"Hysterics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the church, and the girl, kneeling down, was questioned by the bishop, but I could not make out the dialogue, which was carried on in a low voice. She then passed into the convent by a side door, and her mother, quite exhausted and nearly in hysterics, was supported through the crowd to a place beside us, in front of the grating. The music struck up; the curtain was again drawn aside. The scene was as striking here as in the convent of the Santa Teresa, but not so lugubrious. The nuns, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... it has wrecked the nerves of the entire family, has given me Saint Vitus' dance, has kept Laura awake for nights, has reduced Angela to hysterics, and you actually have the face to tell me it is harmless! Judged by its effects, I consider it quite as reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl. Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation, but ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... somewhat more a part of myself than old Mrs. Pollux was,—that there is an intimacy and confidence between us which will enable us to use the short-hand of life,—that she will not fall into a passion or fly into hysterics, but will merely speak to cook in good time. If I don't thank her for mending my glove in just the style that I did when I was a lover, it is because now she does that sort of thing for me so often that it would be a downright bore to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... sight; and unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the door, and crying out with terror, flew down to the kitchen. The cook returned with her, and on entering the room they discovered their mistress in a mad fit of hysterics, shrieking with laughter, and tearing her clothes off. The woman was strong, and seeing that prompt action was needed, seized her mistress in her arms and threw her on to the couch, and held her there in spite of her frantic ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... so people thought. Of course there were many people who were angry—who didn't believe a word—but this woman who told me was astonished that so many did believe.... So then I thought all night—what I should do. And this morning I went to Edith, my sister, and told her. And she went into hysterics, and said she always knew I should bring disgrace on them in the end—and her life had been a burden to her for eighteen years—oh! that's what she says to me so often! But the strange thing was she wanted to make me promise I would say nothing—not a word. We were to go ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the Mother Country was throughout considered as a lady in violent hysterics. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... am, but not for ruinin' a child that's got hysterics. I can face the divvle without havin' that on my conscience. And I'll tell ye somethin' that'll maybe turn out useful when ye grow older. Ye think because I folly a callin' that no decent woman can think of and because ye know that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... When he waded past Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort the girl, his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousness and Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized their plight; he feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and he knew that he ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... lights was in the highest degree complex. Priam understood immediately, from the man's calm glance at the picture, and the position which he instinctively took up to see it, that he was accustomed to looking at pictures. The visitor did not start back, nor rush forward, nor dissolve into hysterics, nor behave as though confronted by the ghost of a murdered victim. He just gazed at the picture, keeping his nerve and holding his tongue. And yet it was not an easy picture to look at. It was a picture of an advanced experimentalism, and would ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... blind man, Mr. Arthur had been left at a hosier's in H——. This seemed to him extremely mysterious; and, as hour after hour passed away, and still Arthur came not, he began to imbibe his wife's fears, which were now wound up almost to hysterics; and just at midnight he ordered his carriage, and taking with him the groom as a guide, set off to the suburban region. Mrs. Beaufort had wished to accompany him; but the husband observing that young men would be young men, and that there might possibly be a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brain. She thought she was going into hysterics. Her one thought was that she must get help, that she must reach some one who knew her. She ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... horrible German murderer who had strangled his employer's wife, while a female accomplice played the piano to divert her children's attention from her cries, swooned away at the news. O'Flynn's old mother went into hysterics and became quite uncontrollable in her grief when, a few minutes later the news, "Five years' penal servitude," was ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the good fellows were like boys. Some of them (with laughter seasoned by a few tears) read me funny bits out of their wives' letters—bits too that were not funny, about having "a pretty fit of hysterics" at reading bad news of us and "wanting to kiss the newsboy" when he brought ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... taken off, crying, just before the funeral begun—after they 'd even set the flowers on the coffin; and nobody'd speak to him after that—they just let him alone; and after a while his wife took sick of it—she was a nice, kindly woman—and she had sort of hysterics, and finally he moved off West. And 't was n't long before the woman died. Now, you can't undertake to ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... can turn for counsel and advice at the critical point in his book, there are only two courses open to him, aside from the doubtful one of evasion. He may let his fancy run riot and put his heroine into clothes that would give even a dumb woman hysterics, or he may follow the example of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor, who says of one of his heroines that "her pliant body was enshrouded in white muslin with a blue ribbon ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... had none of the symptoms of cholera. Yet terror seized upon all present; one of the women was taken with hysterics, and another uttered piercing cries and fainted away. Ninny Moulin, leaving Jacques in the hands of Morok, ran towards the door to seek for help,—when that door was suddenly opened, and the religious writer drew back ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that point, eh? Is it possible, think you, to be glad and sorry at one and the same moment? No doubt a creature like you, with such a very small intellect, if indeed you have any at all, will say that it is not possible. But I know better. Why, what do you call hysterics? Ain't that laughing and crying at once— sorrow and joy mixed? I don't believe you understand a word that I say. You great puffing blockhead, what ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... after midnight on the morning of the date set for the first of a series of grand banquets to the county folk, there came from the kitchen of Bangletop Hall a quick succession of shrieks that sent the three Misses Terwilliger into hysterics, and caused Hankinson J. Terwilliger's sole remaining lock to stand erect. Mrs. Terwilliger did not hear the shrieks, owing to a lately acquired habit of hearing nothing that proceeded ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Margaret when she saw the house inside and knew that it was hers, the tears she shed and smiles that grew almost into hysterics when she saw some of the incongruous furnishings, are all past describing. Margaret was too happy to think. She rushed from one room to another. She hugged her mother and linked her arm in her father's for a walk across the long piazza; she talked ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... walls of the fortress. That same night I sent a courier to General Vallejo—who, fortunately, was at Sonoma—bidding him watch Solano. And, sure enough—the day I left for Monterey the Princess Helene was in hysterics, Rotscheff was swearing like a madman, and a soldier was at every carronade: word had just come from General Vallejo that he had that morning intercepted Solano in his triumphant march, at the head of six tribes, upon Fort Ross, and sent him flying back to his mountain-top in disorder ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... men can't help looking at the question from the other side, because they form the other side. You might cram a woman's head with all the wisdom of the ages, and while it would frighten every man who came near her into hysterics, it wouldn't keep her from going down abjectly before some man who had sense enough to know that higher education does not rob a woman of her womanliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it does, she would have been ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... baby rang in that abode of silence. It began to kick and squirm with determined energy. Poor Miss Letitia had the very look of panic in her face. She clung to the fierce little creature, not knowing what to do. Miss S'mantha lay back in a fit of hysterics. Tunk advanced bravely, with brows knit, and stood looking ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... hunted—it tore my old heart to pieces! For I knew you. You would suffer the torments of the damned for what you had done. So I set out to find you, even if it cost ten times sixteen thousand. My poor Hoddy! I had to talk harshly, or break down and have hysterics. I've come to take you back home. Don't you understand? Back among your own again, and only a few of us the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... poor girl had received in the destruction of all her ideal world had indeed been cruel. Faintings and hysterics had at first shaken her tender frame, and were succeeded by a settled and pining melancholy. She had beheld from her window the march of the departing troops. She had seen her faithless lover borne off, as if in triumph, amidst the sound of drum and trumpet and the pomp of arms. She strained ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... neighboring drug-store; one of the bystanders volunteered to drive the carriage to its destination, and took his seat on the box; the owner droned out his thanks from the inside of the carriage, in a fat, wheezy voice, mingled with the sobs of a woman in partial hysterics; and the equipage rolled away almost as suddenly as it had come—perhaps not five minutes having been consumed in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... at once so frightful and so ludicrous, that I very nearly went off into hysterics, when I first ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... red-white-and-blue ribbon, and who smiled alluringly and somewhat toothlessly and remarked that she liked to go 'way, 'way up till it most turned over, and that it didn't scare her a bit. He swung her almost into hysterics and straightway found himself exceedingly popular with other braided-and-tied young misses. Charming Billy never could tell afterward how long or how many he swung 'way, 'way up; he knew that he pushed and pushed until his arms ached and the hair on his forehead ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... time the tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law was alternately hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally deporting himself like a respectable young man who had suddenly ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity. And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the cellar in a condition bordering on hysterics, the day ending tamely with a Bible story or a selection from "Little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... says she. 'But he's one of the gentlemen that's been coming to see me about the advertisement and he won't marry me unless I give him the $2,000. His name is William Wilkinson.' And then she goes off again in the agitations and hysterics of romance. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the first corner and then turned again into Madison avenue. Gladwin could hear the couple on the front seat whispering excitedly, the girl almost in hysterics. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Cheeseman, for instance, who left nothing unsold that he could turn a penny by, was anything but easy in his mind, and dreamed such dreams as he could not impart to his wife—on account of her tendency to hysterics—but told with much power to his daughter Polly, now the recognised belle of Springhaven. This vigilant grocer and butterman, tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuffman, hosier also, and general provider for the outer as well as the inner man, had much of that enterprise ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... writes Crockett, "and was eying me as an epicure surveys the table before he selects his dish, I have no doubt the cougar looked upon me as the subject of a future supper. Rays of light darted from his large eyes, he showed his teeth like a negro in hysterics, and he was crouching on his haunches ready for a spring; all of which convinced me that unless I was pretty quick upon the trigger, posterity would know little of the termination of my eventful career, and it ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... good-humouredly at me, and making all her little curls shake. "I think you are a very safe person, my love, and, besides, so fond of Rachel. I would not trouble you with my news, only that it is a secret, and a secret is a thing that I never could endure for any length of time without bringing on hysterics. You are not fond of my darlings, I know. There, we will send ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... seat, groping for some formula of leave-taking. The pushing back of her chair roused the white dog's smouldering animosity, and he drowned his mistress's further confidences in another outburst of hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under a pillow, called out: "Do come again! I'd ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... subject of woman he had a fairly large store. But these two subjects had been unrelated. Between the two memory compartments there had been no connection. That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as ridiculous and impossible. But Herbert Spencer had shown him not only that it was not ridiculous, but that it was impossible ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... his mother's face, too, as she came into the court, remembered the look of agony in her eyes, remembered the unearthly scream she had given. What did it mean? His mother was not a weak woman, she was not given to hysterics, rather she was cold and grim and hard to all the rest of the world. She was only tender towards him. What did she mean by coming in such a way? What led her to cry out with such intense pain? The thought had scarcely passed his mind when he ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... feeling. The police captain, the handsome man of whom I wrote to you, went down on his knees to me, tried to read me some verses of his own composition (he is a poet), but . . . his feelings were too much for him, he lurched and fell over . . . that huge giant went into hysterics, you can imagine my delight! The day did not pass without a hitch, however. Poor Alalykin, the president of the judges' assembly, a stout and apoplectic man, was overcome by illness and lay on the sofa in a state of unconsciousness for two hours. We had to pour ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... screamed, and went off into hysterics. Mrs Lascelles and Cecilia went to her assistance; but the latter had not forgotten the very different behaviour of Jack Pickersgill, and his polite manners, when he boarded the vessel. She did not, therefore, believe ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was, she never dreamed of despising the little skipping tailor of Rapps, though he was shorter by the head than herself. She had heard his music, and evidently had danced after it. The fiddler and fiddle together filled up her ambition. But the old people!—they were in perfect hysterics of wrath and indignation. Their daughter!—with the exception of one brother, now absent on a visit to his uncle in Hungary, a great gold-miner in the Carpathian mountains, the sole remnant of an old, substantial house, which had fed their flocks and their herds ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... he. "No useless questions or hysterics; no scene. Strong! Gad, but she's strong! She realized she was safe and I was with her again; that sufficed. Was there ever another woman like her ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... been prepared for this. She knew her duty well, for her father had often told her what to do. No tears! no hysterics! She took Sam's hand without a word, and, placing her fairy foot upon his boot, vaulted up into the saddle before him.... They crossed the river, and dismounting, they led the tired horse up the steep slope of turf that surrounded a ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... our church has been driven into hysterics by reading "Holiness through Faith." I went to see her as soon as I got home from W. yesterday, but she was asleep under the influence of an opiate. There is no doubt that too much self-scrutiny is pernicious, especially to weak-minded, ignorant young people. It was said of Prof. Hopkins that ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as "Jemima," and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked as I ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... was quite prepared for you to start hysterics and had the sal volatile bottle ready right ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... word in Linda's vocabulary more opprobrious than "nerves," which could be applied to a woman, it was "hysterics." The great specialist had admitted nerves; hysterics had no standing with him. Linda herself had no more use for a hysterical woman than she had for a Gila monster. She straightened suddenly, and in ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... you with all this." Selwyn's voice recalled me and the face in the fire vanished. "But there is no one else I can talk to. I should as soon go to a patient in a nerve sanitarium as to Mildred. As a sister Mildred is not a success. She'd first have hysterics and tell me I was brutal to poor Harrie, and then declare that to marry a million dollars was the chance of a lifetime for him. One of the ten thousand things I can't understand about women is their defense of men, their acceptance ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... you would much like the 'Duchess May;' but among the profanum vulgus you cannot think how successful it has been. There was an account in one of the fugitive reviews of a lady falling into hysterics on the perusal of it, although that was nothing to the gush of tears of which there is a tradition, down the Plutonian cheeks of a lawyer unknown, over 'Bertha in the Lane.' But these things should not make anybody vain. It is the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... I couldn't throw him a rope or shove out a plank; I ain't any expert woman trainer, either; but can I stand there with my mouth open and see an old friend get the hooks thrown into him by a class in hysterics? Not when the hookee happens to be one that once set me up as a stockholder in a gold mine. So I lets flicker with the first fool idea that comes into ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Get up!" and I tried to get up, and the caught streamers of my dress held me fast, and I sat down heavily again—plop, right on top of the poor gouty feet. The General roared more loudly than before, the two other men called out, "Oh, oh!" and I felt as if I should go into hysterics myself. It ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hysterics was the natural consequence. The kind and sisterly widow bore, rather than led, Marcia to an upper room, propped her with pillows in an arm-chair, and employed every tender and womanly art to soothe her excited nerves. Calmness came, but only with exhaustion. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... applications of Nancy's fingers made her words good, but laughing was mixed with crying, and Ellen writhed in hysterics. Just then came a little knock at the door. Ellen did not hear it, but it quieted Nancy. She stood still a moment; and then, as the knock was repeated, she called out boldly, "Come in!" Ellen raised her head "to see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... telegram arrives I will let you know. I am very anxious that your time of servitude should be over. That child seems worse than ever. I never knew anything like her manners to-day. Three of the servants have given notice, and even cook was in violent hysterics in the kitchen, for she found that Irene had put a live toad into the bread-pan. She said she can stand most things, but that toads are beyond bearing. The thing foamed at her in a most terrible manner, and the consequence is, all the bread had to ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton nearly had hysterics." ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... weeping. The smiling Nymphs painted on the ceiling above her head and the rose leaves they were for ever scattering to the dancing Hours (a charming group, and considered very cheerful), could not relieve her woe. She cried long and bitterly, and was on the verge of hysterics when the door opened and her most intimate woman friend, the Viscountess Fitz Rewes, was announced. This bewitching creature—who was a widow, with two long flaxen curls, a sweet figure, and the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... her the rug, wondering what she meant to do with it, and disturbed as I was, nearly burst into hysterics when I saw her solemnly place it upon Ralph's knees saying, "The man has lost his garments ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... memories of his friends. Sometimes these were characteristically cynical. He ridiculed the newspaper parade of national sympathy with the Prince of Wales's illness: "We are represented as all members of the royal family, and all in family hysterics." Dizzy's orientalization of Queen Victoria into an Empress angered him, as it angered many more. The last Empress Regnant, he said, was Catherine II. and it seems to be thought that by advising the Queen to take ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... anything to-day. I did not see Frieda Belay after she was dead, but Franke was there yesterday and saw her in her coffin. She says she will never forget it, it gave her such a pang. In the church Lampl had a fit of hysterics, for her mother was buried only a month ago and now she was reminded of it all and was frightfully upset. I cried a lot too when I was with Hella. She fancied it was because I was thinking she might have died last Dec. But that wasn't it, ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... and Don Julius Caesar of Austria exceedingly angry. Get before me, Don Fadrique! I am afraid of the terror of the Moors,—and no shame to me either! A poor dwarf, against a man who tears armies to shreds,—and sends scullery maids into hysterics! What is a poor crippled jester compared with a powerful scullery maid or an army of heathen Moriscoes? Give me that sword, Fadrique, or I am a ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... general health. A gentleman in France who procured a small fragment of this stone cured several persons of inveterate diseases by letting them lick it. The stone Lapis Nephriticus bound upon the pulse of the wrist of the left hand prevents stone, hysterics, and stops the flux of blood in any part. A compound metal called electrum, which is a mixture of all metals made under certain constellations and shaped into rings and worn, prevents cramps and palsy, apoplexy, epilepsy, and severe pains; and in the case of a person ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... liked me. He liked me, all righty, like they all do. God! if I'd ever run across a fellow that was on the level with me, I'd get the hysterics right in his face, I would. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... that followed was indescribable. The landlord came to the rescue of his Brotherhood comrades. His wife fell into hysterics for fear he would be beheaded by Don Quixote's vicious sword. The women were all screaming, wailing, weeping and fainting. Then this tremendous din and noise was suddenly rent by the voice of Don Quixote; and like a flash there was ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... him, and his passion was stimulated by the lies of a cabin-boy, I was forced to undergo an inquisitorial examination, which I resisted manfully but fruitlessly. The Bloomer-dame, who knew her man, assumed such an air of outraged innocence and calumniated virtue, interlarded with sobs, tears, and hysterics, that her perplexed husband was quite at his wit's end, but terminated the scene by abruptly ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... had to bear all the bad temper. I never saw people hate one another like those three did; the sisters even scratched each other's faces in their fits of jealousy, and sometimes they both stormed at their mother till she went into hysterics, just because she couldn't give them more money. The only one in the house who ever spoke decently to me was the son—Alfred Bolter, his name was. I suppose I felt grateful to him. Once or twice, when he met me on the stairs, he kissed me. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... that day at noon to find that the creature he had left in the height of her bright loveliness was in the extremity of suffering and peril—her husband gone no one knew whither; and the servants, too angry not to speak plainly, reporting that he had left her in hysterics. John tried not to believe the half, but as time went on, bringing despair of the poor young mother's life, and no tidings of Arthur; while he became more and more certain that there had been cruel neglect, the very gentleness ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "can't you manage to be sensible for a minute? If you go on in this way you will soon get hysterical, and I don't think my treatment for hysterics would appeal to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a titter between scorn and hysterics. 'His mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you mad? His mind! And what of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hold on her shoulders and shook her hard. "Listen to me, Irene Welland. You're on the way to hysterics or some such foolishness. I won't have it! Do you understand? Are you listening ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the gnomes couldn't make any more till the next day. So she set out to return to the city, with all the court following her diamond chariot, and I can tell you she felt pretty gloomy. She told the Grand Vizier that now she didn't see any end to the trouble, and she was just going into hysterics when a barefooted boy came along driving his cow home from the pasture. The fairy godmother didn't mind it much, for she was in her chariot; but the court ladies were on foot, and they began to scream, 'Oh, the cow! the cow!' and to take hold of the knights, and to get on to the fence, ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... Carlyle book; F. and I are in a world not ours; but pardon me, as far as sending on goes, we take another view: the first volume, a la bonne heure! but not—never—the second. Two hours of hysterics can be no good matter for a sick nurse, and the strange, hard, old being in so lamentable and yet human a desolation—crying out like a burnt child, and yet always wisely and beautifully—how can that end, as a piece of reading, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no time to observe anything else, for Tanty collapsed upon the steps and went off into as fine a fit of hysterics as I have ever seen. But fortunately it did not last long. Suddenly in the middle of her screams and rockings to and fro she perceived Sir Adrian as he leant anxiously over her. With the utmost energy she clutched his arm and scrambled to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Elizabeth shook her head: it was a trick, she said, to hide from her the sorrow which had fallen upon her. Her agony, instead of calming, became more violent; her tears ceased to flow, and were followed by hysterics. The priest then made her swear to keep the secret, and the sanctity ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... these instances: the instinct of imitation is so strong among men and women that every genuine outburst of maniacal excitement is sure to be followed by some purely mimetic efforts of a similar demonstration. The novelty of the whole movement was enough to account for the genuine and the sham hysterics. It was an entirely new experience then for English men and women of the humblest class, and of that generation, to be addressed in great open-air masses by renowned and powerful preachers. Whitefield's first great effort at field-preaching was made for the benefit of the colliers at Kingswood, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... woman is brave. When the lymphatic giantess falls into a faint or goes off into hysterics, she storms, or bustles about, or holds on like a game terrier, according to the work on hand. She will fly at any man who annoys her, and bears herself as equal to the biggest and strongest fellow of her acquaintance. In general ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... a funny little laugh almost like a woman's hysterics, and I stopped crying right off short, and the Voice said, just a little bit mockingly: 'But the only perfectly true story that I know—the only story that's never—never been told to anybody before is the story of my life.' ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... predisposition of some of its members may be, explores abnormal phenomena, not in the interests of faith, but of knowledge. Again, the old inquirers were dominated by a belief in the devil. They saw witchcraft and demoniacal possession, where the moderns see hysterics ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... reality they must be pallid. They called up to me, but the wind whipped their voices away. I made signs that she was not on the tower. The faces disappeared; again the torches wandered among the trees. Now and then I heard a shout, the barking of the greyhound, and a woman—perhaps old Nuta—in hysterics. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... very sooth, Master Feversham,—without you can swim," said Lady Enville faintly. She had gone into hysterics on hearing of the accident, and considered herself deserving of the deepest commiseration for her sufferings. "I am thankful Blanche ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... was dark without, and lights were burning upon the table, there was the sound of some one at the gate, and in a moment Henry stepped across the threshold, but started and turned pale when he saw his mother in violent hysterics upon the lounge, and Mary Howard bathing her head and trying to soothe her. Before he had time to ask a question, Jenny's arms were wound around his neck, and she whispered, "Rose is ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Olivo came soon after. The first said that the convulsions were caused by hysterics, but the doctor said no, and prescribed rest and cold baths. I said nothing, but I could not refrain from laughing at them, for I knew, or rather guessed, that Bettina's sickness was the result of her nocturnal employment, or of the fright which she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... up the marchioness' dress, cloak, lace-edged drawers, silk petticoat, and little varnished shoes, pulled her out of bed, without giving her time to let her know what she was doing, or to moan, or to have a fit of hysterics, and carried her off, as if she had been a doll, with all her pretty toggery, to a large, empty cupboard in the dining room, that was concealed by Flemish tapestry. 'You are a man... Try to get out of the mess,' she said to Stanis as she shut the door; 'I will be answerable ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... that the scene dispersed the party in a hurry. They took French leave, like birds scattered by a sudden storm. Julia was carried to bed in hysterics, accompanied by her mother. Merton and the jeweller had disappeared, the three rogues had been taken into custody, and only Brandon ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... they reached the Villa Rosa. Notwithstanding Jacqueline's efforts to appear natural, her own voice rang in her ears in tones quite new to her, a laugh that she uttered without any occasion, and which came near resulting in hysterics. Yet she had power enough over her nerves to notice the surroundings as she entered the house. At the door of the room in which she was to sleep, and which was on the first story, Madame Strahlberg kissed her with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to wear, as if she had stored her memory with relics; and from the now buried past she gathered all the intimate and trivial recollections with which to feed her cruel reveries. Then, when she had arrived at such paroxysms of despair that she fell into hysterics and swooned, all her accumulated grief broke forth in tears, flowing from her eyes ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... left to itself, unchecked, the habit deepens the "spasm-groove," and the "energy-leaks" grow bigger and bigger until finally, in later, adult life, all that is necessary to convert such persons into first-class neurasthenics or hysterics is some bad news, a few worries, or a ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... put me down now?" she asked. "If daddy saw you carrying me to the house he'd have a fit, and the servants would go into hysterics." So I put her tenderly on her feet, and she took my arm, and we walked slowly to the house. She could see nothing, not even in the hazy confusion of the nearly blind; yet she walked to the house with as firm a step and as natural an air as if she had nothing ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... time the ticket agent says, "Nothing left but an upper," and lovely women have hysterics and begin to make faces at the general public when the colored porter points up in the air and says, "Madam, your eagle's nest is ready far up ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... there'll be a good deal of pitching shortly. Better turn in. You've been through enough to send the average woman into hysterics." ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... silver or jewelled sugar-box, and half a loaf of bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back, or that the Germans would come, or anything that would solve the servant problem.... The daughter of a friend of mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... prayin' and singin'. Dese people is mighty good 'bout prayin' by de sick. Why, Robby, I think it would gib me de hysterics ef I war to try to git book larnin' froo my pore ole head. How long is yer gwine to stay? An' whar is ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... more comfortable generally. When she came to go into it in detail, I found that on the whole hers was the preferable course. New curtains for the drawing-room are to be put in hand at once. The charwoman is to come regularly once a week. We raised the girl's wages a pound, and she went into hysterics. Eliza has insisted that I am to have a first-class season-ticket in future. There is much ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... weird sight. I suppose I should have wrung my hands and had hysterics, but as a matter of fact I was almost amused, it was so silly. Thank goodness the ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... possibility have administered the poison was the prisoner at the bar. What could the judge and jury do, with such evidence before them as this? The verdict was Guilty, as a matter of course; and the judge declared that he agreed with it. The female part of the audience was in hysterics; and the male part was not much better. The judge sobbed, and the bar shuddered. She was sentenced to death in such a scene as had never been previously witnessed in an English court of justice. And she is ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... just as she told it. How much of it is fact and how much is hysterics I can't say. She was scared half out of her wits by what happened afterward, and may have got mixed ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... woman answered, "Hira has become hysterical; the doctor has given me some castor-oil for her; do you think that will be good for hysterics?" ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... on our heads. But this is quite the exception. As a rule they make no sign, and simply look on and say nothing. One young woman in a farm yesterday, which I think she had not started life long in, went into a fit of hysterics when she saw the flames breaking ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... recommended for averting and curing all manner of diseases. It was, if he might be believed, a preventive of the small-pox, and of great use in the course of the disease. It was a cure for impurities of the blood, coughs, pleurisy, peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, carchexia, hysterics, dropsy, mortification, scurvy, and hypochondria. It was of great use in gout and fevers, and was an excellent preservative of the teeth and gums; answered all the purpose of Elixir Proprietatis, Stoughton's drops, diet drinks, and mineral waters; was particularly to be recommended ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... noise had roused the whole household, and so, when I arrived, I found a number of the guests had gathered together. On looking into the room, I saw that the housekeeper was lying in a swoon, one of the servants was in hysterics, while Simon Slowden, who was in the room, and the page boy looked as white as sheets, and were ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... of was in a very queer street—she came to me, all of a shake, all of a tremble, unable to sleep; she came to me in the middle of the night—a thing she'd never done since she was six years old—an' at first I thought it was the hysterics, an' then I thought it was fever. But she spoke plain enough, an' her touch was cool enough. An' then ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... had been broken off. Suspecting that Sergeant Bellews had shifted controls, they essayed to shift them back. The communicator which was Betsy's factory twin went into sine-wave standby-modulation, and suddenly smoked all over and was wrecked. The wave-generator went into hysterics and produced nothing whatever. Then there was nothing to do but pull Sergeant Bellews out of the clink and order him to do the ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... guilty. I did not even wish to know her name, nor do I know it." Just then a piercing cry, ending in a sob, burst from the centre of the crowd, who encircled the lady who had before fainted, and who now fell into a violent fit of hysterics. She was carried out of the hall, the thick veil which concealed her face dropped off, and Madame Danglars was recognized. Notwithstanding his shattered nerves, the ringing sensation in his ears, and the madness which turned his brain, Villefort rose as he perceived her. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... terrible, at first. But they were kind to me, in their way. And I was—cured. I went into hysterics at the first mention of the whole hideous thing. They saw Roy, and they told me that I need never see him again. The papers—for it got to the papers!—said that a divorce had been arranged, but there was no need for a divorce. It was all hushed up—Linda and Fred ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... he summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and of—er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realization of the mistake we both made—and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly as if, I give you my word, she were one of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... rage, grief, vehement desire, or any other passion, whether sudden, or attended by long and painful sensations, the body manifestly suffers, and a variety of diseases, as apoplexy, palsy, madness, fever, and hysterics, may be the consequence. If this be true, an attention to the regulations of the mind is of much more importance than physicians seem disposed to admit. The poet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... was about to go into hysterics. I gently urged her forward. There was some sort of woman's wrap in the hall. I put it round her. Before she—or I—realized it, she was in ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... faintings and hysterics, and said she couldn't live without him, though everybody in Yorkburg knew she could, and easy enough. He without her, too, had she gone first. She had asthma and an outbreaking ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... said afterwards that they could hardly help laughing out loud. The pink muslin was draggled and besmeared with harbour mud, and torn half out of the gathers. Its owner was in a state of rage, terror, and hysterics. The commotion was fearful. It was very strange she did not seem to have the faintest suspicion of any of our party. She was sure the men were drunk because they carried her so unsteadily. She was positive they meant ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... grounds of respect. To come walking in in this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one, and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party—ah, even I could imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among the women, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors—and heaven only knows what distortions such rumors might undergo, having their source in the incredible—would range our social circle like wildfire. And the newspapers, for our families are ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... commanded, screamed out—"Why don't you give her some snuff, and make her sneeze!" The silence thus broken was broken indeed, and the house roared with laughter. Our two friends were not backward in partaking of the merriment. The lady went almost into hysterics, so violent were her paroxysms of mirth. In the midst of the clamour, Holloway, hearing these loud bursts of laughter at a time when there should be complete silence, rushed on to the stage, fancying something had gone wrong. Darting to the footlights, as ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... be so bad," said Miss Prudence, half laughing and half crying, "if there were any sleeves to my dress, but, as you see, there aren't," and then Miss Prudence had something as near hysterics as a healthy young woman from ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... her lovely dinner dress, with the strains of music floating from the drawing-room, and cigar smoke floating from the dining-room, she laughed. When Lily said, "And there wasn't even any chickenroast, mother," she nearly had hysterics. ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... close and firm in the trembling clutch of the sick man, who, with a wild and confused look, begged me not to sacrifice him to any attention to the cause of this disturbance, which was produced by a servant in the house habitually given, through fits of hysterics, to the utterance of these screams. I put on an appearance of being satisfied with this statement; but I fixed my eye relentlessly on him, as he still shook, from the combined effects of his incipient disease, and his fear of my investigating the cause of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... so good. Juanna, you are the bravest and cleverest girl in the whole world. Most young women would have forgotten everything and gone into hysterics ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... accident. In the last to arrive were the captain and the doctor. The company gathered round the fires, keeping their boxes and bags close to them. The stewards and sailors brewed hot punches for all. The lady with the hysterics was soothed to quiet by the doctor and a tiny mug of brandy and boiling water. The officers held a consultation and decided to get the passengers safely to Nap Harbor, and aboard a schooner for St. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... wife and children, Fussie, perhaps excited by his run over the bridge from New York, suddenly bounded on to the stage! The good children who were playing Princess Mary and Prince Henry didn't even smile; the audience remained solemn; but Henry and I nearly went into hysterics. Fussie knew directly that he had done wrong. He lay down on his stomach, then rolled over on his back, a whimpering apology, while carpenters kept on whistling and calling to him from the wings. The children took him up to the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... I hear she rang up the household after you went that night, had hysterics, and sent a servant flying for the doctor. He—a most inferior person, according to Cousin James—having a sister who is a trained nurse, put her in charge of the patient at once, where she has remained since. In consequence of ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deceived to her face, and I could do nothing. Indeed, what could I say to her? I had had time to reconsider things a little and reflect that I had nothing to go upon but certain feelings and suspicious presentiments. I found her in tears, almost in hysterics, with compresses of eau-de-Cologne and a glass of water. Before her stood Pyotr Stepanovitch, who talked without stopping, and the prince, who held his tongue as though it had been under a lock. With tears and lamentations she reproached Pyotr ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had the desired effect. Miss Mitchell was very much thrilled at the prospect of meeting her old friends, and highly appreciated the privilege of a violin solo at the concert. The girls were, of course, most excited, except the performers, who nearly had hysterics at the prospect of playing before so great a ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... little recovered herself, she ordered her attendants to drive him away, and not give him a single copper; whereupon his look of mortified discomfiture wrought her punishment and his revenge, for it sent her into violent hysterics, from which she ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... him with a sudden energy. "How dare you!" she cried, hysterically. "I see it all now: the ring, the—the cloak; she has had them all the time!.... Fool that I was—silly, trusting fool!" And she broke out into violent hysterics. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... crowd gathered closer; and the prospect of a fight put the boys in hysterics of delight, and their rags into great commotion. To their sorrow, it was but the shadow of a "row"; and they kicked and cuffed each other, in order to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... vaguely by the screaming which was still going on at a tremendous rate—evidently the girl had gone off into genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions—remorse at her impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... "No one, so far as we are aware, has as yet studied with sufficient thoroughness the subconscious memories of epileptics, and for all we now can say, closer resemblances may be found between these and the subconscious states of the hysterics than we now ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... if either is in the slightest danger," I assured her confidently. "Hysterics have lost perspective. Long before the Grass becomes an immediate concern my drugstoreclerks, with less exalted opinions of their talents than you, will have found the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... under the external appearance of great strength and robustness. The hypochondriac, palsies, cachexies, dropsies, and all those diseases which arise from laxity and debility, are, in our days, endemic every where; and the hysterics, which used to be peculiar to the women, as the name itself indicates, now attacks both sexes indiscriminately. It is evident that so great a revolution could not be effected without the concurrence of many causes; but ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... brave Biddy's assailants hearing what I said, and expecting probably to have some shot sent after them, took to their heels until they reached their horses, which they had left secured to some trees, when mounting, they galloped off as hard as they could go. Biddy, the excitement over, went into hysterics, laughing and crying ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... to equine hysterics, and evidently convinced that the ordinary buggy behind him had been changed into some dangerous and appalling creation, still plunged and kicked violently to rid himself of it. The man who had stepped out of the depths ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... round the waist, and at the Prompter bowled him. Ah! such a shindy ne'er was seen, such riot and such rage— It was the finest "rally" ever seen on any stage! 'Mid shrieks and cat-calls, whistles shrill, hysterics and guffaws, They rang the Curtain down amidst uproarious applause. The piece is still a great success; but, I regret to say, JOHN's name appears no longer in the bills ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... once a pretty to-do. Anthea was crying—more, I think, at the mortification of being struck than for any other reason; while Mrs Vansittart instantly went into violent hysterics, shrieking that her darling boy was being murdered. The young gentleman himself meanwhile slunk away down the companion stairs, eyeing me as he went, as though by no means certain that I would not yet fall upon him and inflict the punishment ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... out, slamming the door. "Now for the hysterics downstairs," he muttered as he tramped noisily away. "I ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... Mrs. Burton. "Why, I—I should have said she'd go into hysterics. Such a handsome man ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... almost on the verge of hysterics. A garbled version of the events of the night had been brought to her and this, coupled with the long absence of the three young folks, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... in dread of hysterics, and she plunged her hand into Alick's pocket for a scent-bottle, which he had put there by way of precaution for her, and, while applying it, said, in her full, sedate voice, keeping it as steady as she could, "Shall I drive you home? Alick ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conceived, as I had imagined, in the bold but true stile of tragedy. I intended them to produce a great effect; and was sorry to be informed, as among other things I had been, that ladies would faint, fall into hysterics, and be taken shrieking out of the boxes at hearing them. I had no remedy but to submit, re-consider, and, by lowering the tone of passion, perhaps spoil ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of hysterics, and I did wonder," rejoined Gerald, tartly. "But as I told you, women are always fools, and nervous women the worst ones, I haven't any patience with them. I was vexed enough with her for keeping me from Phebe. I don't believe ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... ready to fall into hysterics. She controlled herself with a supreme power, and hastened to touch ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... declares," 'till the tears literally gushed from her "blue, blue orbs," and trickled down her plump and ruddy cheeks; but scarcely had she plunged into the very depths of the pathos induced by the moving air, which threatened to throw her into a gentle swoon, or kicking hysterics, when her spirit was aroused by the sudden change of the melancholy ditty, to the rampant and lively tune, with the popular burden of, "Turn about and wheel about, and jump ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... flight, would, probably, take measures publicly to identify MAGNOLIA'S alpaca garment with the covering of his lost umbrella, and thus direct new suspicion against a sister and brother already bothered almost into hysterics. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... I half dressed and went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate my hysterics to ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... indulging in plain and fancy hysterics at this moment," he said with a memory of the last glimpse he had had of that illustrious lady's face. "And as for the author, he is dreaming chiefly of some quiet spot where one can lie stretched on the beach whenever he isn't lying in ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... misfortune was that when Tricotrin called victoriously upon Claudine, to clasp her in his arms, he found her in hysterics on the sofa—and it transpired that she had not represented the waiting-maid after all. On the contrary, she had at the last moment been promoted to the part of the ingenue, while the waiting-maid had been played by a little actress whom ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the last straw, and Nealie gurgled and choked as if she were going to have a very bad fit of hysterics, which made the sympathizer—a kind-looking elderly man—still more concerned ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... for an explosion of fury, piercing cries, hysterics, fainting-fits. To his great surprise, Jenny did not answer a word. She became as white as her collar, her ruddy lips blanched, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... beings instead of marble-hearted scorpions," said Dick, with an originality of simile which he cultivates. "When we see that we're frightening anything we slow down, slip out the clutch, and glide so stealthily by that the creature gets no excuse for hysterics. I used to think before you taught me to drive, and I had the experience and the responsibility myself, that you wasted time grovelling to animal prejudices; but I've changed my mind. I've learned there's no fun to be got out of pig-selfishness on the road, and leaving a trail ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... science to the class of those educators of the past who taught that it was improper for young ladies to indulge in sports and athletics and who produced generations of feeble, undeveloped invalids, bound up by stays and addicted to swooning and hysterics. One need only go out on the street of any American city to-day to be confronted with the victims of the cruel morality of self-denial and "sin." This fiendish "morality" is stamped upon those emaciated bodies, indelibly ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... dissolved, and with the conjunction the love vanishes. The states of vitiation of the mind which cause separation, may appear from an enumeration of them; they are for the most part, the following: madness, frenzy, furious wildness, actual foolishness and idiocy, loss of memory, violent hysterics, extreme silliness so as to admit of no perception of good and truth, excessive stubbornness in refusing to obey what is just and equitable; excessive pleasure in talkativeness and conversing only on insignificant ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx. You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... given above, with their superlatives, their laboured philosophy, their lyrics, hysterics, and prophecies, are singularly unconvincing. The manner in which the simple question, "How do you propose to fit actual human nature into your scheme?" is answered by the Socialists, proves that they find that question unanswerable. History teaches us that revolutions based on plunder, euphemistically ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... they set forth on their journey. Bambi left lists all over the house as reminders for the Professor. Ardelia had orders enough to manoeuvre an army. The Professor went to the station with them, and absent-mindedly kissed Jarvis good-bye, which infuriated his victim and nearly sent Bambi into hysterics. As the train pulled out, she leaned from the window and called, "Go home, now, Professor!" and with a mechanical jerk he turned and started off in the ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... somewhat gross and bourgeois condition in which the movement found it, to a pure and unworldly idealism. And, unlike most other religious revivals, especially in this country, it has remained remarkably free from unhealthy emotionalism and hysterics. The social atmosphere of Oxford, always alien to mawkish sentiment, penetrated the whole movement, and maintained in it for many years a certain sanity and dignity which, while they doubtless prevented it from spreading widely in the middle class, made the Tractarians respected ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... some years Mary Anderson's senior, who had that devoted attachment to her young mistress often found in the colored races to the whites. Dinah was so much terrified by the fierce declamation that she almost went into hysterics, and rushing up-stairs begged the mother to come down and see what was the matter with "Miss Mami," as she was affectionately called at home. Consent was at length obtained to a little drawing-room entertainment at home of "Richard III.," ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... great writers could not almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Spain has Cervantes and he is always being thrown at us. Germany has Goethe, Heine, Schiller. France so seldom sees literary genius that a man like Victor Hugo sends her into hysterics of self-admiration. But I'm afraid ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... by laics and clerics, So like is to ours, in its spirit and tone. That I often nigh laugh myself into hysterics, To think that Religion should make it ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... in sight of the narrow gorge of Talagouga, with the Mission Station apparently slumbering in the sun. This puts the Eclaireur in an awful temper. She goes down towards it as near as she dare, and then frisks round again, and runs up river a little way and drops down again, in violent hysterics the whole time. Soon M. Gacon comes along among the trees on the bank, and laughs at her. A rope is thrown to him, and the panting Eclaireur tied up to a tree close in to the bank, for the water is deep enough here to moor a liner in, only ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the coaches, he particularly directed his violence and insults. His conduct with them at last became unbearable, and when, after threatening two actors with his revolver and frightening the women to the verge of hysterics, he passed onward into another car, a hurried council of war was held in the coach be had just vacated, and every man who had a pistol got it in readiness, with the understanding that if he returned, he was to be shot down at the first aggressive movement. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... and lightninged, and Antha nearly went into hysterics. She hid her head under the bed clothes and wanted them all to do likewise. Katherine snorted with disgust and delivered her mind about people who carried their fears to the verge of silliness. Antha cried some more and the atmosphere in the tent was becoming decidedly damp again when Hinpoha ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... a care, there was no doubt of that. Imogene, whom he liked and who liked him, declared that "that young one had more jump in him than a sand flea." The very afternoon of his arrival he frightened the hens into shrieking hysterics, poked the fat and somnolent Patrick Henry, the pig, with a sharp stick to see if he was alive and not "gone dead" like the kitten, and barked his shins and nose by falling out of the wheelbarrow in the barn. Kenelm, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the band played it in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience and the noise of corks drawn from smelling bottles prevented the mistakes between sharps and flats being heard. One hundred and nine ladies fainted! forty-six went into fits! and ninety-five had strong hysterics. The world will scarcely credit the truth when they are told that fourteen children, five old men, one hundred tailors, and six common councilmen were actually drowned in the inundation of tears that flowed from the ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... small-sized fit of hysterics after she had gone, and it was not cured by opening up my waste-baskets and laying out the "treasures" she had saved for me. I laughed until ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... was evidently trying to comfort and calm the poor stranger—doubtless the mother or wife of one of the four officers upstairs. Two days ago one of these visitors had had something very like a fit of hysterics after seeing her wounded husband. Rose shrank from the memory. But this was worse—far worse. She hurried on ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... step-son of having taken it with a view to a private sale. So began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which ended for Mrs. Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at the furniture establishment in the afternoon. Mr. Cave took refuge from his wife's ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... him for some offence or neglect to wear a course woollen dress on a particular day, and dine on his knees at the door of the refectory, the boy's haughty spirit swelling under this dishonour, brought on a sudden vomiting, and a strong fit of hysterics. The mathematical master passing by, said they did not understand what they were dealing with, and released him. He cared little for common pastimes; but his love for such as mimicked war was extreme; and the skill of his fortifications, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... time I shall be having hysterics. It is always the way when I drink too much. I don't feel cheerful any longer, I feel melancholy now, Mintz. I feel now as though ... as though I have wept on this sofa all through the night ... Oh, how happy we used to be once upon a time," she sighed ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... him dead, and then sent for Dr. Maverick, to whom he had taken a great liking. Between them both they found a faint sign of life; and he was removed to his elegant mansion on Hope Terrace, where his wife went into immediate and violent hysterics. They remained several hours, and decided it to be that terrible death in life, entire paralysis of brain, nerve, and muscle. He might linger some days; he might drop ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... His blood's on his own head. Oh, Churn, it was on his head, every sense o' the word! I didn't like the look of it—turned me sick! Lucky my long cloak was in the room. See—on my dress, two stains! Boy, that trunk stunt was awful. You've got to let me go to bed and sleep, or I believe I'll have hysterics and yell the house down. I thought I was all right since I found you, but it's comin' on ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson |
