiff neck, with the head drawn down to one side, accompanied by feverishness, and followed by severe prostration. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... being in a monastery, she would be thinking of her precious Sisterhood and wanting to hurry back as fast as she could. She does mean to join when her year is up, I know, which is so silly of her, when the world's such a nice place; and it nearly gives me nervous prostration to hear her talk about it. Not that she often does; but it's bad enough to see it in ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... deprecation. Did she know the exertion required for cutting up a pipe of tobacco in a hot north wind; or the amount of perspiration and anger superinduced by knocking the head off a bottle of Bass in January; or the physical prostration caused by breaking two lumps of hard white sugar in a pawnee before a thunderstorm? The Southern gentleman undertakes ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and something more, he entirely forgot that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom, smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared to him not otherwise than ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... to me a couple of times now, and it almost breaks my heart to know that my position is going to get away from me. No one realizes how much one suffers, and I'm afraid I'm going to break down with nervous prostration soon. When one day is over with me, I wonder how I am going to get ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... between the periods of 3 to 5 and 5 to 7, and the sensation of being seated on board ship. The obstruction of the spleen by the liver should naturally create distaste for liquid or food, debility of the vital energies and prostration of the four limbs. From my diagnosis of these pulses, there should exist these various symptoms, before (the pulses and the symptoms can be said) to harmonise. But should perchance (any doctor maintain) that this state of the pulses imports a felicitous event, your servant will not ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... equilibrium should be lost, and the weaker individual laid prostrate upon the ground, the laugh then sounds throughout the whole assembly, and the beauty is highly extolled, who by her prowess could have so well effected the prostration of her partner. Now it is very possible, that when a person knows of an evil coming over him, he will be so upon his guard as to prevent any disastrous consequences arising from it; but Lander not being aware that any accident could befall ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... be so great, so irreparable a sufferer!—Any thing but that—include me in your terms: prescribe to me: promise for me as you please—put a halter about my neck, and lead me by it, upon condition of forgiveness on that disgraceful penance, and of a prostration as servile, to your father's penance (your brother absent), and I will beg his consent at his feet, and bear any thing but spurning from him, because he is your father. But to give you up upon cold conditions, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... country seemed to suffer from heat prostration, and Malone was hardly inclined to blame them. But, all the same, it took several minutes for him to get through to Dr. O'Connor's office, and a minute or so more before he could convince a security-addled ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that hour, and give ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... defiance. Mr. Lovel neither complained nor threatened; he simply collapsed. An air of settled misery fell upon him, an utter hopelessness, that was almost resignation, took possession of him. There was an unwonted gentleness in his manner to his daughter; he endured the miseries of weakness and prostration with unaccustomed patience; meekness pervaded all his words and actions, but it was the meekness of despair. And so—and so—this was how the familiar domestic drama came to be acted once more—the old, old story to be repeated. It was Robin Gray over again. If the cow was not stolen, the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and judged of accordingly, with reference also to the necessity of his position, arising from the last acts of his predecessors—from the spirit and temper of the age. The long-continued languor and prostration of our commerce, undoubtedly required some decisive, but cautious and well-considered movement, in the direction of free-trade. How far we shall be met, in the same spirit, by France, Germany, Russia, and America, as has been long confidently predicted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... those who rejoice; but I am with those who suffer. Oh, this system of society is false! Some day will come that which is true. Then there will be no more lords, and there shall be free and living men. There will be no more masters; there will be fathers. Such is the future. No more prostration; no more baseness; no more ignorance; no more human beasts of burden; no more courtiers; no more toadies; no more kings; but Light! In the meantime, see me here. I have a right, and I will use it. Is it a right? No, if I use it for myself; yes, if I use it for all. I will speak ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... energies are unceasingly devoted; his relaxation, meantime, an occasional frolic or debauch, which he grapples with, as his father did with fortune and the forest, closely and constantly, only pausing for breath through sheer exhaustion, or prostration rather. His person is square, and better knit together than most men's; his complexion clear, though bronzed by exposure to sun and storm; his manner rustic, but not rude; with a self-possession that is evident at a glance, and which makes him at all times equal to any chance or change ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... discovered was that war between nations, as distinct from war between dynasties or royal houses, was a struggle for existence in which each adversary risked everything and in which success was to be expected only from the complete prostration of the enemy. In the long run, they said to themselves, the only defence consists in striking your adversary to the ground. That being the case, a nation must go into war, if war should become inevitable, ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... and reached the Rue du Coq; he would sell The Archer of Charles IX. to Doguereau; but Doguereau was out. Lucien little knew how indulgent great natures can be to the weaknesses of others. Every one of the friends had thought of the peculiar troubles besetting the poetic temperament, of the prostration which follows upon the struggle, when the soul has been overwrought by the contemplation of that nature which it is the task of art to reproduce. And strong as they were to endure their own ills, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... capture of Briel may be dated the beginning of the long and arduous struggle which resulted in the building-up of the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces, and the ultimate prostration of the power of Spain. The hero of the struggle was William of Orange. The successor of Alva, Requesens, was really more dangerous than Alva, because he was more magnanimous, and therefore excited less antagonism. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... devoted the greater part of the night to composition. He worked so hard that the opera, begun in December 1851, was finished in two years, but he paid dearly for all this extra labor. He fell ill—a state of nervous prostration—and was unable for some time to compose ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... change had come over our circumstances since last we parted. My hopes were then nearly a conviction, and I went on my way not alone without remonstrance or regret on her part, but with intense encouragement. She had heard of Mr. O'Brien's disaster, and a rumour of his arrest, had witnessed the prostration of the people, had heard I had means of escape proposed for me, and came with what money could be provided. We spent that night together at the house of a woman who had been lately confined. She endeavoured to provide tea and eggs, and we enjoyed our ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the word, mentally leaped upon and clung to the city in the sea. From that moment their conversation became easier, and gradually Charmian began to recover from her strange social prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt. Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of course it ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... idea of a universal panacea; and she had gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions when ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... afternoon tea is common in that township. It would have been more to the purpose if Miss Frere had issued a general warning to the people of the Hebrides not to drink tea as black as porter, and, above all, not to boil it. The pale anaemic faces one so often sees in the north and west, the mental prostration and actual insanity so alarmingly on the increase in the Long Island, are unquestionably due, in great measure, to the abominably strong tea that is swilled in such quantities there. A Tarbert doctor told me that the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... life. Some people go through the day on such a nervous tension that they are unable to take cognizance of their surroundings. Eventually this tension will manifest itself in some disorder, as headache, nervous indigestion or complete nervous prostration. In the latter case the nerves have been so abused, so strained that at last they are worn out. A rest ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... in token of their absolute and complete submission to his authority. After they had retired the people themselves came, and made their obeisance in the same manner. As they rose from their knees after the last prostration, they made the air resound once more with their shouts, crying "Long live great Genghis Khan!" ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... me still incredulous he told me how he'd managed it. He had gone every day for three weeks to the Belgian Legation and worried the Belgian Minister into a state of nervous prostration. And when the Minister was at his worst and was obliged to leave things a bit to his secretaries, he'd gone to the secretaries and worried them till the First Secretary had given him his passport and a letter of introduction to the President of the Belgian Red Cross ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... ground by his followers; when sticks were kindled for a fire, and children conveyed to him food, not unfrequently without the knowledge of their parents. Naturally of a weak constitution, he was, at times, so borne down by sickness and total prostration of strength, that he was literally carried on the shoulders of faithful followers, or supported when on horseback. He had frequently to flee from one hiding place to another, barefoot, or without some of his garments, as he had also to travel in disguise. Letters of intercommuning were ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... Lawton's fatuous conversation in the de Laney's drawing-room, or Maude Eliza's dressed-up self-consciousness. The experience of having the three Westerners to dinner just once would, Bennington knew, drive his lady mother to the verge of nervous prostration—he remembered his father's one and only experience in bringing business connections home to lunch—; his imagination failed to picture the effect of her having to endure them as actual members of the family! As if this were not bad enough, his restless fancy carried ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... gave me no chance of asking his advice after the trial. The moment sentence had been pronounced, he allowed himself to be helped out of court in a melancholy state of prostration, and the next morning he left for London. I suspect he was afraid to face me, and nervously impatient, besides, to tell Annabella that he had saved the legacy again by another alarming sacrifice. My father and mother, to whom I had written ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... year. In this protracted contest the chief scene of naval hostilities was to be the West Indies; but beyond even the casualties of war, the baneful climate of that region insured numerous vacancies by prostration and death, with consequent chances of promotion for those who escaped the fevers, and found favor in the eyes of their commander-in-chief. The brutal levity of the old toast, "A bloody war and a sickly season," nowhere ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... chapter of the Koran and saying, 'In the name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate!' with a verse thereof according to the canon of the Imam Al-Shafi'i; (5) bowing the body and keeping it bowed; (6) returning to the upright posture and so remaining for the time requisite; (7) prostration and permanence therein; (8) sitting between two prostrations and permanence therein; (9) repeating the latter profession of the Faith and sitting up therefor; (10) invoking benediction on the Prophet (whom Allah bless and preserve!) (11) the first Salutation,[FN313] and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... enamoured even to madness, could scarce refrain not merely from prostration to the object of his passion, but to Mr Harrel himself for permitting him to see her. Cecilia, who not without some concern perceived a fondness so fruitless, and who knew not by what arts or with what views ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... weeks of the siege he had been anxious, agitated, nervous; he wandered through the house like a soul in trouble; he had moments of inconceivable prostration, during which tears could be seen rolling down upon his cheeks, and then ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... assured me that he was once thrown into a state of great prostration and nausea, from having a part of his hand moistened, for a few minutes, in a ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... told him at last. "If you don't look out you'll have nervous prostration—or I shall, if you don't stop jumping about like a jack-in-the-box. I advise you," she said, "to see a doctor before ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the financial condition of the country, I shall not attempt an extended history of the embarrassment and prostration which we have suffered during the past three years. The depression in all our varied commercial and manufacturing interests throughout the country, which began in September, 1873, still continues. It is very gratifying, however, to ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... in the person of Caroline, were meantime falling fast into a condition of prostration, whose quickly consummated debility puzzled all who witnessed it except one; for that one alone reflected how liable is the undermined structure to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the position of the clergy in the fulness of their power, when they could speak thus on the eve of their prostration? You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned cathedral city, and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church and State. The cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight of as you approach ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... summons in time of need. All these were under my commandment and obeyed my behest, being each and every rebels against Solomon, son of David, on whom be peace! And I used to enter the belly of the idol and thence bid and forbid them. Now this King's daughter loved the idol and was frequent in prostration to it and assiduous in its service; and she was the fairest woman of her day, accomplished in beauty and loveliness, elegance and grace. She was described unto Solomon and he sent to her father, saying, 'Give me thy daughter to wife and break shine idol of carnelian ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... restoration of our currency, of return to a normal situation, of adjustment of expenditure to revenue on a peace footing? Could the possibility be entertained of such a return and such an adjustment, without panic, without paralysis of industry, without temporary interruption and prostration of commerce? Grave apprehensions were felt as to the possible effect upon production and trade of the legislation required to maintain the National credit. These apprehensions derived force and peculiar seriousness from the growing ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... commanded their voluntary reverence for the untaught, uncivilized Indian chief. The day and night wore away, and when they had hoped to resume their journey they found that a fever had succeeded the prostration produced by the poison, and she was too ill to travel. Dismayed at this new calamity, they were at a loss for awhile how to proceed. Their guide settled the point for them by insisting that the sick girl should be conveyed ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... John Mortimer had delayed their return, for Valentine, whether from excitement at the hope of setting off, or from the progress of his disease, had been attacked, while sitting out of doors, with such sudden prostration of strength that he was not got back again to the house without the greatest difficulty. They opened a wide window of the "great parlour," laid him on a couch, and then for some hours it seemed doubtful whether ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... where the pine tree falls, its dissolution leaves a mossy mound—last-flung shadow of the perished trunk; never lengthening, never lessening; unsubject to the fleet falsities of the sun; shade immutable, and true gauge which cometh by prostration—so westward from what seems the stump, one steadfast spear of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... remember I told you the other day about this case—that there was something queer about it, that after a few treatments I was afraid to carry on any more and refused to do so? She really has dermatitis and nervous prostration, exactly as she alleges in her complaint. But, before Heaven, Kennedy, I can't see how she could possibly have been so affected by the few treatments I gave her. And to-night, just as I was leaving the office, I received a telephone call from her husband's ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... selectmen, magistrates, aldermen, mayors, school-committees, and councillors, with an altered judgment. The result of the election is not the victory or defeat of the man alone; it is the triumph or prostration of a principle or purpose with which ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... arranged that they should go in search of the promised bearers, leaving Miss Tinne and her companions at Meschra. Accordingly, Drs. Heughlin and Steudner set out; but the malarious climate was working its evil will upon them, and in a state of great prostration from fever and dysentery, they traversed a desert country, and crossing the river Djur on the 2nd of April, arrived the same evening at Wan. Here Dr. Steudner succumbed to his disease, and passed away, almost without pain, on the 10th. His friend contrived ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... thought," he said cheerfully. "I said, 'She'll drink a pint of strong tea and sit there in the dark until the rugs begin to wiggle and the wall paper glowers at her.' You're on the verge of nervous prostration; that's what you're on the verge of, and nothing else. Now come along, or have I got to come over there and make you?" He noticed her negligee. "Put on your frock, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... associates was a grievous thorn which came to the pioneer during the progress of the war. The first marked disagreement between him and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society not a month after his wife's prostration. The clash came between the leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over a resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the Government and declaring its readiness "to sacrifice the interest and honor of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... made him swallow, his voice grew stronger and clearer, and he turned quite with violence in his bed, so that all began again to entertain the hope which we had lost only upon witnessing his extreme prostration. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the marvel of the century for curing such diseases as—Rheumatism, Bright's Disease, Blood Poisoning, Heart Trouble, Dropsy, Catarrh and Throat Affections, Liver, Kidney and Bladder Ailments, Stomach and Female Disorders, La Grippe, Malarial Fever, Nervous Prostration and General Debility as thousands testify, and as no one, answering this, writing for a package, will deny after using. Vitae-Ore has cured more chronic, obstinate, pronounced incurable cases than any other known ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... of overstudy she had been through had left its effects on her system, and Patty, though she would not admit it, and no one else realised it, was in imminent danger of an attack of nervous prostration. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... the Hellenic delight in noble form and in physical beauty. He is fretted by the restraint which Christian authority imposes upon the unruly affections of sinful men; he scorns the terrors of judgment to come, the prostration of the multitude before the threat of eternal punishment, and the promise of celestial recompense for terrestrial misery. Death is the 'sleep eternal in an eternal night'; and the one thing as certain as death is pleasure. He ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... here all day alone, worrying and thinking all by yourself and hustling from morning until night. Lots of the girls have nervous prostration. My sister had it and I guess I'm getting it. I hear the noise all night. Quite a few have consumption, too, from the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the fictitious baronet entered the room, and, as Holmes read his telegram, passed by us, still apparently in search of the unattainable, little dreaming how close at hand was the explanation of his troubles. I was on the edge of nervous prostration, but Holmes never turned a hair, and, save for a slight tremor of his hand, no one would have even guessed that there was anything in the wind. Sir Henry Darlington took a seat in the far corner of ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... secure the professional assistance of accomplished roguery. And when, notwithstanding this, the law and Mr. Wakem have been too much for him, great skill is shown in the description of poor Tulliver's latter days; his prostration and partial recovery; the concentration of his feelings on the desire to wipe out the dishonour of insolvency, and to avenge himself on the hostile attorney. Indeed, we confess that, notwithstanding his somewhat unedifying end, Tulliver is the only person in "The Mill on the Floss" for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... in that moment that she was facing the primal. And she was not primal. She was a normal woman, weakened to near-prostration by the trek of the past twenty-four hours. Was it not better to turn away while there ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... were three letters from home, none of them carried the news of what was going on there. None of them breathed a syllable that Cousin Eunice Chatterton was ill with a low fever, aggravated by nervous prostration; and that Mrs. Pepper and Polly were having a pretty hard time of it. On the contrary, every bit of news was of the cheeriest nature; Jasper tucked on a postscript to his father's letter, in which he gave the latest bulletin of his school life. And ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Sylvius Piccolomini) an entirely new city, Pienza, with a cathedral, archbishop's palace, town hall and Papal residence (the P.Piccolomini), which are interesting if not strikingly original works. Pisa possesses few early Renaissance structures, owing to the utter prostration of her fortunes in the 15th century, and the dominance of Pisan Gothic traditions. In Lucca, besides a wealth of minor monuments (largely the work of Matteo Civitali, 1435-1501) in various churches, anumber of palaces ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... anxiety whenever any strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought, to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"—nervous prostration. It tired me ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... the eye next attacked him; and were treated by cupping, blisetring, and colchicum. Unable himself to write, he went on preparing his lectures, which he dictated to his sister. Pain haunted him day and night, and sleep was only forced by morphia. While in this state of general prostration, symptoms of pulmonary disease began to show themselves. Yet he continued to give the weekly lectures to which he stood committed to the Edinburgh School of Arts. Not one was shirked, though their delivery, before a large audience, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... is weeping in her chamber, desiring my lord," announced the slave, with much bowing and prostration, but still with that confidence which showed she knew how welcome the news would be to her august listener. Ahmed rose, a fire of joy ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Holdernesse Hall. It is only a few miles away, and we imagined that in some sudden attack of home-sickness he had gone back to his father; but nothing had been heard of him. The Duke is greatly agitated—and as to me, you have seen yourselves the state of nervous prostration to which the suspense and the responsibility have reduced me. Mr. Holmes, if ever you put forward your full powers, I implore you to do so now, for never in your life could you have a case which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... having heart disease, and lung complaint, inhale this vapor with impunity. It stimulates the circulation of the blood and builds up the tissues. Indorsed by the highest authority in the professions, recommended in midwifery and all cases of nervous prostration. Physicians, surgeons, dentists and private families supplied with this vapor, liquefied, in cylinders of various capacities. It should be administered the same as Nitrous Oxide, but it does not produce headache and nausea ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... fruitless. Basins in requisition. Wind hard ahead. Que diable allais-je faire dans cette galere? Writing or thinking impossible: so read 'Letters from the AEgean.'" These brief words give, I think, a complete idea of wretchedness, despair, remorse, and prostration of soul and body. Two days previously we passed the forts and moles and yellow buildings of Algiers, rising very stately from the sea, and skirted by gloomy purple lines of African shore, with fires smoking in the mountains, and lonely ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brows and spoke in a stern voice. But, ere he had uttered a word more, the stricken-hearted woman gave a wild scream and fell upon the floor. Nature had been tried beyond the point of endurance, and reason was saved at the expense of physical prostration. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the Northern Pacific road held a meeting in New York, on Friday, of last week. A letter was read from Henry Villard, resigning the presidency of the company because of nervous prostration and in deference to the interests of the stockholders. The resignation was accepted, and a special election was ordered to choose a successor. The directors voted Mr. Villard $10,000 per annum for ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... deadly a heat, nor a more pernicious climate, in Cuba nor in Porto Rico, than that of southern Florida. Its first effect upon men just emerging from a bracing Northern winter was akin to prostration. Then began to follow a decided tendency to languor; after this one was liable to sudden attacks of bowel troubles. The deadly malaria began to insidiously prepare the way for a hospital cot; the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... future,— without saying anything of a hard couch,—were not the companions with which to approach the shrine of Somnus. As a counterpoise, they felt lassitude both of mind and body, approaching to prostration. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... not, I could not do anything. We are weak, my dear friend . . . . I used to be indifferent. I reasoned boldly and soundly, but at the first coarse touch of life upon me I have lost heart. . . . Prostration. . . . . We are weak, we are poor creatures . . . and you, too, my dear friend, you are intelligent, generous, you drew in good impulses with your mother's milk, but you had hardly entered upon life when you were exhausted and fell ill. . . . ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... problem of husband choosing," she went on thoughtfully. "Being a bachelor I can discuss it with perfect equanimity. But if in a moment of madness I had married and acquired a houseful of daughters, I should have nervous prostration every time a strange man showed ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... beats her each night that she returns to her wretched home with a scanty showing of nickels; and the consciousness of dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, which in you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration," a big doctor's fee, and a change of air. Yet mark my words, if the dark-browed liberator of sorrow's captives were to proffer my little fruit peddler the exchange of death for all this wearing apprehension and constant toil, do you think she would accept the transfer? Not she. The "captain" out ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... adding, a moment later: "Not just the sort of place to send a nervous-prostration patient, is it, after all? But what's your own speculation concerning ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Mrs. Flint had cried, lifting herself from the lace pillows, "what do you expect me to do especially when I have nervous prostration? I've tried to do my duty by Victoria—goodness knows—to bring her up—among the sons and daughters of the people who are my friends. They tell me that she has temperament—whatever that may be. I'm sure I never found out, except that the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... will note the exception." Lincoln generally met the objections by the placid remark, "I reckon that's so." Thus he gave up point after point, apparently giving away his case over and over again, until his associates were brought to the verge of nervous prostration. After giving away six points he would fasten upon the seventh, which was the pivotal point of the case, and would handle that so as to win. This ought to have been satisfactory, but neither Herndon nor his other associates ever ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... spontaneous effect of their illness, a very marked change takes place in the condition of the two brothers. Both of them, at the same time, and often on the same day, rouse themselves from their habitual stupor and prostration; they make the same complaints, and they come of their own accord to the physician, with an urgent request to be liberated. I have seen this strange thing occur, even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicetre, and the other ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... an extreme pitch, the dreadful scream of terror is heard. Great beads of sweat stand on the skin. All the muscles of the body are relaxed. Utter prostration soon follows, and the mental powers fail. The intestines are affected. The sphincter muscles cease to act, and no longer retain the ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... attempt of taking down the painting. It was reported, a number of soldiers were in the neighbourhood, ready to march to the coffee-house, at the first call. This was not calculated to allay the excitement of the public mind. The prostration of the legitimate government; the imprisonment of the district judge of the United States, the only magistrate, whose interference could be successfully invoked, on an illegal arrest, under colour of the authority of the United States, the ascendency assumed by the military, appeared ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... loved God, or seen in the possibility of Him any thing to draw him. I should have lost the mighty dream of the universe; he would be what and where he chose to be, and might well be the more capable. Were I to be convinced there is no God, and to recover by the mere force of animal life from the prostration into which the conviction cast me, I should, I hope, try to do what duty was left me, for I too should be filled, for a time at least, with an endless pity for my fellows; but all would be so dreary, that I should ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... titles of nobility; and in the precautions against the repetition of those practices on the part of the State governments which have undermined the foundations of property and credit, have planted mutual distrust in the breasts of all classes of citizens, and have occasioned an almost universal prostration of morals. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... all ended as such a strain must, in the sort of break which was not yet known as nervous prostration. When I could not sleep after my studies, and the sick headaches came oftener, and then days and weeks of hypochondriacal misery, it was apparent I was not well; but that was not the day of anxiety for such things, and if it was thought best that I should ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... without having the slightest idea of what materials the ensuing one is to be constructed. At times I feel so tired that I throw down the pen in despair; but t is soon taken up again, and, like a pigmy Ant, it seems to have imbibed fresh vigour from its prostration. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... for a moment absolutely still. On the rare occasions when her body was at rest, her head turned from side to side as though moved by machinery, like the mandarin dolls of the toy-shops, and I had doubts whether she ever slept. I was really concerned about her. Nervous prostration seemed the only thing she could look forward to; and later I found that Bradford Torrey had suffered similar anxiety about one of her kind, as related in his charming story, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... do it. She has worn herself down nearly to the point of prostration. We think we can break this fever without serious consequences, but get the young man as soon as possible. She can not relax and ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... a temptation not to be withstood: and to witness this signal prostration of the human intellect before ignorant and crafty superstition, we adjourned to the Santa Maria Maggiore. For processions and shows I care very little, but not for any thing, not for all I suffered at the moment, would I have missed the scene which the interior of the church exhibited; for it is ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... myself to dwell on the deliberate progress of the hellish Borgia poison, in undermining the forces of life. The nervous shudderings reached their climax, and then declined as gradually as they had arisen. For hours afterwards, she lay in a state of complete prostration. Not a last word, not a last look, rewarded the devoted girl, watching faithfully at the bedside. No more of it—no more! Late in the afternoon of the next day, Doctor Dormann, gently, most gently, removed Minna from the room. Mr. Keller and I looked at each other in silence. We knew that ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... do any biting, but lifting the dog-catcher up with his various sets of teeth, fastened to his collar, coat-tails, and feet respectively, carried him yelling like a trooper to the end of the wharf and dropped him into the Styx. The result of this was nervous prostration for the dog-catcher, another suit for damages for the city, and a great laugh for the State authorities. In fact," Boswell added, confidentially, "I think perhaps the reason why the Prime-minister hasn't got Apollyon to hang the whole ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Occie dear, slide it on. But remember: Phemey has got to live with us until I can pick out some victim of nervous prostration that needs a wife like her. And for goodness' sake, Occie, give that waiter an order for ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... for the dignity of this reserve, and even counted it as one of the grounds—grounds all handled and numbered—for ranking him, in the range of their acquaintance, as a success. He WAS a success, Waymarsh, in spite of overwork, or prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife's letters and of his not liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his own career less futile had he been able to put into it anything so handsome as so much fine silence. One might one's self easily have left ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... behind him and rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on the velvet cushion in an attitude of studied grace, remain in silent prostration for a certain time; then mutter over a Collect, and gabble through the Lord's Prayer, rise, draw off one bright lavender glove, to give the congregation the benefit of his sparkling rings, lightly pass his fingers through his well-curled hair, flourish a cambric handkerchief, recite a very ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... whom they had repudiated, and it was decided that the Cadets should not appear as Cadets, but as "Social workers." Pressed hard on both right and left, the bourgeois democracy tolerated all this dickering, and thereby demonstrated its utter political prostration. ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... to give any further publicity to the matter. Even if I did bring the case into court and sue for libel, I've only got one witness to prove my innocence, and that's my wife. I'm not going to drag her into it. She's got nervous prostration over her position as it is, and this would make it worse. Queen Elizabeth and the rest of these snobs in society won't invite her to any of their functions because they say she hadn't any grandfather; and even if she were received by ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... sequestered and lovely home for herself and her family, which consisted of her aged parents, the five children of Sarah B. Judson, and her own "bird," Emily Frances. The cares of her family, and literary labors, here divided her time until the prostration of her health by her last sickness, since which period she has "set her house in order,"[13] and calmly awaited the summons of death. Peacefully and sweetly did the summons come, and on the first of June she fell asleep in Jesus. With a sister ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... was all they knew. Yes, there had been talk of giving the case to a detective agency, but they weren't sure it had been done. And here is his poor mother up in New Rochelle, almost on the verge of nervous prostration. There is his fiancee, too; little Betty Parsons, who is crying her eyes out. Nice girl, Betty. And it's a shame that something isn't being done. Anyway, I shall ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... exhausted on the ground. It appeared that he had not been provided with a litter, but had been forced to run the entire distance, and, as he was already quite worn out when we started, his condition now was one of great prostration. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... those two previous interviews had been both long and exciting; and the consequent prostration was greater than usual; so though Mr. Linden did take down the hand which covered his eyes, and did meet the doctor's look with his accustomed pleasantness, his words were few. Indeed he had rather the air of one whose mind has chosen a good opportunity to ride rampant ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... in a state of prostration, weaker far than he knew, and on the brink of a serious collapse. The need for secrecy made it dangerous to call in medical aid, and he tried to allay his father's anxiety by assuring him that rest was all ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... cruel, and we ought to remember that mercy was not a Roman virtue. His conduct after his abdication shows that his was no common mind. The chief charge against him is his haughtiness in introducing the Oriental ceremonial of prostration into the Roman court. The Christian writers, and especially Lactantius, have spoken unfavorably of him; but Lactantius cannot be implicitly trusted. Of the regular historians of his reign we have only the meagre ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... was the most fortunate thing that could have happened to me. For several days I remained in a state of prostration in which there was but little difference between my waking and sleeping hours. Thanks to this, I understood nothing, and therefore ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... influence for good over the younger men with whom he came in contact. The letter which he wrote to Henry Fawcett on the occasion of his blindness illustrates this. Mr. Stephen says ('Life of Fawcett,' page 48) that by "this timely word of good cheer," Fawcett was roused from "his temporary prostration," and enabled to take a "more cheerful and resolute tone.") in the new 'Fraser'? the public will, I should think, find it heavy. He will be dead against me, as you prophesied; but he is generally civil to me personally. ('Fraser's Magazine,' June 1860. My father, no doubt, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... was easily arranged. A little discreet wire pulling and Esther was once more established as school mistress of District Number Fifteen. People shook their heads, but by the time of the first snowstorm they had ceased to prophesy nervous prostration, and by the time sleighing was fairly established they were ready to admit that the girl had acted sensibly ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... did not cease with that day. The next, Sunday, was spent on the sofa, in a state of utter prostration. With the necessity for exertion the power had died. Fleda could only lie upon the cushions, and sleep helplessly, while Mrs. Pritchard sat by, anxiously watching her; curiosity really swallowed up in kind feeling. Monday was little better, but towards the after part of the day the stimulant of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... station on foot, while the Sub-Inspector followed in a palanquin. Kumodini Babu's women-folk filled the house with their lamentations; and his eldest son, Jadu Nath, was the first to recover from the prostration caused by sudden misfortune. He had a pony saddled and galloped to the railway station, whence he telegraphed to his uncle, Ghaneshyam Babu, the pleader, "Father arrested: charge receiving stolen ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... fact the complete prostration, of the marquise obliged Camille to have her taken to the farmhouse from which the ladder had been borrowed. Calyste, Gasselin, and Camille took off what clothes they could spare and laid them on the ladder, making a sort of litter on which ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... The oppression weighing down the latter is not merely injurious because it impedes what is good, but also because it promotes what is bad. Compulsion in matters of faith may be passed over in silence. It belongs to those antiquated evils on which now that there is greater danger of an utter prostration of religious ideas than of their fanatical abuse, only narrow-minded babblers are declaiming. Not so, however, with regard to freedom of the press. Misled by unfounded apprehensions, arising from the events of the times, even ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... confined by his wound, which had been a much more serious one than that inflicted upon Ellen; and in his then state of prostration, was not as well prepared to scorn the motives of Durant, or penetrate his designs, as he might have been under more favorable auspices; and having no reason to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly repentant ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... delirium set in. What he had said or done during his ravings he knew not, for memory was a blank, and no human friend had been there to behold or listen. At that time, however, Tom did not think very deeply about these words, or, indeed, about anything else. His prostration was so great that he did not care at first to follow out any line of thought or to move a limb. A sensation of absolute rest and total indifference seemed to enchain all his faculties. He did not even know where he was, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... must not be agitated, and, indeed, the events of the day had been too much for her, and the ensuing morning brought the fluttering of heart and prostration of strength, no longer a novelty and occasion of immediate terror, but the token of the waning ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... to have lost all vigor and virtue, could suddenly rise and dare the work of a reformation of the Church. With them we learn how that same nation, after groaning for centuries under the yoke of superstition and hypocrisy, found in its very prostration the source of an irresistible strength. The higher clergy contributed hardly anything to the literature of these two centuries; and what they wrote would better have remained unwritten. At St. Gall, toward the end of the thirteenth century, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... very first lightening of their judicial punishment would seem to them a reason for relapsing, by seeming to argue that there had been two principles. It was but a false alarm, they would say, after all. Affliction, therefore, was past all substitution or remedy. Yet even this case, this prostration to the ground, had been met for a thousand years ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... doctor why he should not recover. Hilda had told him in general terms, and with her usual delicacy, of the cause of the Earl's illness, so that the doctor knew that it arose from mental trouble, and not from physical ailment. Yet, even under these circumstances, he was puzzled at the complete prostration of the Earl, and at the adverse symptoms which ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the managing editor's room are usually of the sort which burden the subordinate ones with anxiety. The London correspondent was "going to pieces." He had cabled that he was suffering from nervous prostration, supplementing a request for a two months' leave of absence. For "nervous prostration" we read "drink." Our London correspondent was a brilliant journalist; he had written one or two clever books; he had a broad knowledge of men and affairs; and his pen was one of those ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... however, to the impressiveness of the whole scene is the same as mars all Papal pageants,—I mean the length and monotony of the performance. One chant may be fine, one prostration before the altar may be striking, one burst of the choral litany may act upon your senses; but, when you have chant after chant, prostration after prostration, chorus after chorus, each the twin brother to the other, and going on for hours, without apparent rhyme or reason, you cease to ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... of what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again. For the most ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... He rose from his prostration on the floor and fairly flew to the girl's side, pushing her hand aside from the key she had almost turned, his ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... a man whose father left him a large business. Though an exemplary man he could not make ends meet in a business out of which his father had made a fortune. The man worried himself into nervous prostration. While he remained at home for rest, his wife took charge of the business and made of it a great success. I say let that woman run the business and the man take ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... we left Old Calabar town, I had all the symptoms of approaching fever, such as headache, foul tongue, hot and dry skin, loss of appetite, prostration of strength, &c. I, therefore, took calomel, and adopted prompt measures of regimen, abstaining from all food, taking nothing but diluents, keeping myself quiet, and occupying the mind with amusing ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... prisoners, has been of late years a topic of complaint. They require more care, and a diet more nicely chosen, than laborers in health and mental tranquillity. Efforts to reduce these comforts have been followed by fever and physical prostration; and whatever aspect their treatment may wear, those who deprive them of liberty are bound to provide for their safety. The law sentences to transportation: no question of public policy could justify a minister, when converting that penalty ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... in very different plight, enjoying her brief moment of triumph, making as it were the most of it. When a woman loves she humbles herself, and every prostration is matter for an ecstasy. Her love returned, she ventured to be proud; but this is against the grain. It is more blessed to give. The freed soul welcomes the prison- gates and hugs the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... exhaustion. We knew that it was not the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail mortal tabernacle. When I called on her at this time, she could not see me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was in a state of utter prostration. Her hands were like ice; her face was deadly pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which showed what exertion it was for her to keep up at all. I left as soon as possible, with an appointment for another interview. That interview was my last on earth ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... people whose hair turned white in a single night. Last night I thought mine was turning. I had a creepy feeling in the roots, which seemed to crawl all the way down inside each separate hair, wriggling as it went. I suppose you couldn't have nervous prostration of the hair? I worried dreadfully, it kept on so long; and my hair is so fair it would be almost a temptation for it, in an emergency, to take the one short step from gold to silver. I didn't dare switch on the light in the wagon-lit and peep at my pocket-book mirror (which reflects one's features ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to be using days for walking, and little things that since I was a grown woman have been crowded into odds and ends of time, or omitted for want of enough of it. I am gaining strength, however, and realize how complete the prostration was, and how radical the reconstructive processes had to be. The seclusion in which I live, surrounded by pine woods, a mile and a half from the nearest post office (tho' a postman brings our letters) and an equal distance from such supplies ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... tumble, drop; decrease, decline, depreciation, slump; cadence; declivity, slope; prostration, downfall, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Her luck was variable; in fact, she had some fair streaks of good fortune, just enough to keep her thoroughly amused with her new distraction; but on the whole she was a loser. The Brimley Bomefields had a collective attack of nervous prostration on the day when she sold out a quantity of shares in Argentine rails. 'Nothing will ever bring that money back,' they ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... took her solitary cup of tea, and shut up the hut and retired to bed. She had not had a good night's rest since that fatal night of Nora's flight through the snow storm to Brudenell Hall, and her subsequent illness and death. Now, therefore, Hannah slept the sleep of utter mental and physical prostration. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... afterwards, that the substitute of hard labor in public, was tried (I believe it was in Pennsylvania) without success. Exhibited as a public spectacle, with shaved heads, and mean clothing, working on the high roads, produced in the criminals such a prostration of character, such an abandonment of self-respect, as, instead of reforming, plunged them into the most desperate and hardened depravity of morals and character. To pursue the subject of this law.—I was written to in 1785 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... being kind to him again at first sight you deprived yourself, you foolish girl, of many pleasures—his prostration at your feet and his ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... very slowly, and she had many trying hours of weakness and nervous prostration to endure. She was almost always very patient, but on a few rare occasions, when suffering more than usual, there was a slight peevishness in her tone. Once it was to her father she was speaking, and the instant she had done ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... Daily by Mr. Howard last Saturday he had told that Abishag had sat upon his table while every single word of the manuscript of "Amy Martin" was penned. He had admitted that she was his mascot. Without her presence he could not compose a line. Daily readers would imagine, then, Mr. Howard's prostration at his appalling loss. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... soldiers in both armies was unspeakable, although the British were in a worse state than the Americans, because of their woolen uniforms, knapsacks, and accoutrements, while the Continental army had no packs and had laid off all unnecessary clothing. Even so, many of both forces died of prostration, despite Molly's cooling drinks which she brought to as many men as possible. John Hays worked his cannon bravely, while perspiration streamed down his face and heat blurred his vision. Suddenly all went black before him—the rammer dropped from his nerveless hand, and he fell beside ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... as his fleet feet would carry him. The doctor pronounced Mrs Cruden to be in a state of high fever, produced by nervous prostration and poor living. He advised Horace, if possible, to get a nurse to tend her while the fever lasted, especially as she would probably awake from her swoon delirious, and would for several days remain in a ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... I am comparatively safe," said Joseph. "If he stayed below with us I fear I should have a return of my nervous prostration." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... mental powers may suspend for some time the action of pathogenic causes. Our mulatto servant having been much more exposed to the rains than we were, his disorder increased with frightful rapidity. His prostration of strength was excessive, and on the ninth day his death was announced to us. He was however only in a state of swooning, which lasted several hours, and was followed by a salutary crisis. I was attacked at the same time with a violent ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... charges, and on these occasions he sternly refused to discuss the matter. 'Mrs. Hawker, I am paying your account with the addition of one week's rent. Your rooms will be vacant at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.' And until the hour of departure no entreaty, no prostration, could induce ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... delight as of modesty, whispered—"My husband, my husband, why should not these words, dear Charles, be as sweet a charm to my heart, as those you've mentioned are to yours. I would, but I cannot add—no, I will not suffer it," she exclaimed, on his attempting, in the prostration of the moment, to embrace her. "You must not presume upon the sincerity of an affectionate and ingenuous heart. Farewell, dear Charles, until we can see each other without a consciousness that we are doing wrong." Saying which, she extended her hand to him, and in a moment ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... humility and docile dispositions may exist towards the master, endued as he is with the power which personal presence confers; but at the same time they will be liable to overstep their due bounds, and to degenerate into passiveness and prostration of mind. This towards him; while, with respect to other living men, nay even to the mighty spirits of past times, there may be associated with such weakness a want of modesty and humility. Insensibly may steal in presumption and a habit of sitting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... smiled for a moment on finding himself in his room, but could scarcely even murmur a few words, so great was his weakness. Gideon Spilett examined his wounds. He feared to find them reopened, having been imperfectly healed. There was nothing of the sort. From whence, then, came this prostration? Why was Herbert so much worse? The lad then fell into a kind of feverish sleep, and the reporter and Pencroft remained near the bed. During this time, Harding told Neb all that had happened at the corral, and Neb recounted to his ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... as the great man passed through the gate, because he would have no share in an act of worship to any but Jehovah. He might have compromised with conscience, and found some plausible excuses if he had wished. He could have put his own private interpretation on the prostration, and said to himself, 'I have nothing to do with the meaning that others attach to bowing before Haman. I mean by it only due honour to the second man in the kingdom.' But the monotheism of his race was too deeply ingrained ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feet? And this is scarcely less true of brain-work than house-work. I believe that the shoes worn by young girls and young women now, are a great cause of nervous irritability, and, joined with other causes, may be a source of disease, "nervous prostration," so called in after life. I have heard women say many times, "Nothing in the world will bring a sick-headache on so quickly as wearing a shoe that hurts my feet." The oft repeated words have led me to watch my pupils in this respect carefully, and to ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... with him. But he didn't and it was not all up; though the kestrel seemed as if she were going to hover there, in that spot, through all eternity. And when at last she condescended to surrender to the wind and vanish like a falling star into the horizon, our friend was as near nervous prostration and hysteria as a bird can be. A very little longer and I believe he would actually have died from sheer ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... forbidden to build churches, or speak openly of their religion, or sit in the presence of a Mohammedan, or to sell wine, or bear arms, or use the saddle in riding, or have a domestic who had been in the Mohammedan service. The utter prostration of all civil and religious liberty took place in the old scenes of Christian triumph. This was an instance in which persecution proved successful; and because it was successful it is a proof, in the eyes of Carlyle, that the persecuting religion was the better, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... deficient in no proportion of mind necessary to make an estimable man. But he was easily malleable, and he took at once the full impression of the stamp to which he was subjected. Had he gone into the Weights and Measures, a hypothesis which of course presumes a total prostration of the intellects and energy of Mr. Hardlines, he would have worked without a groan from ten till five, and have become as good a model as the best of them. As it was, he can be hardly said to have worked at all, soon became facile princeps in the list of habitual idlers, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... been peculiarly weak in its educational facilities, by a strange dullness and inertia due to the economic prostration of the farming industry. For the two decades following 1880 the country schools have failed to keep pace with the city schools. Prof. Foght says, "While the public attention has been centered on work and plans for the improvement of the city schools a great factor for or against the public ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... Of course, we didn't pull off such a success as Barnum did; but we had no kick coming when we counted up the receipts for the next week. Merritt's lecture was a work of art and he manufactured language at a rate which would have given Noah Webster nervous prostration when he christened the python 'Old Glory,' and told about its combining the venomous qualities of the cobra and the strength of the boa-constrictor. The python was so stuck on its new colors that it nearly broke its neck turning around to ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... lest Lord Raygan and his mother and sister should be finding the menage at Sea Gull Manor "all wrong," and laughing secretly at father and mother. If there had been that fear about the dressmaker's model on top of the rest of her anxieties she would have broken down with nervous prostration. But, thanks to her for saving him (without his knowledge), Peter seemed to have got over his silliness and was able to stand by her ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... been controlled in this way, when the wrap is removed, great care should be taken to have the slightest sign of a blaze immediately and completely stifled. This is best done by pinching it but water may be used. Any burns and any prostration by shock should be treated in ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... discerns the coming of Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the emancipation, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... melancholic humors, and his liver's being "adust by the over-pungency of the animal spirits," and then fell back on the universal panacea of blood-letting, which he effected with fear and trembling during a short interval of prostration; encouraged by which he attempted to administer a large bolus of aloes, was knocked down for his pains, and then thought it better to leave Nature to her own work. In the meanwhile, Cary had sent off one of the island skiffs to Clovelly, with letters to his father, and to Mrs. Leigh, entreating ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... found the Princess alone on the dais, receiving the company. "Nervous prostration" had made it impossible for the Prince to be present. He was confined to his bed-chamber; and the Doctor was in attendance ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. On the whole, he was so overjoyed as to be led to commit all manner of eccentricities, and conducted himself generally in such a ridiculous manner, that Charlie laughed himself into a state of prostration, and Kinch was, in consequence, banished from the sick-room, to be re-admitted only on giving his promise to abstain from being as funny as he could any more. After the lapse of a short time Charlie was permitted to sit up, and held regular levees ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... member of the Parliament—supported the popular opinions, and in a few years, by the influence of the popular party, was placed in that high and awful rank in which he now is. The fortunes of his country, we had almost said, the fates of the world, were placed in his wardship—we sink in prostration before the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, when we reflect in whose wardship the fates of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death," he began. "Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale desired to see me at a private interview—the prisoner being then in a state of prostration which made it impossible for him to attend to his duties as master of the house. At this interview the two doctors astonished and horrified me by declaring that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died poisoned. They left it to me to communicate the dreadful news to her husband, and they warned ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... night, but this she let nobody know; nor, what was painfully evident to herself, that her prostration was increased by anxiety and suspense about the wedding on which she had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... after night she Jay awake, hoping, praying that she might hear his step returning on a furlough to which wounds or sickness had entitled him. The natural and inevitable result was illness and nervous prostration. ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... training, particularly in the young, and that peevishness is especially reserved for the old and querulous, who are to try the amiability of the heroine. To a certain degree, this is often the case; the complete prostration of strength, and the dim awe of approaching death in the acute illnesses of the young, often tame down the stubborn or petulant temper, and their patience and forbearance become the wonder and admiration of those who have seen germs of far other dispositions. ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... During the rest of the day she did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupefaction. Night came, and with it but little rest. The next day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son's room, and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return again. She gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... M. Marouin had reported the news to his brother and the king. It was bad news. The king had no courage left to defend his life even by flight, he was in a state of prostration which sometimes overwhelms the strongest of men, incapable of making any plan for his own safety, and leaving M. Marouin to do the best he could. Just then a fisherman was coming into harbour singing. Marouin beckoned to him, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
