"Numb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it a kind of queer thing altogether, and yet I am almost ashamed to add, it really has set me to thinking; yes and to feeling. Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial. I don't know that ever I felt so much so before. I am naturally numb in my sensibilities; but this ode, in its way, works on my numbness not unlike a sermon, which, by lamenting over my lying dead in trespasses and sins, thereby stirs me up to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... both her hands on the harp, which is placed on her right side; her figure is full front, but she looks towards the right; round her this inscription, HIBERNIA, 1722. (Simon, plate 7, Numb. 160) ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... ahead, and endeavored to quicken the pace of the old horse, but the house always transformed itself to a clump of hazel-brush as he drew nearer. About nine o'clock the rain grew colder and the lightning less frequent. Katy became entirely silent—Albert could feel her shiver now and then. Thus, in numb misery, constantly hoping to see a house on ascending the next rise of ground and constantly suffering disappointment, they traveled on through the wretched monotony of that night. The ceaseless plash of the rain, the slow tread of the horse's ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that she did not greatly care whether she lived or died. Her face was blue from the cold; her vitality was sapped. She seemed to herself to have turned to ice below the hips. Outside the misery of the moment her whole attention was concentrated on sticking to the back of the horse. Numb though her fingers were, she must keep them fastened tightly in the frozen mane of the animal. She recited her lesson to herself like a child. She must stick on—she ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... upon the spar and scramble down the rigging; but with us, upon the extreme leeward side, this feat was out of the question; it was, literary, like climbing a precipice to get to wind-ward in order to reach the shrouds: besides, the entire yard was now encased in ice, and our hands and feet were so numb that we dared not trust our lives to them. Nevertheless, by assisting each other, we contrived to throw ourselves prostrate along the yard, and embrace it with our arms and legs. In this position, the stun'-sail-booms greatly assisted in securing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... it's all dark to me," owned Sally Flint. "I guess 'twould puzzle a saint to explain men-folks, anyway, but I've al'ays thought they was sort o' numb about some things. Anyway, Josh Marden was. Well, things went on that way till the fust part o' the summer, an' then they come to a turnin'-p'int. I s'pose they'd got to, some time, an' it might jest as well ha' been fust as last. Lyddy Ann was pretty ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... (Coming back to the present with a murderous look at THE LITTLE DOG.) Death to you, ill-smelling beast, for having evoked these by-gone joys! Aren't you going to disappear, that I may come down from this cold pedestal, where my paws are growing numb? ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... low gunwale ground against the heavy craft, and the remaining correspondent clambered aboard. Rasmunsen was over the eggs like a cat and in the bow of the Alma, striving with numb fingers ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... began to beat again rather wildly, but she reasoned with herself; she was no coward, and indeed why had she any cause for alarm? No one could be more aloof than her companion seemed. She was already numb with cold too, and her common sense told her shelter of any sort would ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... river, with the castellated tops of butte and mountain molten gold in the evening sun. When he reached the brittle strata, the water reflected firelight from the still unseen camp blaze. Enoch, clinging perilously to the breaking rock, half faint with hunger, his fingers numb with the cold, laughed again, to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... leaped past him from he knew not where, and then there was a shout, the report of a pistol, a horrid yell. Something heavy crashed down beside him and writhed. His eyes were closing, his senses were going, he was numb and sleepy. Away off in the distance he heard ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, until there was a crash above them, and the tilted top of the great boom came down. Mattawa, flattened against the rock side, held his breath as the mass of timber ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... of him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make supplication to heaven ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... been coming to the post the past few days, some of us wonder if there has not been an earthquake, and can only sit around and wait in a numb sort of way for whatever may ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... passed over this portage was a most miserable one. We were soaked from morning till night with mingled snow and rain, and numb with the cold, but when we made our night camp, below the junction of the rivers, one or two ax cuttings were found, and I knew that now our troubles were nearly at an end and we were not far from men. The next afternoon (Monday, October sixteenth) we stopped ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... carried around at dizzying speed. I could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying! And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against sharp rocks on the seafloor, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... over the stubble of a field, leading Hannibal and Wilkins' mount. There had been no way of bringing the sergeant's body out of town, and Drew had reported the death to Lieutenant Traggart, who officered the scouts. He felt numb as he headed for the spark of fire which marked their temporary camp, numb not only with cold and hunger, but with all the days of cold, hunger, fighting, and marching which lay behind. It seemed to him that this war ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... that you had not accompanied me. If I had seen you shivering as I shivered myself, if I had seen your hands and feet as red and swelled as mine were, my discomfort would just have been doubled. I can do very well under this sort of thing; it does not fret me; it only makes me numb and silent; but if you were to pass a winter in Belgium, you would be ill. However, more genial weather is coming now, and I wish you were here. Yet I never have pressed you, and never would press you too warmly to come. There are privations ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... told her the afternoon was waning, and then indications of darkness and another night of torture, despair filled her. Numb, hungry, her vitality at low ebb, she doubted her ability to weather it. Was she being punished, she wondered, for protesting against the life the Fates appeared to have mapped out for her? Was this ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... worst of it. A squally wind and rain had set in, making the work on deck thoroughly wet and uncomfortable. An hour or so later the small ship was rolling and pitching and everyone was drenched. The lead was kept going by hands numb with cold—a foretaste of the long and bitter days and nights to be ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... lay silent thus, I was able in some degree to call my wits around me. And the difficulty of knowing in what course I ought to direct conversation presented itself, and seemed to numb my ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had done for myself, so far as THOSE people ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... his skilled and careful treatment, one of my men died the following day, while the number of those who were seriously ill rose to fifteen. The symptoms of this fatal illness are: headache and a numb feeling in all the limbs, accompanied by an unusually high temperature very often rising to 104 and 106 degrees during the first 24 hours, with the blood running from the patient's nose and ears, which is an ominous sign. At other times ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... it not chanced that Elsa was dressed in her warm winter gown with fur upon it, and dry from her head to her feet, it is probable that she would have fallen off and perished in the water. As it was gradually her body became numb and her senses faded. She seemed to know that all this matter of her forced marriage, of the flood, and of the end of Simon and Meg, was nothing but a dream, a very evil nightmare from which she would awake presently to find herself ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... were quite numb with the cold. Ah! a little match might do her good if she only dared draw one from the bundle, and strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers at it. She drew one out. R-r-atch! how it spluttered and burned! It was a warm bright flame, like a little candle, when she held her hands over ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... protruding from the deep, and as the light grew brighter I started to wade slowly towards it. This was an extremely tiresome undertaking, as the bed upon which I had been resting was very rocky and uneven and I received many bruises before finally reaching its base. My limbs too were thoroughly numb and almost refused to work, but with each step ahead the water became shallower and my progress less arduous. As I went forward I thought it was by the miraculous hand of God that my life had been saved, for the time being at least. Then, again, it occurred to me, that if it was the hand ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... . . . How could he wait? He paced the floor, his mind in its chaotic desperation, numb and inelastic. With his glance upon the psaltery stick, a dim notion of accounting filtered curiously into his mind and became obsessional. He went shaking to Brian's room and put the key of the chiffonier in his pocket. Thank God the studio ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... sheep was steady and continuous. The current was swift and the men's bodies ached and grew numb in the intense cold, but they stood their ground. Only in one place was the water too deep to work, and here they lost a few terror-stricken animals who turned aside from the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... victuals, and asked not counsel of the mouth of the Lord."—Josh. ix: 14. This counsel Joshua was expressly commanded to ask, when he was ordained some time before, to be the executor of God's legislative will, by Moses. Here is the proof—Numb. xxvii: 18-23: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thy hand upon him; and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight. And thou shalt put some of thine ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... mix the unpleasant dose, which Lorraine swallowed and straightway forgot, in the muddle of thoughts that whirled confusingly in her brain. Little things distressed her oddly, while her father's desperate state left her numb. She lay down on the cot in the farther corner of the kitchen where her father had slept just last night—it seemed so long ago!—and almost immediately, as her senses recorded it, bright sunlight was shining ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... something burned that she did not know, save that it was a bad thing, and made even blackness blacker. She heard their voices still. They were happy together, while she was alone outside, her forehead resting against the chill glass, and her hands half numb upon the stone; and so it would always be hereafter. They would go, and take her life with them, and she should be left behind, alone for ever; and a great revolt against her fate rose quickly in her breast like a flame before the wind, and then, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into a passive submission. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to get the cold out ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... negro woman, came in with chicken broth. Vesta made a light for him to sup by, protesting when he would sit up to help himself, the spoon impalpable in his numb fingers, still swollen and purple from the long constriction of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... were closed while he chanted the dirge. He sang it over and over, pausing between the lines, and straining as it were every sense lest he might not catch the rapt whisper of her spirit, but only the distant howls of coyotes answered him. His body became cold and numb from sheer exhaustion, and at last his knees bent under him and he sank down upon the ground, still facing the teepee. Unconsciousness overtook him, and in his sleep ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... silence of the cell: The dull, numb pain of waking, Stillness ... Fear clutching oblivion; And then to hear The brazen, blasphemous tolling of the bell, A crash of doors, Loud-clanging tins, The swell of brutal voices nearer and more near, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... not follow; I cry, "Return"—but he cannot come: We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow; Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dripping hat, hung it on the fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on Darrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, after frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answered cheerfully: "No—luckily I had on my new ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... idea that if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... some property. After the Restoration—and not before—Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the floor of the landing. "My feet are cold and numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily. "The woman struggled ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... whiskey which he bought in the liquor store—knowing that, I felt my teeth gritting hard and I took a fierce swing with the stick I was carrying, at a little maple tree beside me.... I socked that tree so fierce with my stick, that my hands stung so bad they were almost numb; the stick broke in the middle and one end of it flew ahead to where Circus and Dragonfly were and nearly ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... upwards into the neck. The radial pulse appeared normal. No swelling or pulsation existed. At the end of three months the condition was unaltered; the patient said he noticed nothing abnormal in his arm, except that it was sometimes 'sort of numb' ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... them, the color suddenly flushed all over her blanched face; she trembled in his arms; and a great, shivering sigh ran through her. It came too late, this warmth of love. She learned what its sweetness might have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Numb, comatose, insensible, The flunkeys and the chamberlains all slumbered like the dead, And snored so loud and mournfully, That Charming passed them scornfully And came to where a princess lay asleep upon a bed. She was ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... is really harmless to bodies or not, as far as its own nature is concerned. Rain-water, too, is useful to the eyes, but it makes the trachea and the lungs rough, just as oil does, although it soothes the skin; and the sea-torpedo placed on the extremities makes them numb, but is harmless when placed on the rest of the body. Wherefore we cannot say what each of these things is by nature. It is possible only to say how it appears each time. We 94 could cite more examples than these, but in order not to spend too long in laying out the plan of this book we shall ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... of the glorious city scarce affected me. We lay opposite the Doria palace, and the constellation of villas and towers still glittered along the hills; but who, with his teeth chattering and limbs numb and damp, could feel pleasure in ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... rebuff. But Sofia's leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... solitude also began even to numb the powers of his mind. He was fully aware of this, and tried to shake it off, for he shuddered more at the thought of mental than of physical decay. Among other things, he took to talking more frequently to Brownie, but although ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of evading or shirking these obligations of law and custom: whoever failed to fulfil them was doomed to perish or to become an outcast; implicit obedience was the condition of survival. The tendency of such regulation was necessarily to suppress all mental and moral differentiation, to numb personality, to establish one uniform and unchanging type of character; and such was the actual result. To this day every Japanese mind reveals the lines of that antique mould by which the ancestral mind was compressed and ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... discomfort, and then intense suffering, to the half-fed travellers. The necessity of frequently wading the Sweetwater chilled the stronger men who were bearing the brunt of the labor, and when morning dawned the occupants of the tents found themselves numb with the cold, and quite unfitted to endure the hardships of the coming day. Chislett draws this picture of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Numb with horror and sick with pity, The heart of each as an iron weight, We crept in the dawn from the awful city, Journeying out of the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Thy repentant creatures." Missy shut her eyes, repented violently, and awaited the miracle. What would happen? How would it feel, when her soul was born anew? Surely it must be time. She waited and waited, while her limbs grew numb and her soul continued to quiver and stretch up. But in vain; she somehow didn't feel the grace of God nearly as much as last Sunday when the Presbyterian choir was singing "Asleep in Jesus," while the sun shone divinely through ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... with lurking death than the men who faced Mauser bullets, but with none of the incidents of glorious war, the flag, the hurrah, and all the things that fire a soldier's heart, to urge them on,—clinging, half naked, with numb fingers to the ladders as best they can while trying to put on their stiff and frozen garments,—is one of the sights that make one proud of being a man. To see them in action, dripping icicles from helmet and coat, high upon the ladder, perhaps incased in solid ice and frozen to the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... pipe and smoked it out; old Captain Merrill, who lived on the opposite bank, came out and hailed me, "Reckon you've got a big one this time, judge;" and still my line pointed to the bottom of the river, and my hands grew numb with holding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... St. Agnes' Eve nothing is white but the heroine. It is winter, and 'bitter chill'; the hare 'limps trembling through the frozen grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the beadsman's fingers are numb, his breath is frosted; and at an instant of special and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... in a close embrace, like that of Death, Earth's pulseless heart reposes, mute and chill; Within her frozen breast, her frozen breath, In its forgotten fragrance, slumbereth still: Sapless her veins, and numb her withered arms, That still, outstretched, stand grim mementos drear Of her once gorgeous and full-leaved charms. Of flower and fruit, all increase of the year: Voiceless the river, in ice fretwork chained; Hushed the sweet cadences of ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... had succeeded in pushing the drawer back into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws, for the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... it; and yet she knew she would not keep it. She argued passionately with herself, a prey to an inward dread; for no matter how firmly she forced resolution upon resolution, they all seemed to melt in her soul like snow on a blazing fire. Then, determined to rid herself of a numb sensation of powerlessness, and achieve the end she desired, she said, 'I'll tell you, Emily, what I'll do. I'll not stay here; I will go away. Let me go away, dear, and then ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... attribute my feelings at that time to anything so concrete as a shock. It was a feeling so tranquil. It was as if an immensely heavy—an unbearably heavy knapsack, supported upon my shoulders by straps, had fallen off and left my shoulders themselves that the straps had cut into, numb and without sensation of life. I tell you, I had no regret. What had I to regret? I suppose that my inner soul—my dual personality—had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper—that she ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. All this was hard on Grandma's rheumatism; but painful as the work was, she did not give it up until something happened that ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... to consciousness with a sickening sensation of nausea and unreality. Only my brain was alive; my entire body was numb and as though paralyzed. Still darkness and silence, for all my senses told me I might have been still in the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... so-called "s'prises." They were many and varied, now a titbit to tempt her palate, or again a native doll which needed a complete outfit of moccasins, cap, and parka, and which he insisted he had met on the trail, very numb from the cold; again a pair of rabbit-fur sleeping-socks for herself. That crude dresser, which he had completed without her suspecting him, was another. Always he was making or doing something to amuse or to occupy ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... impression that the top of the structure, somehow, was not supported by the foundation, but rather the reverse—the floor was suspended from the ceiling. It was the work of the Titans—so high and stupendous that at the first instant Watson felt numb with insignificance. What chance had he against men of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... platforms in the opening hours of the conflict if our response is to be timely and induce shock. Awe is not achieved if the enemy is permitted to gain experience in being attacked; at best you may make them numb. Alternatively, reusable long-range survivable systems provide needed flexibility to alter the Deep Strike plan as it unfolds. The food chain of weapons systems ranges from the most valuable systems such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and stealth bombers, to less valuable, but useful, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... Yes, that is without doubt what has happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe reassurance. "He's coming back,—coming back to me—coming ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... desolation. He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully in these days of sorrow. He was never effusive in his sympathy, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sometimes dragged into the trouble. He loved Ursula, therefore he always had a sense of shame, almost of betrayal, when he turned on her. So he turned fiercely and scathingly, and with a wholesale brutality that made Ursula go white, mute, and numb. Her feelings seemed to be becoming deadened in her, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... I say, at so late an hour that night, numb with the cold, hungry, ashamed, and disgusted as you can imagine, thinking about my sick old father more than about myself. I should have to write to him for money, and this would astonish as much as it would grieve him, since he thought me in very easy circumstances. Just before reaching ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... please.'... For a long time there was silence.... Then the day-light faded quite, and the Prince got up and lit a small oil lamp. There was a deadly silence.... Ah! She must fight against this horrible lethargy.... Her arm had grown numb.... Strange lights seemed to flash before her eyes—yes—surely—that was Gritzko coming towards her! She gave a gasping cry and tried to pull the trigger, but it was stiff.... The pistol dropped from her nerveless grasp.... She ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... up in him, all the cold hurt went into the effort as he stepped in and snapped his fist into the face of Buck Heath. He rose with the blow; all his energy, from wrist to instep, was in that lifting drive. Then there was a jarring impact that made his arm numb to the shoulder. Buck Heath looked blankly at him, wavered, and pitched loosely forward on his face. And his head bounced back as it struck the ground. It was a horrible thing to see, but it brought one wild yell of joy from the saloon—the voice of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... interval; thirdly, on the seventh day, in memory of the mourning of the Israelites seven days for Joseph (Gen. i. 10); fourthly, on the thirtieth day, in memory of Moses and Aaron, whom the Israelites lamented this length of time (Numb. xx.; Deut. xxxiv.); and, finally, at the end of the year, or on the anniversary day itself (Gavant., Thesaur. Rit. 62). This custom also prevails ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... muffled scream of the storm. When he got no answer, he guided his horse close to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy with snow. To his surprise, it was a girl's despairing face that looked up at him. She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb to serve. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... with its wick black and dull. A cold, gloomy light penetrated through the little window of the sleeping room; the light of dawn. Jaime experienced a sensation of chill. The covers were being withdrawn from his body; agile hands were touching the bandages of his wounds. The flesh, numb a few hours before, now flinched at the lightest touch with the excruciating vibration of the pain, arousing ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dawn was crawling sluggishly over the mountain-tops, as if numb as the animal and vegetable life which had been shrinking all the long hours under the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... work. Then it was the work of but an instant, with the same piece of glass that had served him so well, to sever the ropes about his legs. But when Jack tried to stand up he nearly toppled over, so weak was he, and so numb were his legs. They had gone to sleep from the lack of ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... one paralysed, his eyes reading and rereading the words which changed to mockery all the revived faith in her. His brain grew numb. Like a man upon whose head an unexpected blow had fallen, he was only half conscious of what had happened. Even as he read and re-read the letter he failed to gather all that it meant, all that it revealed. The very simplicity of ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... conducting thee at peep of day I will dispose thee in some safe recess, But from among thy followers thou shalt chuse The bravest three in all thy gallant fleet. And now the artifices understand 500 Of the old prophet of the sea. The sum Of all his phocae numb'ring duly first, He will pass through them, and when all by fives He counted hath, will in the midst repose Content, as sleeps the shepherd with his flock. When ye shall see him stretch'd, then call to mind That moment all your prowess, and prevent, Howe'er he strive ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... came to myself we were still flying through the wild, swift-changing scene, homeward bound; one of my hands was numb, and my wrist bandaged, and my head—was on Vesty's shoulder! We were in right Basin fashion now, only by needs it was Vesty's ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the pack was doubled, and he rapped them till his hand was numb before he and Ione got by. Their vines drew out thin, but held until they were firmly tied about the safe. They went back ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... dress he became chilled by the inflow of cold water and was helplessly numb. A little stimulant would have done him a world of good; but he could neither beg, buy nor borrow anything from the spectators. When he reached Lower Waterford Bridge, his agent met him with supplies, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... coming up the walk, some one very short and fat. No; it was a girl carrying a child. Miss Bell reached the door just in time to catch Tommy in her arms as Lovey Mary staggered into the hall. They were covered with sleet and almost numb ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... lame and numb. Van could only hustle them inside a grocery-and-hardware store to save them from a drenching. The store was separated from a gambling-hall saloon by the flimsiest board partition. Odors of alcohol, confusion of voices, and calls of a gamester came unimpeded to the women's ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... forcible prayer she had ever heard. It struck through to her very soul. She stood motionless, but she felt crushed and numb. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... the walls of the room rush toward her, like inward falling ruins; and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... altitude, the air being very keen. At Khilok station, where we stopped for a few minutes, I got out and ran up and down for exercise, but found the cold so great that I was glad to get on board again for fear of having my ears frost bitten, they having become perfectly numb. ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... I thought the day was ours. The headlong Rupert Swept all before him, like the wind that bends The thin and unkind corn, his men were numb With slaying, and their chargers straddling, blown With undue speed, as they had hunted that Which could not turn again—e'en thus was Rupert, When round to meet his squadrons came a host Like whirlwind to the wind. There was a moment that the blood-surge roll'd Hither ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... bulk of a Spanish lumberman; but there was no refuge there. The grain wharves and the oil wharves were passed; the sniff of the mackerel fisher, the faint odour from the great Alexandrian merchantman loaded with the spices of India, were come and gone. A stone struck Agias in the shoulder, he felt numb in one arm, to drag his feet was a burden; the flight with the Caesarians to the Janiculum had not been like to this,—death at the naked sword had been at least in store then, and now to be plucked in pieces by a mob! Another stone brushed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... element, not his. But he would lift her out of it, take her beyond! That BEYOND! on her letter was like a cry for rescue. He knew that Perseus's task is not done when he has loosed Andromeda's chains, for her limbs are numb with bondage, and she cannot rise and walk, but clings to him with dragging arms as he beats back to land with his burden. Well, he had strength for both—it was her weakness which had put the strength in him. It was not, alas, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in two; and, though his face did not show it, it must have been surprising to Carse that she wasn't. With one flick of the wrist he wrenched the Star Devil out of her plunge and sent her scudding, a hundred feet up, over the jungle rim. Friday was gaping. Harkness, still numb from the dive, foolishly staring; and then the brigand bared ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fifteen minutes to hide her brandy and send word to the braves, and I counted off the time to myself, trying to numb my anxiety. But among savages news runs underground as well as over, and I had scarcely covered half the space that I had set for myself before the crowd began to disappear. It slipped away like water between the fingers, and in a moment there remained only the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... true indices of the change that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had found herself suddenly feeling ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sneeringly. "As you were going to the other mansion, you told me to stick them over the door. I was afraid lest any one else should spoil them, as they were being pasted, so I climbed up a high ladder and was ever so long in putting them up myself; my hands are even now numb ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, like a tree from which a parasite has been stripped. But gradually he began to put out new leaves; and when he met the lady who was to become his second wife—his one real wife, as his friends reckoned—the whole ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... consultation passed on. We again entered the snowy woods, which were dimly lighted up by an aurora behind us—a strange, mysterious, ghastly illumination, like the phosphorescent glow of a putrefying world. We were desperately cold, our very blood freezing in our veins, and our limbs numb and torpid. To keep entirely awake was impossible. We talked incessantly, making random answers, as continual fleeting dreams crossed the current of our consciousness. A heavy thump on the back was pardoned by him who received it, and a punch between the eyes ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... years to come, When he shares of Sorrow's store,— When his feet are chill and numb, When his cross is burdensome, And his heart is sore: Would that he could hear once more The gentle voice he used to hear— Divine with mother love and cheer— Calling from yonder spirit shore: "All, ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... way up to his daughters' room, and approached the bed in which were the seven little boys. All were sleeping, with the exception of little Tom Thumb, who was numb with fear when he felt the ogre's hand, as it touched the head of each brother ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... were painfully marked, and his arms felt numb and helpless, but his first thought, as soon as the ligatures that had held him were ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... calmed her—or probably she grew calm, in spite of his attentions, for he was too upset himself to exercise much soothing sway over anybody else. At last, though, she fell into a fitful sleep, and he sat beside her, holding rigid the left hand that she clutched, letting it stiffen and grow cold and numb for fear of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... tea-party seemed to Adam, whose faculties were at their utmost intensity, like a terrible dream. As for poor Mimi, she was so overwrought both with present and future fear, and with horror at the danger she had escaped, that her faculties were numb. However, she was braced up for a trial, and she felt assured that whatever might come she would be able to go through with it. Sir Nathaniel seemed just as usual—suave, dignified, and thoughtful—perfect master ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. "No, I guess I didn't really expect anything. But I believe the facts. ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... on my brain and a despairing numbness at my heart, making everything seem vain and unreal. Please do not blame me. Asking me to feel is like requiring sight of the blind. I've lost the faculty. I have suffered so much that I have become numb, if not dead. The shadows of the past mingle with the shadows of to-day. Only you seem real in your strong, vain effort, and as far as I can suffer any more it pains me to see you thus waste yourself on a hopeless shadow of a woman. I told you I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... undivided orange, evidence enough of an extraordinary occasion in the Madigan household. But she was not waking. She was not sleeping. She was not dreaming. She knew that Sissy had come in and had squatted on the floor with Bep and Fom, playing dolls, probably. Yet she felt that numb, gradual, terrifying enlargement of her fingertips, of her limbs, of her tongue, her body, her head, that she had been told again and again was mere fancy. With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she locked her jaws together that ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... believe me if you like, but when a fellow's almost starving it isn't disagreeable to keep quiet. Yes, one gets numb amidst silence; it's like an inside coating that stills the gnawing of the stomach a bit. Ah, that Chaine! You haven't a notion of his peasant nature. When he had spent his last copper without earning the fortune he expected by painting, he went into trade, a petty trade, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... particular Philosophy or Ethic, mostly some passing fashion of the day, which does not reach the deepest laws and standards even of its own domain, and which, if taken as Religion, will gravely numb and mar the power and character of such religious perception as may still remain in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... myself up with blanket and robe as I would, it was impossible to keep the swirling snow from coming in. I called the dogs to me and made them lie on my feet and up against my side, and so long as they lay still I could get a little warmth, but whenever they rose and left me I grew numb again. But Hans in his sleeping-bag was snoring. The bag is the only bedding on the coast. Added to the physical discomfort of that sleepless, shivery night was some mental uneasiness. There was no telling to what height the storm might rise, nor ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... without a fraction of a moment's respite. Add to this the most soul-splitting crash you have ever heard and the sound as of a gale of wind shrieking through the telegraph wires. It will give you a little idea of what it was like under this bombardment. It seemed to numb one's very brain. What it must have been like in the German position is beyond me to conceive. We were certainly giving Fritz ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... rather it shall call forth to the light of heaven a new, richer soul of life out of the ruins of a storm-tossed civilization. It shall, it must, it will conquer new provinces for the majesty of the noble German spirit (Deutschheit) that never will grow chill and numb, as the Roman did. Otherwise—and even though unnumbered billions flowed into the Rhine—the expense of this war would ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... writer of the books in question not only speaks of Moses in the third person, but also bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, "Moses talked with God;" "The Lord spoke with Moses face to face; " "Moses was the meekest of men" (Numb. xii:3); "Moses was wrath with the captains of the host; "Moses, the man of God, "Moses, the servant of the Lord, died;" "There was never a prophet in Israel like unto Moses," &c. (34) On the other ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... conscious that he leaned over the barrier of the bridge watching me, for I saw the point of his cigar, but that was soon swallowed up in the darkness, and I saw nothing more. The cold was so intense that my fingers had grown numb as I talked with Holgate, and I could hardly feel the iron; moreover, my feet were like lumps of ice and seemed to rest on nothing as they met the rungs. This, I imagine, was the reason of my mishap. At any rate, I missed a rung, lost my catch, and tumbled ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved without speaking, and his face assumed a look ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... answered Norris abruptly. "Do you think I have not watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is numb. 'Heavy as frost,' Wordsworth said, and that's the weightiest figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change him. In three months she has him well started. Isn't it a pity that the worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick's very volatility ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... is, only six pages left to read.' But, only fancy, I chanced to glance before me, and, sitting in the front row, side by side, were a general with a ribbon on his breast and a bishop. The poor beggars were numb with boredom; they were staring with their eyes wide open to keep awake, and yet they were trying to put on an expression of attention and to pretend that they understood what I was saying and liked it. 'Well,' I thought, 'since you like ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... slash with his knife from outside. Danny moved quickly—not quick enough. The knife point caught his arm this time. He felt his hand go numb. His own knife clattered to the deck as blood oozed ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... sudden at these words, the princely youth Leaps on the scaly back that slumbers, still Unconscious of his foot, yet not for ruth, But numb'd to dulness by the fairy skill Of that sweet music (all more wild and shrill For intense fear) that charm'd him as he lay— Meanwhile the lover nerves his desperate will, Held some short throbs by natural dismay, Then down the serpent-track ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wholesome flesh decay, And the willing nerve be numb, And the lips lack breath to say, "No, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... plight, and with an effort shook his senses back into his head. It was not precisely a time when he could afford to let his wits go wool-gathering. And he realised that he had been, in a way, more than half-asleep as he walked; even now he was drowsy, his eyes were heavy, his feet leaden—and numb with cold besides. He had no least notion of what distance he might have travelled or whether he had walked in a straight line or a circle; but when he thought to glance over his shoulder—there was ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... passed over half the road, which lay for the most part down the flat along the Chilcoot River. In fact, we crossed this stream again and again. In places there were bridges, but most of the crossings were fords where it was necessary to wade through the icy water above our shoe tops. Our legs, numb and weary, threw off this chill with greater pain each time. As the night fell we could only see the footpath by the dim shine of its surface patted smooth by the moccasined feet of the Indian packers. At last I walked with a sort of mechanical action ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... visual shade of some one lost, But he, the spirit himself, may come Where all the nerve of sense is numb; Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost. In Memoriam, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... mine, aged about twenty-five, was mesmerized by Lafontaine, for a full half hour, and, no effect appearing to be produced, I told him he might rise from the chair, and leave us. On getting up, he looked uneasy and said his arms wore numb. They were perfectly paralysed from the elbows downwards, and numb to the shoulders. This was the more satisfactory, that neither the man himself, nor Lafontaine, nor the four or five spectators, expected this result. The operator triumphantly drew a pin and stuck-it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... feel like cold storage. A break in happiness is sometimes hard to mend. The blossom does not return to the tree after the storm, no matter how beautiful the sunshine; and the awful fear of the faintest echo of past sorrow made my heart as numb as a snowball. To the old terror of loneliness was added fear for Jack's safety. But I did not do what you naturally would prophesy. After seeing the look on Jack's face I changed my mind, and my protest was the silent ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... over her a sense of peace—numb, silent peace—wholly unlike the satisfaction which had flooded her in her own room or during the earlier ecstasy before the altar. She raised her eyes slowly till they rested on the shrine where the body of ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... flow, the heavy sobs were stilled, her aching and bruised body felt numb with the pain in her heart. But outwardly she was more calm. She rose from her knees, and hiding the small cross in the bosom of her gown, she drew forth the letter and read it ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid the gladiators, halt and numb." ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... fast, her eyes hurrying from side to side of the page, her face blanching, and her hands more numb ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... wisdom, for in a little while the cold began to seize me in my thin clothes. My hands were numb, my face already gave me intolerable pain, and my legs suffered and felt heavy. I learnt another thing (which had I been used to mountains I should have known), that it was not a simple thing to return. The guide was hesitating whether to stay in this rough shelter, or to face the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended, My head beneath the storm I sadly bended, Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest—lazy child of inspiration, My Delvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... into a corner and choke at least a portion of the truth out of his unwilling throat. I had hardly reached this decision when the door opened, and he stood there gazing at me with sphinx-like stupidity. I arose to my feet, gripping the back of a chair, but the utter vacancy in that face seemed to numb action. There was no positive expression, no dim glimmer of interest in his features; the shining bald head alone gave him a grotesque appearance, restraining me from violence. I could as easily have warred ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... empty. I heard the water pour into it like a little cataract. The next cell above, and indeed all the cells in that direction were flooded like my own. Of course it was no trouble for me to keep afloat; my only danger was that the intense coldness of the water would numb my body beyond recovery. Still, I had been accustomed to hardships of that kind before now, in the frozen North. At last the gentle roar of the waterfall ceased, and I realized my cell was emptying itself. When I reached my shelf again, I stretched my limbs back and forth as strenuously ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had accepted my representations. I tried to pull myself together, for I felt Mr. Rogers' keen eyes burning into the back of my head, appraising the effect of his words and measuring the degree of my numb terror. He saw, in spite of all my efforts to appear calm, that I knew I had been given ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... held my head, lying on the rim of the basket, was already numb; but the prickling could no longer rouse me, and half-dead with weariness, I fell asleep. Uncle Eb has told me since, that I tumbled out of the basket once, and that he had a time of it getting me in again, but I remember nothing more of that ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... brutality, but there was left in the woman no spark of spirit to resist. With neither tongue nor eye did she make any response, and her shufflings back and forth were neither hastened nor delayed by the pleasure of her lord. Her bearing was that of one who has suffered until the senses are numb, who has drunk the last dregs of bitterness, for whom no possible change of condition can be worse. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... and coming back into the room, sank weak and trembling into a chair. A horror grew upon her until the beads of perspiration stood upon her face. Her hands grew numb and useless, and the skin of her head seemed stiff and frozen. Her ears were strained to catch any sound, and out of the silence there came many strange noises to torment her ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... of his way beyond a numb feeling of pleasure when it grew steeper and rougher. He had left the trail long since, but he was stayed by no obstacle, was arrested by no barrier of Nature's make. A lizard asleep on a tiny ledge of rock, jutting ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... his sorrows in her sight. And earth was bitter, and heaven, and even the sea Sorrowful even as he. And the wind helped not, and the sun was dumb; And with too long strong stress of grief to be His heart grew sere and numb. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 8. Medeba (Numb. xxi. 30), and [Israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years. But there ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold; but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover, to tread on the top end of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... in a whirl of black-and-yellow coils and struggling legs and arms, to rise up again and again. "Now! now! now!" said Kaa, making feints with his head that even Mowgli's quick hand could not turn aside. "Look! I touch thee here, Little Brother! Here, and here! Are thy hands numb? Here again!" ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... head, rubbed his eyes, and tried to stretch his limbs, now numb with the damp dullness of the night. Potts had run to him and was asking the "matter," with dilated eyes and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera |
