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Ordeal   Listen
adjective
Ordeal  adj.  Of or pertaining to trial by ordeal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books



... but crushing ordeal of August, 1914, Belgium has proved that she possesses other titles to existence and respect than those afforded by treaties, by the mutual jealousies of neighbours, or by the doctrines of international law. She has more than satisfied the tests which distinguish ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... which they declared was very poetical, and 'quite large enough for anything' (the canvas was six feet by four), and invited the artist to dinner. This first dinner-party, in what he regarded as 'high life,' was an alarming ordeal for the country youth, who made prodigious preparations, drove to the house in a state of abject terror, and in five minutes was sitting on an ottoman, talking to Lady Beaumont, and more at ease than he had ever been in his life. In truth, bashfulness ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... his remarks. This system is naturally the most repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon establishing himself in this country he introduced ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... say that ordeal is over," she remarked. "And I think," she continued, with a smile, "that when the Northbury people see my cards, awaiting them on their humble hall-tables, they will ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... came, and with the steadying of his nerves and the quieter pulse of his blood Philip began to ask himself if he was going to escape the ordeal which a short time before he had accepted as a certainty. Was it possible that his shots had frightened Bram? He could not believe that. Cowardice was the last thing he would associate with the strange man he had seen in the starlight. Vividly ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... scenes of disaster, saw the frightful ruin, heard the stories of Christians and missionaries, faced the little companies of survivors and learned more of the awful ordeal through which they had passed, I marvelled, not that some yielded, but that so many stood steadfast. Edicts were issued commanding them to recant on pain of dire punishment, but promising protection to those who obeyed. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... commanding them to move with decent slowness. Had she obeyed her impulse, she should have run. She forced herself to turn at the door and smile back, forced herself to bridle her emotions and go quietly to breakfast and to her ordeal with the lightning thrusts ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... dangerous test of their good or bad deeds, the unerring trial of their guilt or purity, stood many souls of Dahcotahs, and others whom Akkeewaisee had known on the earth. He stood and beheld the punishment of the bad, and the blessed escape of the good from the dreadful ordeal to which all alike were subjected. He saw a Dahcotah attempt the dangerous passage who had been too lazy to hunt, who had lain whole days stretched out upon his mat, while his wife begged food of the husbands of other women, and his children were clothed with skins, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... longer," he said, in low tones. "As I told you last night, I need you to strengthen me for the ordeal that is to come. Will you ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton

... absurdity is amusing. Meantime it must not be forgotten, that the principle concerned, though it may happen to disgust men when associated with ludicrous circumstances, is, after all, the very same which has latently governed very many modes of ordeal, or judicial inquiry; and which has been adopted, blindly, as a moral rule, or canon, equally by the blindest of the Pagans, the most fanatical of the Jews, and the most enlightened of the Christians. It proceeds upon the assumption ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... traversed, as it seemed to me, miles of silence and of twilight, and all the time my blood hammered at my temples and my throat grew dry as I thought of the ordeal that stood before me. To whom was I thus bidden, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... had however passed through this ordeal. The letter to John Birkenholt had been despatched by a trusty clerk riding with the Judges of Assize, whom Mistress Perronel knew might be safely trusted, and who actually brought back a letter which might have emanated from the most affectionate ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Nancy's endeavors, and such an effect had it on her frame, that it was feared she must give it up. This would have been a terrible calamity; and the tears of the two sisters and the benevolence of the employer enabled Nancy to pass through this severe ordeal. In a while she acquired sufficient dexterity, and thenceforward went through her work with great accuracy and perseverance. As far as any intercourse with the workpeople was concerned, she might ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... everything was merged in this great ordeal of love and grief they were battling through together—secure from the unwanted presence of others as they had not been since he had last felt her heart fluttering beneath his, in the porch of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... passed through a fiery furnace in which all the bullion in the Bank of England will not serve a man. That kind of ordeal upsets one's old notions as to the value of money. And, again, I have never been able to contemplate Charlotte's inheritance of that fortune as anything but a remote contingency; the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... should never have learned in the sunshine. I am constantly rousing myself up to suffer and be strong. I intend, when this conflict is over, to cast my lot with the freed people as a helper, teacher, and friend. I have passed through a fiery ordeal, but this ministry of suffering will not be in vain. I feel that my mind has matured beyond my years. I am a wonder to myself. It seems as if years had been compressed into a few short months. In telling you this, do you not, can you ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... generally much thought of, though it is of the most vital importance to the safety of London. It is very desirable that the metropolis should take warning by the experience of Liverpool, without going through the fiery ordeal which the ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... once vaccinated and the two young people received many precautions, and injunctions, with medicine and a strict regime; and even then the old doctor shook his head dubiously. If those two beautiful faces should have to pass through the ordeal of that dread disease his old heart would be quite broken. All that skill and science could do to prevent it ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... was built in the fourteenth century as an open place for the delivery of proclamations and for other ceremonies, and also as a shelter from the rain, the last being a purpose it still serves. It was here that Savonarola's ordeal by fire would have had place had it not been frustrated. Vasari also gives Orcagna the four symbolical figures in the recesses in the spandrels of the arches. The Loggia, which took its new name from the Swiss lancers, or lanzi, that Cosimo ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... and she laughed and babbled again, and the new-born beauty departed from her eyes for a season, and the warm blood raced through her veins, and she was all happiness. Meanwhile nothing came of his painting and he was not sorry when she ended the ordeal. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... his stay at Thessalonica was limited to three weeks; yet it was very brief, and for this reason he was anxious to return again that he might impart further instruction and consolation to the converts there, who were undergoing a severe ordeal of temptation through persecution. Chaps. 2:17-3:5. His labors at Thessalonica were not confined to the Sabbath-day and the Jewish synagogue. He preached the gospel to the Gentiles also, and his chief success seems to have been among them. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... meantime, Tom was doing his best. It was no easy task for him to pass safely through the Apache lines in the guise of an Indian. The redskins would be on the lookout for the return of their scout, and the ordeal through which he would have to pass would be a much more severe one than usual. But he was accustomed to desperate schemes, and ready for any sort of encounter. If discovered immediately, he meant to dash back again up the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... barbarians. They are worse than the sea, and that was inhospitable enough. The saints be praised that that is over, at any rate. Oh, the intolerable scent of pitch, and the tossing and the heaving! Heaven spare me such an ordeal again! I thought I should have died of the smells. And here, can it be? Is it possible that there is a distinct odour of—pah! what? Oils, as I am a Christian, and close to the very palace of the Archon! What a detestable people! Some ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... the people on board here had assumed we should breakfast before starting and not a scrap of food was ready. The poor men finally got some food at 2 p.m. after a twenty-two hours fast and three hours herded or working in a temperature of about 140 deg.. Nobody could complain of such an ordeal if we'd been defending Lucknow or attacking Shaiba, but to put such a strain on the men's health—newly arrived and with no pads or glasses or shades—gratuitously and merely by dint of sheer hard muddling—is ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... shrapnel fire on to them, and although they bore it most unflinchingly, old experience told me that their nervous fighting energy was being used up all the time. If only these men could have been brought within charging distance, fresh and unbroken by any ordeal! But here was just one of the drawbacks of the battlefield and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... of George Meredith existed, where in it would The Shaving of Shagpat find its place? There is fear that in competition with the series of analytical studies of modern life that stretches from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel to One of our Conquerors, it might chance to be pushed away with a few lines of praise. Now, I would not seem so paradoxical as to say that when an extravaganza is held up to me in one hand, and a masterpiece of morality like The Egoist in the other, I can doubt which is ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... pen, in which she sits, pensively, holding her bonnet by the strings, the heavy folds of her light auburn hair hanging dishevelled over her shoulders. Melancholy indeed she is, for she has passed an ordeal of unholy brutality. Near her sits one Pringle Blowers, a man of coarse habits, who resides on his rice-plantation, a few miles from the city, into which he frequently comes, much to the annoyance of quietly disposed ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... Persian poem, and his popularity rests almost entirely upon his published correspondence. Of these letters, so excellent of their kind, can it be said that they have the note of improvisation, that they were written for a friend's eye, without thought or care for that ordeal of posthumous publication which has added, as we have been told, a fresh terror to death? The composition is exactly suited to the tone of easy, pleasant conversation; the writing has a serene flow, with ripples of wit and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... spiritual advantages to be derived from taking part in those services. Add to this that a monk had to pass through rather a long training before he was regularly admitted to full membership. He had to submit to a term of probation, during which he was subject to a somewhat rigorous ordeal. ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... courtesy all his own, Gifford Barrett went through the trying ordeal of an introduction in his bathing suit. Even Phebe was forced to admit that he was well-bred, while, in the distance, Cicely capered about madly, half in rapture that the desired meeting had taken place, half in rage that she could ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... inaccurately, but there is no noun to describe a person who goes to court for a single time) was compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, bowing, out of the queen's presence. For ladies who had trails to manage the ordeal must have been a trying one. Now it has been made quite easy. There is but one point in which a presentation to the queen differs from that already described at the prince of Wales's levee. You may turn your back to the prince, but after bowing to the queen you step ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... home to make the needful preparations, and Juanita Sterling went to encourage Miss Crilly for the coming ordeal. ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... his "American Notes" expresses the opinion that no vigor of mental constitution could be proof against the influence of solitary confinement; but the narrow monkey-cages of our zoological prisons show that the minds of the little captives can stand the test of even that ordeal. They play with their shadows, if the nakedness of their four walls does not afford any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... 1st to 4th century; against Yemishi; prime minister; great duke of the Presence; in conquest of Korea; succession to Jingo; ordeal for treason; grand-daughter, marries Nintoku; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... for I knew from past experience with other children what to expect: fretfulness and tears, if nothing worse. To my unbounded amazement she greeted me with a smile and said she was glad to see me; and, if you'll believe it, there was never so much as a whimper from her lips through the whole ordeal, though I knew ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... the drawing-room; but she was compelled to relinquish this idea. The expression of her face betrayed too plainly the terrible ordeal she had passed through. The servants had heard M. Wilkie's parting words; and news of this sort flies about with the rapidity of lightning. That very night, indeed, it was currently reported at the ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... face brought back to the Indian lad with a rush the memory of the recent ordeal he had been through. He gave one glance at the unconscious form on the other couch and his hand darted to the hunting-knife at his hip as he ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... she must sit holding the silk, a mark for Lady Rythdale's eyes and tongue. She sat drooping a little with indignation and shame, when Mr. Carlisle came up. He had seen from a distance the tint of his lady's cheeks, and judged that she was going through some sort of an ordeal. But though he came to protect, he stood still to enjoy. The picture was so very pretty. The mother and son ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... Anti-natural God or Spirit. In summer he shivers with cold, in winter he suffers from heat; he cries when he laughs and he laughs when he cries, &c. He is the reverse of nature in all things. Heyka is universally feared and reverenced by the Dakotas, but so severe is the ordeal that the Heyka Wacpee (the dance to Heyka) is now rarely celebrated. It is said that the "Medicine-men" use a secret preparation which enables them to handle fire and dip their hands in boiling water without injury, and thereby gain ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... The audience at first remained silent, then their faces gradually unwrinkled, and soon, one or two claps having been ventured, they were carried away and peace was made. I was well rewarded, however, for this terrible ordeal, as my "second-sight" never gained a more ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... a special election called for that purpose, the question shall be presented to the electors whether the judge shall be permitted to continue in office or some other specified person shall be substituted in his place. This ordeal differs radically from the popular judgment which a judge is called upon to meet at the end of his term of office, however short that may be, because when his term has expired he is judged upon his general course of conduct while he has been in office and stands or falls upon that as a whole. ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... creatures with whom she had been compelled to associate—even to the few who, though scarcely sane, had manifested tenderness and affection. She had felt that she must reserve all her strength for the coming ordeal, which she both welcomed and feared inexpressibly. She knew how critical was the step she was taking and how much depended on it, yet the more she thought, the more it seemed to her as if Providence ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal presence and issues from it ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the popular fervour had ebbed, and that the repeal members would not generally be returned: the English press made confident predictions to that effect. John O'Connell and the clique at Conciliation Hall accepted the ordeal, and were backed by priests and people in their policy. An extraordinary meeting was convened, and an address to the electors of Ireland resolved upon. It was a document which ought to be retained upon the page of history, for it discloses ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... "thundering epistles." The controversy now waxed warm, too much so for the monk. He was condemned, imprisoned, and scourged. He threw his treatises into the fire, but intimated his willingness to go through the ordeal of stepping into cauldrons of boiling water, oil, and pitch, being thoroughly convinced that he had the truth upon his side. His offer was treated by Hincoma as the boast of a Simon Magus. He ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... drawing-room doorway she stood still, extraordinarily still. For Desmond himself confronted her; and she had not anticipated the ordeal of a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples inculcated all these deeds of self-absorbing vain-glory, our heroes of a "better revelation" have no excuse for failing under their trial, and many there be who pass ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... during that nightmare ordeal was that those holes were regularly spaced. But somehow his confidence did not feed on that fact. There always remained the nagging fear that when he searched for the next it would not be there and he would cling ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... Government seems to be in a pretty state between their moderate and their violent adherents, and though they may scramble through this session, and hustle Parliament to an end, it is difficult to see how they will ever pass the ordeal of another, for they can neither continue in their present course nor adopt any ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... preparations, which lasted some days, and that it would prove repugnant to enumerate, the fakir declared himself ready to undergo the ordeal. The Maharajah, the Sikhs chiefs, and Gen. Ventura, assembled near a masonry tomb that had been constructed expressly to receive him. Before their eyes, the fakir closed with wax all the apertures in his body (except his mouth) ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... her thoughts. Another, and a stranger's, image is throned in her soul. She who had moved in the world so variously, who had received so much homage and been accustomed from her childhood to all that is considered accomplished and fascinating in man, and had passed through the ordeal with a calm clear spirit; behold, she is no longer the mistress of her thoughts or feelings; she had fallen before a glance, and yielded in an instant ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... am an Alderman—I was Sheriff—I have been Lord Mayor—and the three great eras of my existence were the year of my shrievalty, the year of my mayoralty, and the year after it. Until I had passed through this ordeal I had no conception of the extremes of happiness and wretchedness to which a human being may be carried, nor ever believed that society presented to its members an eminence so exalted as that which I once touched, or imagined a fall so great as that which I experienced. I came originally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... had no party dresses, but with Mrs. Willard's assistance she always looked the beautiful country cousin. Other girls remarked upon the monotony of her dress, but then the gentlemen did not care that one woolen gown did duty on many occasions. Some women can stand the ordeal of a uniform for church and ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... experience in any capacity in navigating the western rivers. Captains, pilots, mates, engineers and deck-hands enough presented themselves to take five times the number of vessels we were moving through this dangerous ordeal. Most of them were from Logan's division, composed generally of men from the southern part of Illinois and from Missouri. All but two of the steamers were commanded by volunteers from the army, and all but one so manned. In ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... the unanimous consent of one and all of them; his novels, however, appeal only to a select few, but by them they are regarded with unbounded admiration, some giving preference to this and others to that of the series; "The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," published in 1859, is by many considered his best, though it is over "The Egoist" that Louis Stevenson breaks out into raptures; Meredith has most sympathetic insights into nature and life, has a marvellous power in analysing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... one's face between these two points. The possessor of a rotund countenance experiences considerable difficulty in performing this feat, and is apt to spill the contents over himself, yet every one of the emperor's guests has to submit to the ordeal, for an inscription on the goblet says that all persons attending shooting-parties at Rominten for the first time must empty the vessel of its contents,—a pint bottle of champagne,—at one draught, to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... to describe the parting, as it might be too touching to the feelings of our fair readers. Lucy, having had to undergo the same ordeal just before, was able to console her sister-in-law. Jack's manly heart felt very full, but he tore himself away, and, hastening on board, ordered the ship, which was at Spithead, to be got under weigh. Round went the men at the capstan, the merry pipe sounding, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... by a gastaldo or tribune, whose power, nominally limited, was virtually absolute. This administration had lasted nearly two centuries and a half, during which period the republic passed through a cruel ordeal of anarchy, oppression, and bloodshed. The tribunes conspired against each other; the people rebelled against the tribunes. Family rose against family, clan against clan. Sanguinary affrays were of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the shoulders, firmly, but not the least roughly, and looked straight into her hazel eyes. She blushed at this ordeal—blushed scarlet; but her eyes, pure as Heaven, faced his fairly, though with a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... made to Charleston; and the formality was dispensed with in her case by the intervention, as it was supposed at the moment, of Albert Pike's authority, even as her Father's intervention had excused her beforehand from another ordeal which could not be suffered with propriety. This episode implanted in the breast of Sophia Walder an extreme form of Palladian hatred for the Diana of Philalethes. Now, Sophia was in high favour with all the hosts of perdition, yet her rancorous relations with her ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... told you over and over again about a proper reserve?" The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared that ordeal, for ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... season before had vanished, and she could plunge into the summer gaiety with an assurance that amazed even herself. Her first meeting with Annie, after the day of Chris's disclosures, was an ordeal at which he himself chanced to be a secretly thrilled onlooker. Norma grew white, and her lips trembled; there was a strained look in her blue, agonized eyes. But Annie's entire unconsciousness that the situation was at all tense, and the presence of three or four total outsiders, helped ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... great many of the persons who took part in the massacre of St. Bartholomew were under twenty-two years of age. But though Members listened and laughed they refused, for the most part, to vote with him. The Bill came almost unscathed through the first day of its ordeal in Committee. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various

... domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne's cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get rid ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation, astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting with Lord Dunstable. He was carrying various slips of paper in his hand, and asked her distractedly if she could throw any light on the question—"Why is Lord ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... The ordeal was ended. No touch of colour, no golden sunbeam or crimson shadow stained the ghastly surface of those snows, they were pallid as the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... malicious as if matter were enjoying its revenge of the contemptuous spirit of man. Did you notice? You didn't? Eh? Well I am perhaps a little mad on that point. When I pass one of these places I must avert my eyes. I couldn't have gone to meet de Barral. I should have shrunk from the ordeal. You'll notice that it looks as if Anthony (a brave man indubitably) had shirked it too. Little Fyne's flight of fancy picturing three people in the fatal four-wheeler—you remember?—went wide of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... for it was palpably dangerous in the circumstances to remain longer than necessary in that lonely spot. Hurriedly I began to put out the lamps. I unlocked the stable doors and stood looking all about me again. I was dreading the ordeal of driving the cab those last ten yards into the garage, for whilst I had my back to the wilderness of bushes it would be an easy matter for anyone in hiding there to come ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... strange, isn't it? how our spirits will revive after some great ordeal. Molly had been sure she was going to die and saw nothing to live for; now that she had had a cup of hot milk and held her red little baby close, she was just as happy and hopeful as if she had never left her best friends ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... in the little school, so he was to remain with the surveyor and study in the evening under Mr. Carson's direction; but he knew from former experience what a scene Tabitha usually created before she could be persuaded to begin school each year, and dreaded the ordeal almost as much as did the passionate ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... warm summer," when the Princess was seven years of age, she was invited to Windsor to see another uncle, George IV. That was a more formidable ordeal, but her innocent frank brightness carried her through it successfully. It is not easy for many men to contemplate with satisfaction their heirs, when those heirs are no offspring of theirs. It ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... words were echoed by other tongues in the court; and a panic fear seized on all save the chief judge and Wagner himself. The former smiled contemptuously, the latter had summoned all his courage to aid him to pass through this terrible ordeal without confirming by his conduct the dreadful suspicion which had been excited ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Dov-inger Rangers into the thickest of the fight; yet he had never felt such palpitant tremors of excitement as when he stood on the hotel piazza of the New Helvetia Springs, where the banqueters had gathered, and suffered the ordeal of introduction to sundry groups of fashionable ladies. He had earlier seen specimens of the species in the course of military transitions through the cities of the lowlands, and he watched them narrowly to detect if they discerned ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... at Possum Gully father was much away on business, and so on my mother fell the ordeal of receiving ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... Miss Francis ended her long sojourn at Mount Whitney and returned to England. The ordeal of living surrounded by the Grass, which had destroyed her assistants, seemed to have made no other change in her than the fading of her hair, which was now completely white, and a loss of weight, giving her a deceptive appearance of fragility ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... justly-celebrated "Faust" of Goethe translated, and that some one or other of my partial friends have induced you to consider me as the man most likely to execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course, whose higher power (established by the solid and satisfactory ordeal of the wide and rapid sale of their works) it might seem profanation to employ in any other manner than in the development of their own intellectual organization. I return my thanks to the recommender, whoever he ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... we mistake not he divined that the end of the Confederacy, involving the end of his own military career, was not far ahead. It is to the credit of his genius that he did not weaken under such a situation and despair ere the ordeal came upon him; but on the contrary, he planted himself in the Wilderness and awaited ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... were running forward, his blood was pounding in his arteries, in vengeful eagerness to take up the trail of the men who had subjected him to this inhuman ordeal. He could not hope to repay them cruelty for cruelty, for he was not a man who did much crippling when it came to handling a gun, but if he had to follow them to the Nueces, even to the Rio Grande, for his toll, then ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... that in this world gentle methods have effected more than harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... severe ordeal for Ishmael. The young ladies had all gathered around Claudia, and were examining her favourite. Ishmael felt his face burn until it seemed as if the very tips of his ears ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... inflicting so many unfamiliar details upon the reader is that the key to the whole situation lies in Austria-Hungary, and that upon the fate of its provinces and races in this war depends to a very great extent the question whether the new Europe which is to issue from this fiery ordeal is to be better than the old Europe which is crumbling in ruins before our eyes. For the moment a thick fog of war obscures this point of view; but the time will assuredly come when it will emerge ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... ill-starred damsel who disdains my friend. And lo, what is she but an o'er-ripe pear? The girls all cry 'Her bloom is on the wane.' We'll watch, Aratus, at that porch no more, Nor waste shoe-leather: let the morning cock Crow to wake others up to numb despair! Let Molon, and none else, that ordeal brave: While we make ease our study, and secure Some witch, to charm all evil ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... indecorousness of wedding ceremonial. We drag a young girl before the prying gaze of all the world at the very crisis in her life, when natural modesty would most lead her to conceal herself from her dearest acquaintance. And our women themselves have grown so blunted by use to the hatefulness of the ordeal that many of them face it now with inhuman effrontery. Familiarity with marriage has almost killed out in the maidens of our race the last lingering relics ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... pass, farewell to Whitelaw! What possibility of pursuing his studies when every class-companion, every Professor,—nay, the very porters,—had become aware that he was nephew to the man who supplied meals over the way? Moral philosophy had no prophylactic against an ordeal such as this. Could the most insignificant lad attending lectures afford to disregard such an occasion ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... overseers skilful in these matters. There are two methods of trying the goodness of indigo; by fire and by water. If it swims it is good, if it sinks it is inferior, the heavier the worse; so if it wholly dissolves in water it is good. Another way of proving it, is by the fire ordeal; if it entirely burns away it is good, the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... a philosophy of a kind, but we should have been deprived of any object which could evoke within our hearts the trust and affection that are needed to sustain a religion. However, as it proved, there was no great cause for fear. Agnosticism was subjected in its turn to the ordeal of criticism, and the result proved that it had not in it the substance and force that could give it any permanent hold upon the best ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face. He can be saved now. Imprison him as a criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost. He has neither the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal. Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has undergone. The latter is ten times heavier already. He has lain in prison under this charge for more than two months. Is he likely ever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... powers, who had no reason to be too friendly to the American director of relief, for Hoover had often to oppose the policies of this power in the Paris councils, has recently written of him: "Mr. Hoover was the only man who emerged from the ordeal of Paris with an enhanced reputation. This complex personality, with his habitual air of weary Titan (or, as others might put it, of exhausted prizefighter), his eyes steadily fixed on the true and essential facts of the ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... of America; may her administration have virtue enough to defy the ordeal of patriotic societies, and patriotism enough to cherish instead of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... not shown the world that she may, indeed, do what she pleases among the nations, so long as her pleasure is regulated and supported by her accustomed sagacity and spirit? She has, however, recently had to pass through an awful ordeal, principally occasioned by the brief ascendency of incompetent councils; and while expressing, in terms of transport, our conviction that, "out of this nettle danger, we have plucked the flower safety"—we cannot repress our feelings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... he said, speaking a little lightly to raise her spirits for the instant's ordeal through which she must pass. "I have doctored half a dozen during the last three months. You must take off your moccasin and your stocking, and I will make ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... gentlemen," Vandersee said, motioning to some of the Barang's crew. "I have seen much of this sort of thing. It will be several days at least before you recover from your ordeal. Meanwhile I suggest that you have your men carry you back to the post. Mrs. Goring is caring for Gordon there and will gladly take care of you, assisted by ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... an advocate. For eight years he led an active and seemly life. He was not wholly pure from that indiscretion of the young appetite, about which the world is mute, but whose better ordering and governance would give a diviner brightness to the earth. Still, if he did not escape the ordeal of youth, Robespierre was frugal, laborious, and persevering. His domestic amiability made him the delight of his sister, and his zealous self-sacrifice for the education and advancement in life of his younger ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... necessary in the east, he had then taken the final and most hazardous step of going to Farnham's home. It was hardly remarkable, therefore, that he had seized the opportunity of escaping so trying an ordeal at once. It seemed to me impossible that he should intend returning to Denver, where, in the light of day, and among old business and domestic associates, he could not long hope to escape detection, perfect as the likeness ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... as if she would gladly forego her dinner to escape the French asking for it, and yet not quite so neither. But this ordeal was more terrible to her by far than all the rest; she could face them, indeed, they had ceased to be anything but pleasure—or pleasure with a spice that enhanced it; but at this she trembled. To the above speech—or ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... suffering. "But I can't do that. I won't work on her sympathy. I've promised to be true to what's deepest and truest in us both. I have been, by God! and I will be. If our married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free and honest . . . true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her own nature. If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as before . . ." he groaned, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... an awful ordeal for you," she exclaimed, her sorrow at Blair's death apparently lost sight of ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... the sentimental, the self-confident, it was a welcome and uplifting exercise. To the timid and self-distrustful it was a terrible ordeal. To the intellectual it was a perpetual challenge to skepticism. Even Bunyan puts as his first and worst temptation, "to question the being of God and the truth of his gospel." To the prosaic and practical minds it made ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and Noll under charges. Uncle Sam's Boys shunned by neighbors. "We won't submit to such false charges." A town divided against itself. A bitter attack in the press. "The culprits face their ordeal to-day." ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... business-like. Among the peasantry there is more of the picturesque, and many quaint customs still survive. Marriage-brokers do a good trade, and get a percentage on each pair that they see through the ordeal of a wedding. In Frascati, parents with marriageable sons and daughters assemble on Sunday afternoons in the chief piazza. The men sit on one side and the women on the other. In the intervening space the candidates for ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... arrived yet with Joan. She was still in the making, and the best that could be said for her was that she was undergoing the ordeal with bewitching charm. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... in danger. Lincoln put off the encounter as long as he could, and when the wrestling match finally came off neither could throw the other. The bystanders became satisfied that they were equally matched in strength and skill, and the cool courage which Lincoln manifested throughout the ordeal prevented the usual close of such incidents with a fight. Instead of becoming chronic enemies and leaders of a neighborhood feud, Lincoln's self-possession and good temper turned the contest into the beginning of a warm and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... all things favored the bold and persevering. And he had been persevering. No one would ever know how he had suffered, what terrific pangs had assailed him. He could not see now how he had done it, and he was quite sure that he could never go through such an ordeal again. The rack would be almost ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler



Words linked to "Ordeal" :   ordeal tree, trial, ordeal bean, experience



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