"Suffocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ministry; and spoke with such vehemence as produced a violent headache, which obliged him to retire. He underwent proper evacuations, and seemed to recover; but next day, in the evening, became lethargic, and being seized with a suffocation, instantly expired. The king deeply regretted the death of this favourite minister, which was the more unfortunate as it happened at such a critical conjuncture; and he appointed lord Town-shend to fill ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... least some comfort that they were spared the outrages and mutilations inflicted on so many of the martyrs of that awful summer, for unless some were struck by bullets, death came by suffocation in burning houses—swiftly and mercifully. No Boxer hand touched them, living or dead, but within less than an hour from the beginning of the attack, the end came, and the flames did their work so completely ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... my diary, "we drove out to Stayley Bridge to hear the preaching of Stephens, the man who has become the subject of so much newspaper celebrity," (Does any one remember who he was?) "We reached a miserable little chapel, filled to suffocation, and besieged by crowds around the doors. We entered through the vestry with very great difficulty, and only so by the courtesy of sundry persons who relinquished their places, on Doherty's representing ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Court, Near to suffocation full; Counsel unto lies resort, And the jury loud exhort ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... sensation new and strange vibrated in her blood. She had heard many tales of valour in this war, and more than one hero of the Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but as a child's heart might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful story, so she felt a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding eyes took on a brighter, a more objective look, as she heard ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the helmets instead of air, we all may be able to stand it. These special cushions keep the body from flattening out, as it normally would under such a pressure. The unconsciousness is simply a suffocation caused by the lateral muscles being unable to lift the ribs—in other words, the air-pumps aren't strong enough for the added work put upon them. At least we stand a chance this way. We may live through the pressure while we are pulling ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... the inn a wild mob of over a thousand men filled the inn yard; and as we alighted from the cart these men literally drove us before them into one room, which in a few moments was packed to suffocation. For probably an hour the crowd kept crushing us into one corner; then those outside became impatient at not being able to get in, and demanded that we be brought out. We managed to keep some of ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... her wish, madame, however; the wolf was surprised and angry. With a low, fierce growl, that made Marcelle's heart beat to suffocation, he dropped ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pale, for coming out of the clear night into a room heated to suffocation by a close stove, and redolent with the mingled fumes of tobacco smoke and alcohol, the atmosphere oppressed him with a sickening sensation; his head began to reel, and he sat unsteadily in his chair. Thus oppressed, he reached ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... witness minutely described, he said there were indications of a struggle having taken place between deceased and some other person or persons; that the man had been thrown, or had fallen down violently; and that death had ultimately been caused by strangling and suffocation. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... by, and the evening came for the great debate on the Eight flours Bill between Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Hyndman. St. James's Hall was packed to suffocation. I sat on the platform near my old leader, and I saw how the effort was telling on him. His opponents in the meeting behaved with incredible brutality. Some of them laughed aloud when he said, "Believe me, ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... fastened to a ring in the wall he lay, having a cork gag strapped so tightly between his teeth that I wondered how he had escaped suffocation. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... to know what the vessel was. I desired the surgeon to be sent on board, as some of the men and many of the poor slaves were wounded by our shot. Of all the miserable objects, I know of none to be compared to the poor devils of slaves on board of a slave vessel: the state of suffocation between decks—the dreadful stench arising from their filth, which is hardly ever cleared away—the sick lying without help, and looked upon by those who are stronger with the utmost indifference—men, women, and children, all huddled and crowded together in a state of nudity, worn to skin ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Irish whisper, that set the towel flapping and billowing like a flag in a wind. The room was none the cooler for his exertions, but in such intensity of heat mere movement of the air serves to prevent suffocation. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... faintly; and the next moment it seemed as if the breath were being squeezed out of her body, as Rex pressed her more and more tightly against the wall. A horrible gasp of suffocation, a wild desire to push him off and fight for her own liberty, and then it was all over, and they were standing side by side, gasping, ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 13, 1914, Embourg was stricken into ruin. On the same day the electric lighting apparatus of Fort Boncelles having been destroyed, the few living men of its garrison fought through the following night in darkness, and in momentary danger of suffocation from gases emitted by ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... myself, at the mantel door, at everything. I did not fear suffocation; before the thought had come to me I had already seen a gleam of light from the two small ventilating pipes in the roof. They supplied air, but nothing else. The room itself ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had overwhelmed Melissa began now to subside, as the waves of the ocean gradually cease their tumultuous commotion, after the turbulent winds are laid asleep. Deep sobs and long drawn sighs succeeded to a suffocation of tears. The irritation of her feelings had caused a more than usual glow upon her cheek, which faded away as she became composed, until a livid paleness spread itself over her features. Alonzo feared that the delicacy of her constitution would ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... of suffocation and of lung diseases is due to the excessive stimulation of this center, caused by the excess of carbon dioxid in the blood. Various mental influences from the brain itself, as the emotions of alarm or joy or distress, modify the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... especially when he reflects that many of them were wounded, and all of them fatigued with hard duty. Transported with rage to find themselves thus barbarously cooped up in a place where they must be exposed to suffocation, those hapless victims endeavoured to force open the door that they might rush upon the swords of the barbarians by whom they were surrounded; but all their efforts were ineffectual; the door was made to open inwards, and being once shut upon them, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was very low and tremulous, her heart throbbed almost to suffocation, her bosom heaved tumultuously, and her color came ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... that you are Americans and members of the United States Navy," continued their commanding officer. "We have air supply in the reserve tanks sufficient to stay here for many hours yet without danger of suffocation; and in the meantime quite a number ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... would have maddened them and made them push on until the horses would have died within five miles of the labor; otherwise the pain in their slowly swelling throats would have taken their reason. For thirst in the desert carries the pangs of several deaths—death from fire, suffocation, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... established, and all the fine things you have ever done. Up in that tower you feel you are safe. But hear you not the tramp of your unpardoned sins all around the tower? They each have a match. They are kindling the combustible material. You feel the heat and the suffocation. Oh, may you leap in time, the Gospel declaring: "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me, My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'T is twelve o'clock, and Thurtell [1] is just now coming out upon the new drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality; yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... individuals; and which are now the source of glory, so that if a man's name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod; and people will pardon him when he talks back and forth, as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on railway platforms, as they did the other day to General Boulanger; and buy his literary works, as I hope you have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were upon some great enterprise, would sacrifice a life; building, it may be, a favourite slave into the foundations of their palace. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plague me too. For instance, TRUBERRY, whom I meet occasionally, has a wild and venomous habit of relating to me his infinitesimal jokelets. That I could pardon. But when, having related one, he bursts, as he always does, into a helpless suffocation of purple laughter, the savage within me awakes and I murder TRUBERRY in fancy to an accompaniment of refined and protracted tortures. Once, as I helped him on with his overcoat, he joked and exploded. My fingers were horribly near his throat. But ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... houses were soon burning fiercely. On that hot September evening, the air was like a furnace. Before long the streets were full of blazing debris. Two persons who had hidden themselves in their cellars died of suffocation; yet to appear in the streets was to risk death at the hands of some drunk ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with pain. M. Greffulhe became every day fatter and subject to all the inconveniences of extreme obesity, and died of suffocation when he was ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... staircase. I rolled a blanket round the girl—head and all. She was very light. In the excitement of the moment I raised her as if she had been a child, and darted back towards the passage, but the few moments I had lost almost cost us our lives. I knew that to breathe the dense smoke would be certain suffocation, and went through it holding my breath like a diver. I felt as if the hot flames were playing round my head, and smelt the singeing of my own hair. Another moment and I had reached the window, where the grim but welcome head of the escape still rested. With a desperate bound I went head first ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Mass for the dead was sung, amid an array of dropping crape and cobwebs. The lad, with his full red lips and open blue eyes, coming as with a great cup in his hands to life's feast, revolted from the like of that, as from suffocation. And still the suggestion of it was everywhere. In the garish afternoon, up to the wholesome heights of the Heiligenberg suddenly from one of the villages of the plain came the grinding death-knell. It seemed to come out of the ugly grave itself, and enjoyment was dead. On his way homeward ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... conscious again, and swimming in a bath of perspiration. The crisis was now passed, and I was to see Ghadames and Ghat, and return to my fatherland. So fate—rather Providence—would have it. Every day, until I reached Ghadames, there was a sort of point of halting between life and suffocation or death in my poor frame, when the European nature struggled boldly and successfully with the African sun, and all his accumulated force darting down fires and flames upon my devoted head. After this ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... large it is well to divide the centers of attractions by placing the young couple in one room and the parents in another, thus compelling a freer circulation of the guests, who else would crowd the bridal party to suffocation. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... unless any marshy ground shelters frogs. But to hear all this you must go to the old jungle, where the tall trees stand near together and shut out the light of day, and almost the air, for there is a painful sense of suffocation in the dense wood. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... made the blue boots dance a sort of jig upon the door. Hanging was evidently not a painful operation, for she smiled contentedly, and looked as if the red ribbon around her neck was not uncomfortably tight; therefore, if slow suffocation suited her, who else had any right to complain? So a pleasing silence reigned, not even broken by a snore from Dinah, the top of whose turban alone was visible above the coverlet, or a cry from baby Jane, though her bare feet stuck out in a way that would have produced shrieks ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... Friday, and the school term had closed that day. The next morning, with a heart beating almost to suffocation, the young person found herself on the way to the theater, with self-possessed Blanche, who led the way to the old Academy of Music. Entering the building, the girls went up-stairs, and as they reached the top step Blanche called to a small, dark man who ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... humanity. Had he not come there to prostrate himself and implore the Virgin to restore the faith of his childhood? Why, then, did he not pray, why did he not beseech her to bring him back to grace? His feeling of suffocation increased, the burning tapers dazzled him almost to the point of giddiness. And, all at once, the recollection came to him that for two days past, amidst the great freedom which priests enjoyed at Lourdes, he had neglected to say his mass. He was in a state of sin, and perhaps it was ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of suffocation, while utterance intensifies experience and leads to fresh expression; religion, like Shelley's Skylark, "singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth." Above all, the instinct for the Unseen is developed by exercise; obedience to our heavenly ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... of miles away from the great city that lay beneath it. The idea of descending any sooner than I could help into the heat and gloom of London repelled me. The prospect of going to bed in my airless chambers, and the prospect of gradual suffocation, seemed, in my present restless frame of mind and body, to be one and the same thing. I determined to stroll home in the purer air by the most roundabout way I could take; to follow the white winding paths across the lonely heath; and to approach London through its most open suburb by ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Sunday in February this year I found myself surrounded by a black, thick London fog—almost as dense as the blackest midnight, and an overpowering sense of suffocation creeping over me—in the midst of an encampment of Gipsies at Canning Town, and, acting upon their kind invitation, I crept into one of their tents, and there found about a dozen Gipsy men of all sizes, ages, and complexions, squatting upon peg shavings. Some of their faces ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... fancy is found to supply the disorder called Ephialtes, or nightmare, or indeed any other external impression upon our organs in sleep, which the patient's morbid imagination may introduce into the dream preceding the swoon. In the nightmare an oppression and suffocation is felt, and our fancy instantly conjures up a spectre to lie on our bosom. In like manner it may be remarked, that any sudden noise which the slumberer hears, without being actually awakened by it—any casual touch of his person occurring in the same ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... taken any of this?" He pronounced in a tone of suffocation. "Remember must never take it ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... up in the whole affair. A few weeks ago the Parrett's juniors had done their best to drown him; now they had done their best to drown him and break his neck and crack his skull all at one onslaught; and as if that wasn't enough, the Welchers had stepped in at the same moment and added poison and suffocation to the other crimes of which the unlucky master ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... have broken a bone, or plucked out an eye, and been silent; but they never grappled iron and whalebone into the very nerves and life-blood of their system. They might possibly have passed a dagger too deeply info the heart, and died; but they never drew a ligature of suffocation around it, and expected to live! They never tied up the mouths of the millions of air-vessels in the lungs, and then taxed them to the full measure of action and respiration. Even Pharaoh only demanded bricks without straw for a short time; but the fashionable lady asks to ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... had an unexplained feeling of suffocation, and drew great breaths,—she could not have said why,—but she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of going into an hysteric spasm. They called Dr. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wood and the danger of suffocation precluded the building of an adequate fire, and the miserable night wore interminably upon the nerves ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the heavens!" cried the king. "What we had suffered before seemed but little in comparison. It came upon us after night; and the absolute darkness, the awful roaring, the terrific force of the falling water, the sense of suffocation, the rapid filling of the barge until the water was about our necks—these things drove ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... side; with this instrument I severed the lion's head at one blow, and the body fell at my feet! I then, with the butt-end of my fowling-piece, rammed the head farther into the throat of the crocodile, and destroyed him, by suffocation, for he could neither gorge ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... before the stream recovered its wonted tranquillity. For nearly half an hour the struggles of the great saurian continued, its tail lashing the water into foam, as through its gagged jaws a stream rushed constantly down its throat, causing suffocation. But, in spite of its amphibious nature, drowning was inevitable; and soon after became an accomplished fact—the huge reptilian carcass drifting down stream, towards the all-absorbing ocean, to become food for sharks, or some other ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... little coffee-room—so called, though whiskey-room, or punch-room, or porter-room would be much the more appropriate name, unless indeed there is a kind of "lucus a non lucendo" propriety in the appellation—is full nearly to suffocation. There is not an unoccupied chair or corner of a table ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... unfortunate youth who figured as the hero of this festival was subjected to a procedure akin to that of roasting a herring in the flue; and it is singular enough that the records show only one case of death by suffocation consequent upon this ordeal. Good days, however, now followed upon evil ones, and the youthful novitiate was feted and entertained by his companions and made to forget the sufferings and hardships of his initiation. Many other ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the Stomach, Liver, Spleen, and Womb it maketh warm, and is good in the Suffocation of the Womb, hardness of the ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... SUFFOCATION. Immediately on discovering a person in this unfortunate situation, whatever be the cause, the windows and doors ought to be opened; the body undressed, covered with blankets, removed to the open air, and supported in a leaning posture on a chair. The patient's face should be sprinkled ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... refusal to go back to New York. "I know I am silly," she told her son, "but I have a feeling that I shouldn't be able to breathe, and should die of suffocation." ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... panic, and a nameless dread of some mysterious, awful fate, extended even to the scattered farm-houses near Canal Street. Between this and the last of August, a hundred and fifty- four negroes, exclusive of whites, were thrown into prison, till every cell was crowded and packed to suffocation with them. For three months, sentence of condemnation was on an average of one a day. The last execution was that of a Catholic priest, or rather of a schoolmaster of the city, who was charged with being ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... moveth of itself ought to be held animated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation, precipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing syncope, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... at the chapel, all the pews were filled to suffocation with the crowd that the rumor of the approaching marriage had drawn together. And the bridal party were the cynosure of many hundred eyes as they passed up the aisle and stood ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... bustle and animation in this quarter of the Fort to engage the attention, but it seems silent and deserted when compared with the crowd of the more exclusively native portions. Here the streets literally swarm with life—men, women, children, and bullocks, filling them almost to suffocation. Ranges of open shops appear on each side, raised a foot or two from the ground, the occupant being seated upon a ledge in front, in the midst of his wares. Here, too, immense quantities of English glass and crockery-ware are exhibited, which may be purchased at ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed; but that baser thing, functional disturbance—in this case present as heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and uncontrollable struggle for breath—defies concealment. This manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost—inaccessible ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a stillness abnormal, unnatural, accompanied by a scorching heat, with an atmosphere so close as to threaten suffocation. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... asthma. There were no premonitory symptoms; he was as well as usual in the daytime, and even after going to bed, where he always read before going to sleep; but directly he fell asleep, he was suddenly aroused again by suffocation. In describing his sensations to me, he said it seemed as if breathing required—while in a waking state—a slight effort, which he made unconsciously, and this being discontinued when sleep arrived, produced ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the authors of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and the gendarmerie make it out. The physical sensation, far from being pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable—the suspension of respiration, indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation—and the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the incompressibility ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... 1850, the place that long, soft, hot dry stretch of blasted desolation known as the Humboldt Sink. The sun stared, the heat rose in waves, the mirage shimmered, the dust devils of choking alkali whirled aloft or sank in suffocation on the hot earth. Thus it had been since in remote ages the last drop of the inland sea had risen into a brazen sky. But this year had brought something new. A track now led across the desert. It had sunk deep into the alkali, and the soft edges had closed over it like snow, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... stairs to a large, low-ceilinged hall that was jammed to suffocation. A score of gayly trimmed booths wherein were displayed various articles of feminine fallals and cheap bric-a-brac, each presided over by a lady house-smith. "Or should it be house-smithess?" asked Indiman. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... suffocation when Marcos and his father entered by this door. At the foot of the shallow steps descending from the porch to the floor of the Cathedral, Sor Teresa's white cap rose above the heads of the people. Here and there a nun's cap or the blue veil of a nursing sister showed itself amidst the black ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... find in thy book that fear is a stifling spirit, a spirit of suffocation; that Ishbosheth could not speak, nor reply in his own defence to Abner, because he was afraid.[70] It was thy servant Job's case too, who, before he could say anything to thee, says of thee, Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me, then ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... her guide's advice by taking some food, but was compelled to desist, as the effort to swallow even a single morsel gave her so much uneasiness as amounted well-nigh to suffocation. A moment afterwards the horses appeared at the latticed window. The lady mounted, and found that relief from the free air and change of place which is frequently experienced in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... given it "repeatedly in heart disease, severe lung diseases, Bright's disease, etc., where the patients were so feeble as to require assistance in walking, many of them under medical treatment, and the results have been all that we could ask—no irritation, suffocation, nor depression. We heartily commend it to all as the anaesthetic of the age." Dr. Morrill, of Boston, administered Mayo's anaesthetic to his wife with delightful results when "her lungs were so badly disorganized, that the administration of ether or gas would be entirely unsafe." The reputation ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... held him down on the pebbly bottom. In another moment Nisida herself plunged into the river with the wild hope of aiding her lover to conquer his foe, or to rescue him from the grasp which the bandit maintained upon him with the tenacity that was strengthened rather than impaired by the agony of suffocation. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... utterly,—and some sixteen hundred of them were sentenced to be transported to the colony of Virginia, which had long been a dumping ground for convicts and felons and political scapegoats. Hither, then, they came, in ships crowded to suffocation, and many dead upon the way and thrown to the sharks for burial, but for some reason only one of the ships stopped here, while the others went on to Barbados to discharge their living freight. I more than suspect that Cromwell's agents soon discovered ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy wave. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... not only had they almost strangled their adversary, but likewise, through an aftereffect, their master: France which, after fourteen months of suffocation, was approaching physical suicide.[2319] Such success, too great, had obliged them to stop; they had abandoned one-half of their destructive creed, retaining only the other half, the effect of which, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... say they did. There ain't any way they didn't turn and twist the teepee for comfort. That's what makes it so good. Ye kin live in it forty below zero an' fifty 'bove suffocation an' still be happy. It's the changeablest kind of a layout for livin' in. Real hot weather the thing looks like a spider with skirts on and held high, an' I tell you ye got to know the weather for a teepee. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery. In this manner we continued to undergo more hardships than I can now relate, hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the stench of the necessary tubs, carried off many. During our passage I first saw flying fishes, which surprised me very much: ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... stranger to every individual in the assemblage of wealth and fashion, she slipped quietly away into the library, where some elderly people were playing whist. She would have gone home, but she lived in an obscure street some distance away. With a sense of suffocation she now remembered that she would have to recall herself to Christian's mind, for she must depend upon him to see her home. "He has not thought of me once this evening," she said bitterly. Soon supper was announced. Gentlemen and ladies began to pair off, not one mindful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... well enough, but the real thing is never done. Go to the theaters of the common people—there you will see laughter. Go among the bourgeoisie, when they are amusing themselves; you will see them laugh to suffocation. Go to the soldiers' quarters, you will see men choking, their eyes full of tears, doubled up on their beds over the jokes of some funny fellow. But in our drawing-rooms we never laugh. I tell you that we ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... was any laughter in the apartment of the Violettes. It was cough! cough! cough! almost to suffocation, almost to death! This gentle young woman with the heavy hair was about to die! When the beautiful starry evenings should come again, she would no longer linger on the balcony, or press her husband's hand as they gazed at the stars. Little Amedee did not understand it; but ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the Prince!" she cried, her breath coming thick and fast, whilst her heart beat almost to suffocation. "O Nat, good Nat! what can it mean? The Prince! what can ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to record the death of one of the crew, William Nicholls, who, for some time past, and particularly during the last three days, had been suffering from a dropsical complaint; his death was occasioned by suffocation, having very imprudently laid down with his head to leeward while we were under sail: this poor fellow had been for nearly three months on our sick list; he was a native of Norfolk Island, and, when in health, had been one of my ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... under those things,' remarked I, with a gesture towards the dismal draperies which to me were another name for suffocation. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... as though the blood receded from her face and gathered all about a heart which beat to suffocation. For a wild moment she had an impulse to denounce Buckheath and her stepfather. But almost instantly she realized that she would weaken her cause and lose all chance of assistance by doing so. Her standing ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered. It has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so soft that nobody could hear. The pedals played for thunder, the flutes languished and coquetted, and the swell died away in delicious suffocation, like one singing a sweet song under the bed-clothes. Now it leads down a stupendous waltz with full brass, sounding very much as if, in summer, a thunderstorm should play, 'Come, Haste to the Wedding,' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... had elapsed since the first alarm had been given, before the hammocks were all got on deck, and the ports opened, to give light and room below, until the place of fire could be discovered, and better means obtained for drawing water. Mr. Tailour did not recover from the suffocation so fast as he expected, and was obliged to go upon deck for air. There he found Captain Le Gros in consultation with the master, who, being of opinion that the fire was on the larboard side, gave orders to wear the ship, so as to allow the water which had been hove in to flow over her. Mr. Tailour ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... in the middle of summer, but the service we were recommended to attend did not begin till it was dark. The church was well lighted, and crowded almost to suffocation. On entering, we found three priests standing side by side, in a sort of tribune, placed where the altar usually is, handsomely fitted up with crimson curtains, and elevated about as high as our pulpits. We took our places in a pew close to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... the difficulties of the climate and the overheated rooms, the voices of even the nicest people appeared to me to be loud, and however generously you may have been entertained, you are left with a sense of suffocation, which it would be difficult ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... carefully. But every symptom was alarming, and indicated a speedy fatal termination, this was especially the case with the upper part of the throat, which was black. Nothing deeper could be seen, as the tonsils were so swollen as to threaten suffocation. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... frozen earth seemed to quake beneath his hands and knees. For a minute he lay flat, fighting for breath with his arms encircling his face. He knew that he must find shelter of some description immediately or else die terribly of suffocation and cold. Surely he could find a thicket of spruce-tuck near at hand? He staggered to his feet, stood hunched for a second to get the points of the compass clear in his mind, then plunged forward, fighting through the storm like a ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... suffocation with cattle, threatening the health of the animals; Deveny had sent no word from the Cache regarding the disposal of the stock, and Haydon's ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... occasion there was the usual suffocation and confusion. While some swore they were dying, others indulged in jokes or loose remarks; all abused the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the misery. When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast as Pitt. More than ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... commanded the Free Companies under Du Guesclin, and that Francois-Henri de Hardimont was killed at Fontenoy with "Red" Maison. Upon learning that France had lost a battle on French soil, the young duke felt the blood mount to his face, giving him a horrible feeling of suffocation. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Teresa soon afterwards quitted the apartment with her children, and De Montaigne, who was rather fatigued by the exertions and excitement of the morning, stretched himself in his chair to enjoy a short siesta. He was suddenly awakened by a feeling of pain and suffocation,—awakened in time to struggle against a strong grip that had fastened itself at his throat. The room was darkened in the growing shades of the evening; and, but for the glittering and savage eyes that were fixed on him, he could scarcely discern his assailant. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was thumping to suffocation, and he lay exhausted on his pillow. It was a dark morning, and a cold rain beat dismally against the window-panes. Gone were the Dream Woman, the Italian garden, the song of the nightingale, the perfume of flowers. How definite that perfume ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... a sensation of lying at the bottom of a steep hill—on a sharp inclined plane, as it were, with his feet uppermost—a sense of suffocation, too, as if his throat had been full of blood. There seemed to him to be blood in his eyes also; and he could only see things in a dim cloudy way—a room—what room he could not remember—one candle flaring on the mantelpiece, and the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... with direction, not of their own choice—to be discovered behind the scenes during the performance of a Christmas piece, is an impressive portion of the spectacle, although it is withheld from the contemplation of the audience. There have been "supers" who have approached very near to death by suffocation, from the hurtful nature of their attire, rather than fail in the discharge of their duties. For there ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that the poor wretches, men, women, and children, were packed like herrings in the holds of the fast little sailing vessels employed, and to such a fearful extent was this packing carried on that, even if the vessels were not captured, more than half the number of blacks embarked died from suffocation or disease before arriving at their destination, yet that half was sufficient to pay handsomely those engaged ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... out. At first he prescribed for himself, and nearly to the period of his death delivered his opinion of the remedies offered him by his wife and Dr. Chartran.... When his wife, on account of a fit of suffocation, said to him, 'Providence ought to exempt you from these sufferings, as you have relieved so many, and endured such numerous persecutions,' he replied, 'Me: why me? Every one works according to the abilities and powers which Providence has bestowed upon him. Superiority ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... 1479. Asphyxiation (suffocation) by Gas. Asphyxiation by gas is treated the same as in the case of drowning, omitting, of course, the operation of getting the water out of ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... stuffing with green fruit to utter suffocation manifested itself in a general and alarming cholera-morbus among the junior Triangles, and the whole house ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... was at the extreme end of the building, with the staircase on the other side. I had frequently been cautioned not to leave my windows open, as someone might get in. But, as I always slept with an open window, winter and summer, I thought I would take the risk rather than endure a feeling of suffocation night after night. The blinds were solid, and to close them was to exclude all the air, so I left them open about a foot, braced by an iron hook. A favorite resort for a pet donkey was under my window, where he had uniformly slept in profound silence. But one glorious moonlight night, probably ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... that,' he said, 'and I believe that I can manage to let him down gently, so that he shall die of suffocation, instead of having his neck put out of joint. I will do ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... room, with a folded letter crushed within her palm, and a heart that beats almost to suffocation, she hears ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... females are peculiarly subject were in Aubrey's time commonly termed "the mother", or "fits of the mother". Dr. Edward Jorden published a "Discourse on the Suffocation of the Mother", (4to.) in 1603.- ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... that horrible and inhuman form of slavery which had drawn upon itself the condemnation of the civilized world. The earnest antislavery convictions which had characterized it only twenty-five years before, violently suppressed from utterance, seem to have perished by suffocation. The common sentiment of southern Christianity was expressed in that serious declaration of the Southern Presbyterian Church, during the war, of its "deep conviction of the divine appointment of domestic servitude," and of the "peculiar mission of the southern church to conserve ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... silent. He had a sense of suffocation, as of waves of heat and darkness going over him. The wind sang in his ears, shouted and hooted at him. He was stunned. Presently he gasped, "Mr. Thane! you have not surely profaned this solemn journey with such thoughts ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the mornings of the MCFARLAND trial, a very importunate person attempted to force his way into the court-room, which, as he was told, was already crowded "to suffocation." To this he retorted that he "wasn't born to be suffocated." That's in substance what the late JACK REYNOLDS said, and he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man whose task it was to engage six of the contestants, was aware of a feeling of suffocation as if he were drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, with small, contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in a suit of plain burlap and a common-sense ...
— Options • O. Henry
... tenderness presently enwrapped and warmed the spirit. The soul as it recovered was no longer alone; it was encouraged and perceptibly helped by the Virgin, who revived it. And this impression, peculiar to this crypt, permeated the body too; it was no longer a feeling of suffocation for lack of air; on the contrary, it was the oppression of inflation, of over-fulness, which would be mitigated by degrees, allowing of easy ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... met with an adventure which well-nigh proved serious. I was awakened at night by the flash from a bull's eye lantern, a sense of suffocation and a scream from my wife. A masked burglar was before me, pressing to my face a handkerchief saturated with chloroform, and endeavoring to take from under the mattress a large sum of money which I had collected the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the scenes that passed in that small room baffles description. Men and women in the agonies of thirst and suffocation fought like tigers. Many prayed their guards to shoot them and end their sufferings, only to meet with jeers and laughter. Some of the native officers took pity on them and would have opened the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... determined upon almost any other species of voluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve upon encountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this is to be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not rather owing to the preternatural action of a ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin |
