"Wormwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no 'count of your foreign spice. Rosemary, thyme, mint, savoury, fennel, and carraway be spice enough for any man, and a deal better than all your far-fetched maces, and nutmegs, and peppers, that be fetched over here but to fetch the money out of folks' pockets: and wormwood and currant wine are every bit as good, and a deal wholesomer, than all your sherris-sack and Portingale rubbish. Hans, lad, let's have a currant-bush or two in that garden; I can make currant wine with any, though I say it, and gooseberry too. I make no count of your foreign frumps and fiddlements. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'Well, he'll keep till morning anyway, and if you don't get some sleep you'll look like a boiled owl, and there'll be no riding for you, miss, Phil Carre or no Phil Carre.'" All of which was gall and wormwood to young Torode, as Jeanne Falla quite well knew ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... her with great attention in church, and tried to get into conversation with her. At first she was shy of him, and one day meeting him at the approach of evening in a narrow footpath through a field of rye, she ran into the tall thick rye, overgrown with cornflowers and wormwood, so as not to meet him face to face. He caught sight of her little head through a golden network of ears of rye, from which she was peeping out like a little animal, and called affectionately ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Hubert Lisle, a man his superior in mental, moral and personal accomplishments, had associated with Althea during almost the whole period of his absence, this knowledge, we say, was to Thornton as gall and wormwood. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Ralston; for Smith was not too blinded by prejudice to appreciate the fact that Ralston was handsome in a strong, man's way, younger than himself, and possessed of the advantages of education which enabled him to talk with Dora upon subjects that left him, Smith, dumb. Such times were wormwood and gall to Smith; yet in his heart he never doubted but that he would have Dora and her love in the end. Smith's faith in himself and his ability to get what he really desired was sublime. The chasm between himself and Dora—the difference of birth and education—meant nothing to him. It is doubtful ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... such a torrent that even Mr. Arnot could not check it until he saw fit to drop the sluice-gates himself, which, with a contemptuous sniff, and an expression of concentrated wormwood and gall, he now did. Lifting his battered hat a little more toward the perpendicular, he went to the cashier's desk, obtained his money, and then jogged slowly and aimlessly down the street, leaving a wake of strange oaths ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you, and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal, to win me, if you please, (Without the which I am not to be won,) You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... will get more than he expected along with it,—even an accusing voice that prophesies evil. Elijah strides among the leafy vines in the field bought by crime. Ahab meant to make it a garden of pot-herbs. 'Surely the bitter wormwood of divine revenge grew ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... intense public joy and acclamation, which must have been gall and wormwood to the Queen. His powerful family, the clergy of France, and the very people, with whom he had ever been popular, had all laboured strenuously to vindicate him. And thus it befell that the one man the Queen had aimed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... those minds on earth At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled: 'Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... are generally to be found in the neighbourhood of brick-yards, I took the 'bus to Notting Hill, and after asking the policeman, for neither clergyman or other ministers could tell me where they were to be found, I wended my way to Wormwood Scrubs, and the following letter, which appeared in the Daily News, September 6th of last year, is the outcome of that "run out," and is as follows:—"It has been the custom for years—I might almost say centuries—when speaking of the Gipsies, to introduce in one form or other during the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... talked of the pestilence by day, and dreamed of it at night; and more than once alarmed the house by roaring for assistance, under the idea that he was suddenly attacked. By his mother's advice, he steeped rue, wormwood, and sage in his drink, till it was so abominably nauseous that he could scarcely swallow it, and carried a small ball in the hollow of his hand, compounded of wax, angelica, camphor, and other drugs. He likewise chewed a small piece of Virginian snake-root, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... grew into months, and still Princess Sudolisu's kingdom looked like one large bedchamber. The people snored in the streets, the brave army lying in the fields slept soundly, hidden in the long grass under the shadow of nettle, wormwood, and thistle, rust and dust marring the brightness of their armour. Inside the palace everything was the same. The twelve maids of honour lay motionless. The princess alone kept watch, silent amid this reign of sleep. She walked up and down her narrow prison, sighing ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... property, nor is their price to be cleared off from being private property." "And which are these?" "The root of the deceitful scallion, and the root of the mint, and scorpion grass,(68) and the bulbs of the milk-flower, and the spikenard, and a kind of dye-stuff, the dye-plant, and the wormwood,—to them the laws of the Sabbatical year apply, and to their price the laws of the Sabbatical year apply. They are not to be cleared off from being private property, nor is their price to be cleared off from being private property." Rabbi Maier said, "their prices are to be cleared off from ...
— Hebrew Literature
... used to lament pathetically to me, and to Mr. Sastres, the Italian master, who was much his favourite, that they made his life miserable from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy, when every favour he bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If, however, I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying the other; and finished commonly by telling me, that I knew not how to make allowances for ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... he feared Dorothy had given her heart to Richard. This admission was gall and wormwood to the self-love of Storri. He made it, however, and recalled Mrs. Hanway-Harley to Dorothy's chatter concerning the morning talks ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... old maid's kindly action for the text of his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate promptings of philosophy, must find it full of gall and wormwood. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Wine camphorated and Sal Armoniack; lastly deterging and cleansing away the Pus and Sanies, whilst it is thick and too corrosive, with Lotions made of Barley Water, Honey of Roses, Camphire; or with vulneraine Decoctions of Scordium, Wormwood, Centaury the less, and Birthwort. And when the Ulcer has been well deterged, and the tumified Glands entirely consumed by Suppuration, there remains nothing but to apply a simple Plaister to bring the Wound to ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... preliminary skirmishing arises much anxious inspection of ancient shrubs and the faithful among old-fashioned plants, to see whether they have "stood the winter." The fresh, brown "piny" heads are brooded over with a motherly care; wormwood roots are loosened, and the horse-radish plant is given a thrifty touch. There is more than the delight of occupation in thus stirring the wheels of the year. We are Nature's poor handmaidens, and our ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... acquaintance of Lord Fitz-pompey previous to the decease of his noble friend; and after that event such an acquaintance would probably not have been productive of agreeable reminiscences; for from the moment of the opening of the fatal will the name of Dacre was wormwood to the house of St. Maurice. Lord Fitz-pompey, who, though the brother-in-law of a Whig magnate, was a Tory, voted against the Catholics with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... and Satan. If you will read and listen you will hear the blast of trumpets, the breaking of vials, the sounds of woe, the tramp of marching feet, the clash of battle, fire falling out of the heavens, trees and grass in flame, the waves of the sea turned to blood, fountains and streams become as wormwood and gall, the sun as black as a starless midnight, the moon hanging in the lowering heavens like a clot of blood, earthquakes, the scarlet tongues of outpouring volcanoes, thunderings and lightnings, all manner of wickedness and pervading sin, a world quivering as ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... cliffs; and sometimes formed perpendicular walls and overhanging precipices. An air of sterility prevailed over these savage wastes. The valleys were destitute of herbage, and scantily clothed with a stunted species of wormwood, generally known among traders and trappers by the name of sage. From an elevated point of their march through this region, the travellers caught a beautiful view of the Powder River Mountains away to the north, stretching along the very verge ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... was gall and wormwood to Brown, who pursued Macdonald with a malignity which has no parallel in our happier times. Nor, it must be confessed, did Macdonald fail to retort. Though not a resentful person, nor one who could not control his feelings, he never disguised ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... is excellent for a fresh wound of any kind. In winter, when wormwood is dry, it is necessary to soften it in warm vinegar, or spirit, before it is bruised, and ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... your reputation, health and happiness, and that of your family and friends also. And let me say right now that you begin to form the habit when you touch your lips to any sort of intoxicating drink the first time. I have drank the sparkle and foam, and the gall and wormwood of all liquors. Do you envy me the horrors through which I have passed? You know how to avoid them. Never touch liquor. If you are bent on going to hell and destruction, choose a nearer and more honorable way by blowing your brains out ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... of some writers is supposed to be only blue. Milk not coagulable is produced by feeding on husks of green peas, and on mint. Bitter milk, from wormwood, sonchus alpinus, and the leaves of the artichoke; and in goats, from eating freely of elder, (sambucus nigra,) and potato-tops; a disagreeable taste, from turnips, in Upper Canada. Garlicky milk, from causes well known. Insipid milk, and ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... top of a 'bus is no doubt a liberal education, but it may be questioned whether the tuition is as extensive and peculiar with a gasoline-driven vehicle as with the old horse-hauled affairs that took all day to jungle along from the North Pole Inn at Wormwood Scrubbs to the Mile End Road, or from the Angel at Islington to Roehampton. Almost before the author has digested a leading article dealing with the Venezuelan Question the 'bus roars down Sloan Street, shoots across ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and Lisbeth. The benefactress flavored the exile's bread with the wormwood of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed it to be lost. From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took the poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too slowly, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... journey) in the sheltered haven of Port William. Many and deep were the curses bestowed upon him by the infuriated crews of those two ships, although he had certainly done them no harm. But the sight of other people's good fortune is gall and wormwood to a vast number of people, who seem to take it as a personal ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Acton, and then suddenly the huge bulk of Wormwood Scrubbs Prison loomed up in the growing dusk away to the right of the line. It was there that I had served my "separates"—those first ghastly six months of solitary confinement which make even Princetown or Portland a ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... by the time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass—this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... your own liberty, bear the sword of your common magistracy in vain, sit still and fold your arms, or, which is worse, let out the blood of your people to tyrants, to be shed in the defence of their yokes like water, and so not only turn the grace of God into wantonness, but his justice into wormwood: I say if you do thus, you are not now making a commonwealth, but heaping coals of fire upon your own heads. A commonwealth of this make is a minister of God upon earth, to the end that the world may be governed with righteousness. For which cause (that I may come at length ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... a very sore rebuke, and humbling providence, both to myself and mine, and desire so we may improve it. (2.) In that also in my family were some of both parties, viz., accusers and accused, I look also upon as an aggravation of the rebuke, as an addition of wormwood to the gall. (3.) In that means were used in my family (though totally unknown to me or mine, except servants, till afterwards) to raise spirits and create apparitions in no better than a diabolical way, I do look upon as a further rebuke of Divine Providence. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... potion, and Cicely disposed of it by small instalments at the windows; and a laugh over the evident horror it excited in the master, did the captives at least as much good as the camomile, centaury, wormwood, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... house of life We marked the lurid sign of strife, And, poisoning and imbittering all, We saw the star of Wormwood fall. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her was so stern a reality that she thought of its fury with a shudder whenever she heard of the world's wickedness. When Parson Fenwick had first made himself intimate at the mill Mrs. Brattle had thought that her husband's habits of life would have been to him as wormwood and gall,—that he would be unable not to chide, and well she knew that her husband would bear no chiding. By degrees she had come to understand that this new parson was one who talked more of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... which are being heaped on the ground in gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers, bright orange pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Sale, all mingled with fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... by his office window that day and saw the old spider dancing up and down the web, Dr. Nesbit knew the truth—and the truth was wormwood in his mouth—that he had been only an errand boy between greed in the bank and self-interest in the stores. In a flash, a merciless, cynical flash, he looked into his life in the capital, and there he saw with sickening distinctness that with all his power as a boss, with his ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... N. bitterness, acridness[obs3], acridity, acrimony; caustic, alkali; acerbity; gall, wormwood; bitters, astringent bitters. [additive for alcoholic beverages]Angostura aromatic bitters. sourness &c. 397; pungency &c. 392. [bitter substances] alkaloids; turmeric. Adj. bitter, bitterish, acrid, acerb, acerbic. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... phase had developed in his character that defied analysis; suspicion, suspicion of daylight, of night, of shadows moving by walls, of footsteps behind. Only a little while ago he had walked free-hearted and careless. This growing habit of skulking was gall and wormwood. Once in his room, which was directly over the office of the American consulate, he fell into a chair, inert and breathless. What a night! What a series ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... resistance, order was soon evolved out of the general chaos and then came the decision to make an early start on the return trip. Among the slaves, the reaction from a feeling of hope and joyous anticipation of the delights of freedom was terrible indeed. The bitter gall and wormwood of failure was the sad and gloomy portion of these seventy and seven souls. Among them then there were but few who were not completely crushed, their minds a seething torrent, in which regret, misery and despair made battle ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... made of the fruit of the plant wrightea antidysenterica, or oval leaved wrightea, medicines, and other things which are always wanted, should be obtained when required and kept in a secret place of the house. The seeds of the radish, the potato, the common beet, the Indian wormwood, the mangoe, the cucumber, the egg plant, the kushmanda, the pumpkin gourd, the surana, the bignonia indica, the sandal wood, the premna spinosa, the garlic plant, the onion, and other vegetables, should be bought and sown at ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... condition was wormwood to Mrs. Little; but she knew that if she let her son see her feeling, all was over. She was all the mother now, and fighting for her son's happiness: so she sacrificed truth to love with an effort, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... schoolroom, or I fancy she would never have come at all. But oh, Lettice, if you could have seen her how patient she has been throughout with my father, reading him all about every race, just because she thought it was less gall and wormwood to her than to me, and going out to the stables to satisfy him about his dear Night Hawk, and all the rest of it. When she was away for that fortnight over poor little Michael, I found to the full what she had been, and then after that, back ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skirmishes and battles, now at length by the good hand of God upon them, take counsel to join themselves, first one to another, and then both unto God. Let us "join ourselves," and then to "the Lord, in a perpetual covenant." Surely, not only this copy in the text, but the wormwood and the gall of our civil combustions and wars, which our souls may have in remembrance to our dying day, and be humbled within us, may powerfully persuade us to a cheerful engagement of ourselves, for the preservation ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... both years, or finally, the Emperor's failure to secure a slice of Morocco for Germany had most antagonizing effect on German popular feeling; but whatever the cause, the general elections of January, 1912, proved a tremendous Socialist victory, which must have been, and still remains, gall and wormwood to the Emperor. Notwithstanding official efforts, over one-third of the votes polled at the first ballots went for Social Democratic candidates. The number of seats thus obtained was 64, and this number, after ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... conviction that the defence of Lady Mason would be conducted not only with zeal, but in that spirit of justice and truth for which the gentlemen opposite to him were so conspicuous in their profession. All this was wormwood to Joseph Mason; but nevertheless, though Sir Richard was so moderate as to his own side, and so courteous to that opposed to him, he made it very clear before he sat down that if those witnesses were ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The genus, I think it is called, irritabile, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a—what is it?—immedicabile, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, 290 If any poor devil but look at a laurel;— Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), Kept our Hero at hand, who, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... her Milton to a singular hieroglyphic, in a wiry black frame, resting on the marble-painted mantelpiece. "He was very distinguished in his time; and such an excellent Christian." She shakes her head and wipes the tears from her spectacles, as her face, which had before seemed carved in wormwood, slightly relaxes the hardness ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... five that from a considerable height I looked down upon the great "City of the Plains," the metropolis of the Territories. There the great braggart city lay spread out, brown and treeless, upon the brown and treeless plain, which seemed to nourish nothing but wormwood and the Spanish bayonet. The shallow Platte, shriveled into a narrow stream with a shingly bed six times too large for it, and fringed by shriveled cotton-wood, wound along by Denver, and two miles up its course I saw a great sandstorm, which in a few minutes covered the city, blotting it out ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Beth-el shall come to nought. 6. Seek the Lord, and ye shall live; lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Beth-el. 7. Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth, 8. Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His name: 9. That ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Dick—it's your affair to keep your own judgment unwarped, your own heart gentle, your own soul untainted by the poison of hatred. We are both churchmen, as you put it—loyalty is for us both. You live your sermon—I say mine. I have said it. Now live yours. Put this wormwood away from you. Forgive Preston, as you need forgiveness at higher hands. Don't break the girl's heart, and spoil your boy's life—it may spoil it—the leaven of bitterness works long. You're at a parting ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... I shall never become gall and wormwood, in any event, like some old folks. Now, is not that ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... died for me, It warmed the heart of one abhorred: Nay, start not—no—nor bend thy knee, Nor midst my sin such act record; Thou wilt absolve me from the deed, For he was hostile to thy creed! The very name of Nazarene 1040 Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen. Ungrateful fool! since but for brands Well wielded in some hardy hands, And wounds by Galileans given— The surest pass to Turkish heaven— For him his Houris still might wait Impatient at the Prophet's gate. I loved her—Love will find its way ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... he on the threshold, "I am so far on my road to immortality that I ought to have vine-leaves in my hair; instead of which I have wormwood in my heart. Will you kindly take ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... was, with her inquisitive bent of mind and shifting points of view, to ask a question the answering of which would be gall and wormwood ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... roses, lapididis hoematis, white frankincense, of each half an ounce. Dragon's blood, fine bole, mastic, of each two drachms; nutmeg, cloves, of each one drachm; spikenard, half a scruple, with oil of wormwood; make a plaster for the lower part of the belly, then let her eat candied eringo root, and make an injection only of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... tents to lie in, and to put our goods under; and in this caravan of ours there were four thousand camels laden with spices and other rich goods. These camels can subsist very well for two or three days without water, feeding on thistles, wormwood, magdalene, and other coarse weeds they find by the way. The government of the caravans, the deciding of all quarrels that occur, and the apportionment of all duties to be paid, are committed to the care of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... he said, determined to outdo the monk in denunciation, 'but the vilest of evils, not honeycomb and venom but filth and venom. Though as fair as roses the beginning the end is gall and wormwood; heartache and misery are the end of love. Why then do we seek passion when we may ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... learnt that over the vast plain before us for seventy miles in that arid region no water could be found but such as was brackish and fetid, and no kind of food but southernwood, wormwood, dracontium, and other bitter herbs, we filled the vessels which we had with sweet water, and having slain the camels and the rest of the beasts of burden, we thus sought to insure some kind of supplies, though not ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... up, nothing could exceed his disappointment. He now saw that his money must all go to enrich one who had no fortune of his own. He could bear his being a rascal; but to want an equivalent to his daughter's fortune was wormwood. He sate therefore for some minutes employed in the most mortifying speculations, till Sir William attempted to lessen his anxiety.—'I must confess, Sir' cried he, 'that your present disappointment does not entirely ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... see what made Josh think so quick that day. We never thought he was brighter 'n common; but jest see how in that flash o' bein' mad with Lyddy Ann he'd planned out what would be most wormwood for her! He gi'n her the half o' the house she'd furnished herself with hair-cloth chairs an' a whatnot, but 'twa'n't the part that was fit to be lived in. She stayed pretty close for three or four days, an' I guess she never had nothin' to eat. It made me kind o' sick to think ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... would not cease to revolve about the undertaking, for he could not at once relinquish his long-cherished dream. The thought of tame surrender was as wormwood in his mouth. To stand by acquiescent while the project collapsed! That prospect he could not endure. Never again, if he capitulated now, would he be able to strike out with the same courage as in this project; never with the ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... sandals, strips of silk, seeds, German hardware, American cigarettes, and goodness knows what else. I suppose I shall forget all these groups—and, colours, and expressions, in time—that is the gall and the wormwood of seeing beauty; I'd fain remember them longer and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... blow through the strings of a well-ordered instrument, but it blows, and however grotesque the sound produced may sometimes be, it is of a sort which is not to be produced by any mere mechanism of the mind. To the critical ear the tunes played in 'Wormwood' and 'The Sorrows of Satan' are not, and cannot be, agreeable. The writer, to speak in plain English, and without the obscurity of symbols, is the owner of genius on the emotional side, and is not the owner of genius, or anything approaching to it, even from afar, on the intellectual ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... be eternized by a blast From her shrill trumpet: in the glittering halls Of sensual Pleasure some sing songs, and bind Their fair young brows with chaplets steeped in wine; Though soon the chaplets turn to chains, the wines To gall and wormwood, and the festal song To howls and hootings. High above these shrines The great arch-demon and parental Jove Of all the Pantheon, a god unknown But every where adored, omnipotent And omnipresent to the tribes ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Saint Bartholomew's Day last, [24th August, 1572]; of the Admiral of France slain in his chamber, and divers other murders: so that he "thought those Frenchmen the happiest which were farthest from France, now no longer France but Frensy, even as if all Gaul were turned into wormwood and gall: Italian practices having over-mastered the French simplicity." He showed what famous and often reports he had heard of our great riches. He desired to know of our Captain which way he might "compass" his ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... rosemary, rue, wormwood, sage, mint, and lavender flowers, each, 1/2 oz. Bruised nutmeg, cloves, angelica root, and camphor, each, 1/4 oz. Alcohol (rectified), 4 oz. Concentrated ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... which have been considered of good omen when seen in dreams, may be mentioned the palm-tree, olive, jasmine, lily, laurel, thistle, thorn, wormwood, currant, pear, &c.; whereas the greatest luck attaches to the rose. On the other hand, equally numerous are the plants which denote misfortune. Among these may be included the plum, cherry, withered roses, walnut, hemp, cypress, dandelion, &c. Beans are still said ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the least in love with Mrs. Houghton. And, though he did love his wife dearly, though the more he saw of her the more he admired her, yet his marriage had not made him happy. He had to live on her money, which galled him, and to be assisted by the Dean's money, which was wormwood to him. And he found himself to be driven whither he did not wish to go, and to be brought into perils from which his experience did not suffice to extricate him. He already repented the step he had taken ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the same time, of every human heart which is unkindly and unjustly treated. And whilst he himself has so painfully suffered in that deep combat in which the Laocoon-snakes seize upon the outstretched hand; whilst he himself has been compelled to drink from that wormwood-steeped bowl which the cold-blooded and arrogant world so constantly offers to those who are in depressed circumstances, he is fully capable of giving to his delineations in this respect a truth and an earnestness, nay, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... plain. This bird is the largest of the grouse kind, though it is neither a bird of handsome plumage, nor yet is it delicate in its flesh. On the contrary, the flesh, from the nature of its food, which is the berry of the wild wormwood, is both unsavoury and bitter. It would not have deterred the appetites of our four trappers, could they have laid their hands upon the bird, but without guns such a thing was out of the question. For several days they sustained themselves on roots and ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... informed, by some of his friends in the Southern States, that the objections to the appointment of Federalists were insuperable, and would everywhere affect the popularity of his administration, he observed: "On such appointments all the wormwood and gall of the old party hatred ooze out. Not a vacancy to any office occurs but there is a distinguished Federalist started and pushed home as a candidate to fill it, always well qualified, sometimes ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... replied Bessy, humbly. 'Sometimes, when I've thought o' my life, and the little pleasure I've had in it, I've believed that, maybe, I was one of those doomed to die by the falling of a star from heaven; "And the name of the star is called Wormwood;' and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." One can bear pain and sorrow better if one thinks it has been prophesied long before for one: somehow, then ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wormwood to Ruthven, so long the official lap-dog of the very small set he kennelled with; and the women of that set were perverse enough to find Neergard amusing, and his fertility in contriving new extravagances for them interested these people, whose only interest had always ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... felt no remorse for their own most painted lives. Religion had been a pole-star to light and to guide. It was now more like to that ominous star in the book of the Apocalypse, which fell from heaven upon the fountains and rivers and changed them into wormwood; for even so did it descend from its high and celestial dwelling-place to plague this earth, and to turn into bitterness all that was sweet, and into poison all that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... For two full years this representative of the Holy See was feted and toasted on all hands, as little less than the Pope himself, whom he represented. But last year all these happy feelings were dashed with gall and wormwood by an announcement that as the bishops controlled all this immense property by virtue of their spiritual authority, there was a resulting trust in his favor, or at least in favor of the Pope, whom he represented with full powers. It ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... warms in the hand the perfumes give forth," said the doctor. "Now the fever is past there must be a fumigatory. Make a good brew, Goody, make a good brew—amber and nitre and wormwood—vinegar and quinces and myrrh—with wormwood, camphor, and the fresh flowers of the camomile. And musk—forget not musk—a strong thing against contagion. Let the vapor of it pass to and fro through the chamber, burn the herbs from ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... regarded by her brother Jacob. In the sore troubles that had come into the old man's life. Jacob had had a part. What part Elizabeth did not know she did not even know the nature of the trouble, but she knew, though she had only learned it lately, that the very sight of her brother was like wormwood to Mr Fleming; that even Mrs Fleming, friendly and sweet to all the world, was cold and distant to Jacob. And all this seemed to Elizabeth a sufficient reason why he should be more gentle and forbearing with them than with others, that he should be willing to forego his just ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... when good men go to morning mass; and she stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy, about half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter than wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground. "You have sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him. He looked round—Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like a brush, his eyes like those of a bull. "I know what you lack: here it is." Then he jingled ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... him elixir of vitriol, his favourite first medicine. And he made himself a jug of wormwood tea. He had hanging in the attic great bunches of dried herbs: wormwood, rue, horehound, elder flowers, parsley-purt, marshmallow, hyssop, dandelion, and centaury. Usually there was a jug of one or other decoction standing on the hob, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... hotcakes—! But breakfast in the little green cottage recalled Marie, and Marie was a bitter memory. All the more bitter because he did not know where burrowed the root of his hot resentment. In a strong man's love for his home and his mate was it rooted, and drew therefrom the wormwood of ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... not do to say to what our gallant Sholto condemned all tricksome queans and spiteful damosels in whose eyes dwelt mischief brimming over, and whose tongues spoke softest words that yet stung and rankled like fairy arrows dipped in gall and wormwood. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... orders rather than her own deserts. To her fellow-students she was still an insignificant new-comer, with no claim to distinction. If she excelled in one subject, she was behind in the next, while at games she was hopelessly ignorant. It was wormwood and gall to be obliged to join the "Bantlings" at hockey, and be coached by a girl of twelve; but Rhoda set her teeth and determined that if pluck and energy could help, it would be a short time indeed before she got ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not at all elated. After all, he knew there were no national boundaries to valor or patriotism, and however sweet the victory it must always carry the wormwood of regret that the vanquished will see no more red dawnings and go out on no more dawn patrols. That plunging, flaming plane was as a lighted match dropped into a deep well—the deep well ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... those who fail; the vessels that never came back from their venturous voyages left us no log-books. Many have written the History of Success. What melancholy Plutarch shall arise to record, with a pen dipped in wormwood, the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... omnibus that was to carry our friends back to the station; they caught sight of several about the shop windows, as that drove through the streets. Thus the place perpetually renews itself in the glow of love as long as the summer lasts. The moon which is elsewhere so often of wormwood, or of the ordinary green cheese at the best, is of lucent honey there from the first of June to the last of October; and this is a great charm in Niagara. I think with tenderness of all the lives that have opened so fairly there; the hopes that have reigned in the glad young ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood." Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown holy oil, laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are supposed to ascend to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that they tumble down to earth. And in order that they may not fall soft, but may hurt themselves very much, the yokel hastily brings out a chair ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sweeping over the fields of snow which melted under neither sun nor rain; and in spring could only watch for the breaking up of the ice in the Danube, the restoration of the gloomy plains to their crop of wormwood, and the rare arrival of some brave ship from Italy or Greece. The acknowledged master of the Latin tongue, the courted talker in brilliant circles in Rome must learn to write and speak a barbarous jargon if he wished to have any intercourse with his neighbours. The husband ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... expressed admiration of his ability and thrift, which greeted her ears on every side, and, finally, the sight of Esperance, fresh, smiling, and prosperous, behind her little counter—all these were as gall and wormwood to Alexandrine, brooding over her accumulating debts and her decreasing earnings, among her dusty stacks of jars and boxes. Once she had called upon her neighbour, somewhat for courtesy's sake, but more for curiosity's, and since ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... that the first thirty Days of Matrimony (as 'tis written in the Book of Zend) is Honey-Moon; but the second is all Wormwood. He was oblig'd, in short, as Azora grew such a Termagant, to sue out a Bill of Divorce, and to seek his Consolation for the future, in the Study of Nature. Who is happier, said he, than the Philosopher, who peruses with Understanding that spacious Book, which the supreme ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... undergone so subtle a change when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's invariable way of expressing his opinions on current affairs. He would sit on the front-board of his cart,—the Big Gray stumbling over the stones as he walked, the reins lying loose,—and fill the air with details of events ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Herb. L.—Wormwood is a strong bitter; and was formerly much used as such against weakness of the stomach, and the like, in medicated wines and ales. At present it is rarely employed in these intentions, on account of the ill relish and offensive smell which it is accompanied ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... The attentions of the men, their easy manners, their little liberties, their bows, their smiles, their compliments—it was gall and wormwood to the girl's unbroken spirit. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain pleasure in the bitterness. The bitterness was her own, the pleasure some one else's, so to speak, who was looking on and laughing. She felt an unconquerable ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... enlevement. It spoilt her day for her. She fumed and fretted and made things fly—for Struthers always works hardest, I've noticed, when in a temper—and surrendering to the corroding tides which were turning her gentle nature into gall and wormwood, obliquely and tremulously warned the somewhat startled Peter against ungodly and frivolous females who 'ave no right to be corrupting simple-minded colonials and who 'ave no scruples against playing with men the same as a cat would play with ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Mrs Wackles and Miss Wackles were seated, looking on at the dance; and unto Mrs and Miss Wackles, Miss Cheggs occasionally darted when her partner was occupied with his share of the figure, and made some remark or other which was gall and wormwood to Richard Swiviller's soul. Looking into the eyes of Mrs and Miss Wackles for encouragement, and sitting very upright and uncomfortable on a couple of hard stools, were two of the day-scholars; ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... really felt was impossible to Sarah, for at the bottom of her hatred of her riches was the feeling that they had been unjustly, if not dishonourably, obtained, and that other people knew it and despised them for it, and this was gall and wormwood to a girl ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... his old friend, Alexander Gordon, that he knows a man who sometimes wonders to see any one laugh or sport in this so sinful and sad life. But that was because he had embittered the springs of laughter in himself by the wormwood sins of his youth. William Guthrie had no such remorseful memories continually taking him by the throat as his divinity professor had, and thus it was that with all his melancholy he was known as the greatest humorist and the greatest sportsman in the Scottish Kirk of his day. ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... any Remedy we tried a better Effect. We gave the following Medicines to divers Patients; the saline Draughts and cooling Medicines; Infusions of Camomile Flowers and of other Bitters; Dr. Morton's Powders of Camomile Flowers, Salt of Wormwood, and diaphoretic Antimony; Dr. Mead's Powders of Camomile Flowers, Salt of Wormwood, Myrrh, and Alum; Alum and Nutmeg; large Doses of sal ammoniac; large Quantities of Spirits of Hartshorn; the antimonial Drops and Powders; to some we gave Emetics, both ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... down to Kew with the particular purpose of engaging my brother and Lionel to accompany him, on the next day but one, to Wormwood Scrubs, where there was to be a grand review, in honour of some foreign prince or other, of two or three regiments of light cavalry, with horse-artillery and rockets. It was to conclude with a sham fight, and which ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... ere thou knew'st That kindly grief, which re-espouses us To God, how hither art thou come so soon? I thought to find thee lower, there, where time Is recompense for time." He straight replied: "To drink up the sweet wormwood of affliction I have been brought thus early by the tears Stream'd down my Nella's cheeks. Her prayers devout, Her sighs have drawn me from the coast, where oft Expectance lingers, and have set me free From th' other circles. In the sight of God ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... that he was going to bite my nose off. The lady did not at all participate in the joviality; and, as it is difficult to keep up mirth entirely upon one's own resources, we were beginning to be a gloomy party. What I had unconsciously said regarding my master's voice, was wormwood to him. He had long been the butt of all his acquaintance respecting it, and what followed was the making that unbearable which was before too bitter. Many questions were put by the visitor, and the answers appeared to grow more and more unsatisfactory as they were elicited. The lady was beginning ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... was very anxious to see a wolf-hunt the Judge volunteered to get one up, and asked old man Prindle to assist, for the sake of his two big fighting dogs; though the very names of the latter, General Grant and Old Abe, were gall and wormwood to the unreconstructed soul of the Judge. Still they were the only dogs anywhere around capable of tackling a savage timber wolf, and without their aid the judge's own high-spirited animals ran a serious risk of injury, for they were altogether ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... "wolf in sheep's clothing," by which title he never failed in after years to designate the traitor. The Jew trembled, and partly rose from his seat; while Zillah, whose love had turned to hate—whose affection had become as wormwood—stood erect as he advanced, with a pale but firm look. Prepared to assert her rights to the last, she was the very model of a determined woman, who, having been greatly wronged, resolves to be greatly avenged. If her lip quivered, it was ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... tones. Mr. Maugham ... has suffered for the joy of the many who are to read after him. By no willing of his own he has been compelled to take life by the hand and go down where there has been little save sorrow and degradation. The cup of gall and wormwood has obviously been lifted to his lips and to the last drop he has been compelled to drink it. Because of this, we are enabled to see the rug, woven of the tortures and delights of a life. We may actually walk and talk with one whose hands ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one of her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse upon the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and sweetly shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal month. As Madame du Bousquier drove back to Alencon, she chanced to meet Madame Granson at the corner of the rue Val-Noble. The glance of the mother, dying of her grief, struck to the heart of the poor woman. A thousand maledictions, a thousand flaming reproaches, were ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Soon you will see the Angels of the Seals. I shall show the multitude Death on the Pale Horse and the vision of Ezekiel. And you shall behold the star called Wormwood, the great star of the third angel, which shall fall like a burning lamp upon the waters and turn them bitter. And at the last you will see the chariot of Elijah caught up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... from his eyes, "Not water, but oil on the flames! This is not the time to weep, but to avenge. A pirate's tears are drops of blood! I will avenge you, my murdered family, on mankind, on the whole world. Earth, grant me no more rest. Change the wine-cup to wormwood ere it reaches my lips, and every throb of my heart to hate. I had a single joy, my soul a single steadfast idea, which came to my remembrance whenever any one sued to me for mercy, and I granted it. That was joy. But it is forever torn ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... since she, with good reason, felt under obligations to him. Even more than an adventurous scouting expedition he relished a situation full of humor, and such, his presence at Mr. Baron's supper-table promised to be. He knew his entertainment would be gall and wormwood to the old Bourbon and his wife, and that the courtesy had been wrung from them by his own forbearance. It might be his only opportunity to see Miss Lou and suggest the liberty he had brought to her as well as to ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... strongest acid, such, for instance, as calcin'd chalk, calcin'd oyster or scallop-shells, calcin'd egg-shells, alabaster, &c. But if a hogshead can soon be drank, use a stronger alkali, such as salt of tartar, salt of wormwood; but in using them, you must always preserve their colour with lac, or else the alkali will turn the liquor black, ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... also gives an insight into the medical practice of the good old times. A niece, Cynthia, is being treated for the dropsy by "drinking copiously of a decoction made by charring wormwood in a close vessel and putting the ashes into brandy, and every night being subjected to a heavy sweat." It recommends plenty of blue pills and boneset for the ague. Later, Susan writes of a friend who is "under ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... mead passeth from the lips, But they are long corroded by the juice of wormwood; The lamb is brought to the shambles, but the wolf rangeth the mountain; Kindness fadeth away, but ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I'm a poor, miserable, forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that's all. What's the use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to be anything? What's the use of living? ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... garden, both wild and cultivated. It was about half an acre, which he cultivated wholly himself. Besides the common garden-vegetables, there were Yellow-Dock, Lemon-Balm, Hyssop, Gill-go-over-the-ground, Mouse-ear, Chickweed, Roman Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish-hawk stoop to pick a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Browne was now raging against the fate that had placed him in this humiliating, almost contemptible position. He, and he alone, was responsible for the sufferings that Lady Agnes had endured: it was as gall and wormwood to him that other men had been ordained to save her from the misery that he had created. He could almost have welcomed death for himself and her rather than to have been saved by George Deppingham. As he staggered along, propelled by the resistless ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... all trust me!" she ejaculated; "and they always shall. I will never be false to their friendship; no, not if to serve them my heart's blood must become wormwood and gall." ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... it was gall and wormwood, yet she was all the more determined upon keeping him. She said to herself that she had toiled, and waited, and striven for him for too long to relinquish him now that the victory was hers ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and turned it aside from him, as a woman will when flattered, or when she wishes to be flattered, but she did not rise to depart; and he felt that the incense which he offered to her beauty was not unacceptable. But the words and the attentions of the stranger were as daggers in the ears, and as wormwood in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... of Riverius are supposed to owe their antiemetic effects to the air, which is separated from the salt of wormwood during the act of effervescence. And the tonic powers of many mineral waters seem to depend on this principle. I was lately desired to visit a lady who had most severe convulsive REACHINGS. Various remedies had been administered without effect, before ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... muttered the old sinner, "it's hard to say what's best,—powder of toad's bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder's fat. The safest thing is to consult ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... other time this much-wanted promotion would have been hailed joyfully. Now it seemed almost like wormwood. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... about just now. Certainly, I had always lived comfortably, spending money, eating and drinking of the best, and dressing well—that is, according to the London standard. And there was my dear old bachelor Uncle Jack—John Smith, Member of Parliament for Wormwood Scrubbs. That is to say, ex-Member; for, being a Liberal when the great change came at the last general election, he was ignominiously ousted from his seat, the Scrubbs proving at the finish a bitter ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... she is, my sweet Aizif!" she went on amusedly stroking the creature's head,—"Her feminine wit teaches her what the dull brains of men can never grasp, . . namely, that pleasures, no matter how sweet, turn to ashes and wormwood when once obtained,—and that the only happiness in this world is the charm of DESIRE! There is a subject for thee, Sah-luma! ... write an immortal Ode on the mysteries, the delights, the never-ending ravishment of Desire! ... but carry not thy fancy on to desire's ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was spruce and trim, and so freshened up throughout, that if there yet remained at large any of the rioters who had been concerned in the attack upon it, the sight of the old, goodly, prosperous dwelling, so revived, must have been to them as gall and wormwood. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in a language the greater part of them do not understand, and performed by such a set of beings!... Conscience had done its office before; nay was busy at the time; and if it did not dash the cup of pleasure to the ground, infused at least a tincture of wormwood into it. I did think of the alarming call, 'What doest thou here, Elijah?' and I thought of it to-night at ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... whereby the air will be much purified. Now, as soon as this rain shall announce itself by thunder or hail, every one of you should protect himself from the air; and, as well before as after the rain, kindle a large fire of vine-wood, green laurel, or other green wood; wormwood and camomile should also be burnt in great quantity in the market-places, in other densely inhabited localities, and in the houses. Until the earth is again completely dry, and for three days afterwards, no one ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... dry and bitter, as if he'd been taking wormwood tea; "I see. He's been having a good time making ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is a matter of joy, that your faith in Jesus has been preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with bitterness and made drunken with wormwood, I conjure you to have recourse in frequent prayer to 'his God and your God'; the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... borders now. There were a few perennials easy to cultivate; and annuals such as sow themselves, marigolds and pansies. There was balm in abundance, and two or three gigantic peonies, in their season the admiration of all passers by; and beds of useful herbs, wormwood and sage, and summer savory. But, though it looked like a wilderness of weeds the first day they came to see it, Janet's quick eye foresaw a great deal of pleasure and profit which might be got for the bairns out of the garden, and, as ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... all. There are laws against the stuff in France, Switzerland, and Belgium. It isn't the alcohol alone, although there is from fifty to eighty per cent. in it, that makes it so deadly. It is the absinthe, the oil of wormwood, whose bitterness has passed into a proverb. The active principle absinthin is a narcotic poison. The stuff creates a habit most insidious and difficult to break, a longing more exacting than hunger. It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... P. M. attached. Might as well take lodgings in Wormwood Scrubs—quite as much liberty. But, anyhow, Caesar, you see now what you have ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... not then bitter as wormwood and gall to think that over these domes and towers beneath my feet, no longer than half a century ago, fluttered the holy cross of St. George! For never was there a holier crusade undertaken, never a nobler conquest planned, than that which ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... wormwood to those of the Sans who attended the dance in its closing hour to see Marjorie, radiantly pretty, enjoying herself as though she had never been through a trying experience only three hours before. By common consent ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the time when he first became Exciseman, that he had parted company with all thought of steadily working out his ideal, and that whatever he might now do in that way must be by random snatches. To his proud spirit the name of gauger must have been gall and wormwood, and it is much to his credit that for the sake of his wife and children he was content to undergo what he often felt to be a social obloquy. It would have been well for him if this had been the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the limit of plant life. At 17,000 feet the vegetation has ceased to be alpine and has become arctic, and the plants nearest the snow-line are minute primulas, saxifrages, gentians, grasses, sedges, some tufted wormwood, and a dwarf rhododendron, the most alpine of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... you the time o' day with blazin switches and pinchers: Even prayin' don't help, nor helps all your Ave Marias! When you begin 'em, he takes your jaws and claps 'em together; Look to heaven, he comes and blinds y'r eyes with his ashes; Be you hungry, and eat, he pizons y'r soup with his wormwood; Take you a drink o' nights, he squeezes gall in the tankard; Run like a stag, he follows as close on y'r trail as a blood-hound; Creep like a shadow, be whispers: 'Good! we had best take it easy'; Kneels at y'r side in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... They married men o' means, and the gall and wormwood entered into my soul, and ate it away. Laban was awful good. He laughed and worked, but we couldn't make it. Times was too hard. I'd see Samanthy trailin' silks and satins in the dust, and —and my underskirts was made o' flour sacks. Yes—flour ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... substituted his "wormwood wine" for Malone's vinegar; and before he can make it as palatable to common sense, and Shakspeare's "logical correctness and nicety of expression," as it was to Creed and Shepley, he must get over the "stalking-horse," the drink UP, which stands in his way precisely as it did in that of Malone's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... put out. She was enough of a Jewess to realize that if you dislike Jewish comment, you must never step out of the narrowly conventional Jewish pathway. That Ruth, her only daughter, should be the subject of vulgar bandying was more bitter than wormwood to her; but that her own niece could come with these wild conjectures incensed her ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... cusco is sometimes used as an anthelmintic, so is wormwood, and the liquid extract of male fern, and in America spigelia ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... my dear D'Argens. You shall take the place of the Holy Father, and bless and consecrate a small spot of earth for me. With your pure lips you shall pray to the house gods for their blessing and protection on my hearth, and beseech them to pour a little joy and mirth into the cup of wormwood and gall which this poor life presses to our lips. My palace of Weinberg, near Potsdam, is finished. I will drive you there today—you alone, marquis! As for the others, they are light-minded, audacious, suspicious children ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Courcy was in London, and that her son-in-law, Mr Crosbie, whose wife,—Lady Alexandrina,—had died some twelve months since at Baden Baden, was at variance with her respecting money which he supposed to be due to him. But there was that in Lady Julia's letter that was wormwood to him. Lily Dale was again thinking of this man, whom she had loved in the old days, and who had treated her with monstrous perfidy! It was all very well for Lady Julia to be sure that Lily Dale would never desire ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... at present. I hope we shall not find any of Nat. Lee's left-handed gods at work, to dash our bowl of joy with wormwood. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... a doctor?" Jack asked, and Mrs. Biggs replied, "A doctor? What for, except to run up a bill. I know what to do. She'll have to keep quiet a spell; wormwood and vinegar and hot water will do the rest. Tim, go up garret and get a handful of wormwood. It's the bundle of 'arbs to your right. There's catnip, and horehound, and spearmint, and sage, and wormwood. Be lively, and put it to steep in some vinegar, and bring me that old sheet in the under bureau ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... everything antique will end with them. The squat little house will tumble down and the place where it stood will be overgrown with that which, according to my grandmother, always grows over the spot where man's handiwork has been—that is, nettles, burdock, thistles, wormwood, and dock leaves. The very street will cease to be—other people will come and never will they see anything like it again, never, through all ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... large handful of lavender blossoms, and the same quantity of sage, mint, rue, wormwood and rosemary. Chop and mix them well. Put them into a jar, with half an ounce of camphor that has been dissolved in a little alcohol, and pour in three quarts of strong clear vinegar. Keep the jar for two or ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... fears or compunctions in criticising, if she could. The paper was in the essay style, between argument and sarcasm, something after the model of the Invalid's Letters; but it was scarcely lightly touched enough, the irony was wormwood, the gravity heavy and sententious, and where there was a just thought or happy hit, it seemed to travel in a road-waggon, and be lost in the rumbling of the wheels. Ermine did not restrain a smile, half of amusement, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... right hand, and a slight roll in his gait when he walked. But appearances are deceptive, for Mr. Kemp, at liberty or in gaol, had never been out of London in his life. He was born and bred a London thief, and had served all his sentences at Wormwood Scrubbs. For over a minute he and Mr. Holymead remained in conversation. Rolfe would have described it officially as familiar conversation, but that description would have overlooked the deference, the sense of inferiority, in "Kincher's" manner. For a time Rolfe ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... of all Church-plagues, farewel; Bad at the best, but at the worst a Hell; Thou truss of wormwood, bitter Teaz of Life, Thou Nursery of humane cares a wife. Thou Apple-Eating Trayt'riss who began The Wrath of Heav'n, and Miseries of Man, And hast with never-failing diligence, Improv'd the Curse to humane Race e'er since. Farewel Church-juggle ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... making use of a salve against the elfin race and nocturnal goblin visitors (nightmare) is extremely curious. "Take the ewe hop plant (probably female hop), wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, etc.; put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night-visitors ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the most galling experience of General Yozarro was the scarifying repulse of Miss Starland, when he presumed to address her; but unknown to all except the author of the insult and himself, he was compelled to taste a deeper dreg in the cup of wormwood and gall. While he paused, facing the group of Americans, a man on the outer fringe succeeded in catching his eye and made the most taunting grimace conceivable. He repeated it several times, the last being accompanied by a flirt of the forefinger across ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... has been previously saturated with gunpowder, or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate of potash. But, till then, they had not found any of these polypores or even any of the morels which could replace them. On this day, the engineer, seeing a plant belonging to the wormwood genus, the principal species of which are absinthe, balm-mint, tarragon, etc., gathered several tufts, and, presenting them ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... manhood clashed. Relentless fate had decreed that "York" must contend with "Lancaster" in the "War of the Roses." And with flushed cheeks and throbbing hearts we eagerly entered the field; his shield bearing the red rose, mine the white. It was a contest of principles, free from the wormwood and gall of personalities, and when the multitude of partisans gathered at the hustings, a white rose on every Democratic bosom, a red rose on every Republican breast, in the midst of a wilderness of flowers there was many a tilt and many a loud huzzah. But when ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Lord George's second and the meeting-place was at Wormwood Scrubs at six a.m. The weapons were pistols and the antagonists stood ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... lives, and the very sorrows and humiliations of one day, if we do not beware, may become the idols of the next. "We have eaten and drunk in thy presence:" can such a language ever be used in vain-glory, while we remember "the wormwood and the gall," which we now see to have been administered in fulfilment of His own words, "Ye shall indeed drink of my cup"? Indeed, it seems to me that nothing is too high, too good, or too pure for Satan to make use of, if ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... surroundings, as forty years ago the parents of these aristocrats affected to despise the imperial parvenus. The swells amused themselves during the official visit of the Emperor and Empress of Russia last year (which was gall and wormwood to them) by exaggerating and repeating all the small slips in etiquette that the President, an intelligent, but simple-mannered gentleman, was supposed to have made during the sojourn of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... shore. Thus the sea, though it bears no harvest on its bosom, yet sustains all the harvest of the world. If like a desert itself, it makes all the other wildernesses of the earth to bud and blossom as the rose. Though its own waters are as salt and wormwood, it makes the clouds of heaven drop ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... pine here in a chain whose gall Is bitterer than drop of wormwood brought From that salt sea where nothing lives, and all The recompense ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... themselves before your enraptured vision. Remember that "the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." In a few years at most the conflict shall end, and sighing grief shall weep no more; the wormwood and the gall will be exchanged for the cup of salvation; the armor and the battle-field will be exchanged for the white garment, the crown and the throne. Soon your typical homestead shall be exchanged for your antitypical home; and we shall unite in the home-song ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... other. The parts of life contribute to the perfection of the whole. Each object has its own peculiar office, as it has its own form. The tulip delights with its beauty, the carnation with its perfume, the unseemly wormwood displeases both taste and smell, yet in medicinal value is superior to both. So each temperament, each character, has its good and bad. The one has inclinations of which ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... in this country as a healthy beverage. Let me give you a few of the ingredients frequently used in its manufacture. The adulterations most commonly used to give bitterness are gentian, wormwood, and quassia; to impart pungency, ginger, orange-peel, and caraway. If these were all, there would be small need of warning the young against the use of beer on account of its injurious ingredients, but when there are added, ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow |
