"Numbness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the dark, for it was faint and much drifted, and had taken off his snow-shoes to feel with his moccasined feet for the hardened snow that would indicate it. That was almost the end. He had gone across the river and back again, feeling for the trail, and then, with the deadly numbness already upon his brain, had wandered in a circle. The date of his starting in the memorandum-book and the distance travelled made it almost certain that, at some moment between the time when those three moons floated in the sky and the time when that ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Sir Moses being obliged to leave by a side door to escape the great numbers of people who were waiting in front of the hotel to pay their respects to the Champion of Israel. About two o'clock we were all much alarmed by Lady Montefiore being suddenly taken seriously ill, with a numbness of her hand and arm, and a dizziness and great pain in the head, which almost deprived her of speech and motion. She was just able to ask for the Prayer Book. Gradually she recovered from the attack, which Sir Moses ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... the sky had cleared, and he saw the leaves above him drying in the sunlight. Inactivity was at all times intolerable to him to stand thus for hours was an exercise of impatient patience which only his relentless passion made possible; his body yielded to a sort of numbness, whilst the suffering expectancy of his mind only grew keener. He durst not avert his eyes from the door for an instant; his sight ached and ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... tenderness and burning at pit of stomach, pain and tightness in throat. Vomiting of mucus, bloody or dark coffee-ground matters, purging and tenesmus, followed by collapse, feeble pulse, cyanosis and pallor of the skin; also swelling of tongue, with dysphagia. In some cases cramps and numbness in limbs, pain in head and back, delirium and convulsions. May be tetanus or coma. If taken freely diluted, the nervous symptoms predominate, and may resemble narcotic poisoning. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... to an extreme. If I wrote for fifty-nine minutes, and then read for seventeen, those facts I recorded. Thus, in my diary and out of it, I wrote and wrote until the tips of my thumb and forefinger grew numb. As this numbness increased and general weariness of the hand set in, there came a gradual flagging of my creative impulse until ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... health is good enough, but pain which he cannot master is killing him into numbness. He watches each joy, each experience with which they were both tremulous, depart. And do you suppose it is any comfort for those two honest souls to believe that their spirits will recognize each other in some curious state that has ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... paced the room half impatiently,—a very well-feigned expression of friendly concern and sympathy on his features. Thelma stood motionless, a little bewildered—her head throbbed achingly, and there was a sick sensation of numbness ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... hear the Flopper save in a vague, inconsequential way—he was looking at Helena. She had drooped forward a little over the table, her chin in her hands, her lips quivering—and a white misery in her face seemed to bring a chill, a numbness to his heart. His Hands clenched, and he began to pace ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... to the touch, hide-bound, and in marked cases immobile. [OE]dema may, especially in the more acute cases, precede the induration. Pigmentation, of a yellowish or brownish color, is often a precursory and accompanying symptom. The skin feels tight and contracted, and in some instances numbness and cramp-like pains ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... should not paint what he must in future regard as sober facts. On her side Mary was silent, not because her thoughts took much handling, but because her mind seemed empty of thought as her heart of feeling. Only Ralph's presence, as she knew, preserved this numbness, for she could foresee a time of loneliness when many varieties of pain would beset her. At the present moment her effort was to preserve what she could of the wreck of her self-respect, for such she deemed that momentary glimpse of her love so involuntarily revealed to Ralph. In the light ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... is a distressing remembrance. Despite the cold, we advanced briskly enough until noon. Then the wind grew stronger, whilst we got weak from the exposure. The cold increased. A numbness of mind and body was creeping over us, and our limbs were heavy to move. At about three we stopped, and in what shelter we could find, built a great fire; and heating the coffee as hot as we could swallow it, drank nearly all that remained, and ate a dinner. That strengthened and warmed us up enough ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... neurasthenia, hysteria and certain depressed conditions render a man more liable to react excessively and badly to surprise. The tired soldier has lessened resources in wit and courage when surprised, for fatigue heightens the confusion and numbness of surprise and decreases the scope of intelligent conduct. Choice is made difficult, and the neurasthenic doubt is transformed ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to sit down in the middle of an open field. He did ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... longer possible to keep the truth about Mike Burton from the invalid, and Mary broke the news to him as gently as she could, The shock seemed to stun Jim's sensibilities for a time. As the numbness wore off, a bitter, blind hatred grew in his heart against the men he chose to regard as Mike's murderers, and he had a ferocious longing for vengeance. Again law and order, the forces of society, had intervened to embitter him. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Robertson and it was with difficulty that he was able to fight off a numbness and dizziness that almost overcame him. One thing sustained him. It was a bitter resentment against those who sought to hurt him. The fires within him had grown until they became a flaming, devastating thing that ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the injured man was standing the trip as well as could be expected. He suffered great pain, though at times a sort of numbness came over his limb, ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... keen delight, and streaming over, surrounded Mose, who stood at bay not far from his horse in the darkness—a sudden numbness in his limbs. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the normal conditions of my existence, but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I should die, asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I also suffered from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the mortal numbness of those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake again. Still, while unceasingly realizing the necessity of remaining calm, I felt maddening blasts sweep through my brain, and to quiet my senses I exhorted myself to patience, trying to remember the circumstances of my burial. Probably the ground ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... in the hands of the Russians in a German village, I had the consolation of finding an old philosopher, who gave me the rarest proofs of friendship. Who would have told me, when I succumbed to the numbness of the cold in the tower of Liebenfeld, that that sleep would not be the last? God is my witness, that in then addressing, from the bottom of my heart, a last farewell to Clementine, I did not even hope to see her ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... the sedentary, and those who have suffered great anxiety and distress of mind, are the most subject to this disorder, which generally attacks the left side, and is attended with numbness and drowsiness. The parts affected ought to be frequently rubbed with a flesh brush, or with the hand. Blisters, warm plasters, volatile liniments, and electricity should likewise be employed. The following electuary is also recommended. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... to be almost Oriental in its violence. The passionate force of her resentment against her mother also was not easy to cope with though he quelled it eventually. But when that was over, when she had wept herself exhausted in his arms at last, there followed a period of numbness that ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... nor fear. Through much suffering, thought and sensation were, to a great extent, dead in her; and, in a sort of emotive numbness, she laid her candlestick in its usual place on the chair by her bedside; and, sitting up in bed, her night-dress carefully buttoned, holding the tumbler half-filled with chloral, she tried to take a dispassionate survey of her life. She thought ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... upon; under these circumstances the discomfort is felt in the lower part of the back. On the other hand, the pain may be referred to the point where the nerve ends. In this way is explained not only pain in the leg but also those sensations of numbness and tingling which prospective mothers not infrequently complain of. The presence of these pressure symptoms is usually limited to the last few weeks of pregnancy. They often begin about the time ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... numbness, in spite of the lassitude which that burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his lack of manhood which had made ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... "scarlet lilies." The influence of summer is like a poison in one's blood, with a sudden bewildered sickening of life and all things. In Galahad: a Mystery, the frost of Christmas night on the chapel stones acts as a strong narcotic: a sudden shrill ringing pierces through the numbness: a voice proclaims that the Grail has gone forth through the great forest. It is in the Blue Closet that this delirium reaches its height with a singular beauty, reserved perhaps for ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... I say it is a flat fish, much resembling the thorn-back. This fish is of a most singular nature, productive of the strangest effects on the human body; for whoever handles it, or happens even to set his foot upon it, is presently seized with a numbness all over him, but more distinguishable in that limb which was in immediate contact with it. The same effect, too, will be, in some degree, produced by touching the fish, with any thing held in the hand; for I myself had a considerable degree of numbness conveyed to my right arm through ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... are a fool," she said, moved actually now by his numbness to his own endowment. "I could beat my head and scream, when I think how you're throwing things away, your time, in that beastly night school, your power, your personal charm. Jeff, you've the devil's own luck. You were born with it. And you simply ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... mental paralysis. The whole fabric of his thinking and feeling for months of intense emotional experience had instantly been annihilated, and he was left in the midst of a great void in his consciousness out of touching-reach of anything. There was no sharp pang, but just a bewildered numbness. A few filaments only of the romantic feeling for Ida that filled his mind a moment before still lingered, floating about it, unattached to anything, like vague neuralgic feelings in an amputated stump, as if to remind him ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... lengthen'd flight, Old Peneus' streams she saw, and loud exclaim'd:— "O sire, assist me, if within thy streams "Divinity abides. Let earth this form, "Too comely for my peace, quick swallow up; "Or change those beauties to an harmless shape." Her prayer scarce ended, when her lovely limbs A numbness felt; a tender rind enwraps Her beauteous bosom; from her head shoots up Her hair in leaves; in branches spread her arms; Her feet but now so swift, cleave to the earth With roots immoveable; her face at last The summit forms; her bloom the same remains. Still loves the god the tree, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... ground. But a new misfortune now befell me: I lost my boots. They were strong laced boots, without elastic sides, or any such weak points about them. I had observed before that one was getting loose, but was unable to do anything to it from the numbness of my hands; and after struggling out of a deep drift previous to reascending the hill, I found that I had left this boot behind. There was nothing for it but to go on without, and as my feet were perfectly numbed from the cold, and devoid of feeling, I did ...
— A Night in the Snow - or, A Struggle for Life • Rev. E. Donald Carr
... a block or two when, through her numbness, crept a dim little shadow of dread. At first it was nothing more than an inner suggestion to hasten her steps, but gradually it became a conscious impulse to outstrip something or some one behind her—some one or something whose footfalls, resounding faintly through the deserted street, kept ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... little story, crude and young; I never glance at it without longing to write it over; but I cannot read it, to this day, without that tingling and numbness down one's spine and through the top of one's head, which exceptional tragedy must produce in any sensitive organization; nor can I ever trust myself to hear it read by professional elocutionists. I attribute the success of the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... lapse, and surrendered to the sleepy numbness which assailed his brain in waves. He was riding without support by this time, but it was an automatic effort. There was no more real life in him than in a dummy figure. It was not the effect of the blow. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... abundant hearth did not permeate the discourse and keep his audience comfortable in spite of the bitterest northern blast that ever wrestled with the church-steeple. He reads while the heat warps the stiff covers of the volume; he writes without numbness either in his heart or fingers; and, with unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... constitution without honoring them sometime. These minor symptoms I have described, grew until they were giants of agony. I became more nervous; had a strange fluttering of the heart, an inability to draw a long breath and an occasional numbness that was terribly suggestive of paralysis. How I could have been so blind as not to understand what this meant ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Lyle, holding out the letter, but speaking with great effort, for the room was growing very dark, and a strange numbness seemed stealing over heart and brain, "this tells that I was stolen from the side of my dead mother who was killed in a wreck—" She could get no farther, and she knew nothing of his reply. A thick darkness ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... mittened hand to the bucking gee-pole and held the sled in the trail. With the other mittened hand he rubbed his cheeks and nose. He rubbed his cheeks and nose every little while. In point of fact, he rarely ceased from rubbing them, and sometimes, as their numbness increased, he rubbed fiercely. His forehead was covered by the visor of his fur cap, the flaps of which went over his ears. The rest of his face was protected by a thick beard, golden-brown under ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... in a little while came out upon a street some distance from the one in which Mother Peter lived. There were very few people abroad, and no one noticed or spoke to him as he went creeping along, every step sending a pain from the hurt ankle to his heart. Faint with suffering and chilled to numbness, Andy stumbled and fell as he tried, in crossing a street, to escape from a sleigh that turned a corner suddenly. It was too late for the driver to rein up his horse. One foot struck the child, throwing him out of the track of the sleigh. He was insensible when taken up, bleeding and apparently ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... with a coldness and numbness in her limbs, which by degrees affected the nerves (I think the physicians call them), seized the brain, and at last ended in a lethargy. It betrayed itself at first in a sort of indifference and carelessness in all her actions, coldness to her best friends, and an aversion to stir or go ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Perhaps it might steady him and clear his head. The numbness of his faculties and senses alike exasperated him, filling him with a persuasion he would say precisely those things wisdom would ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... dwelt upon these things; she racked her brain to recall them in order to reawaken her grief and remorse, but in vain. Mind and memory responded to the effort, but her own heart she could not touch. The acute stage was over for the moment, and a most distressing numbness, attended by a sense of chilliness and general physical discomfort, had succeeded it. The rims of her eyes were red and the lids still swollen by the tears of the day before; but the state of weeping, with the nervous energy and mental excitement which had been ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... can endure a great strain of mental anguish long. A merciful numbness usually seizes it, in which everything grows hazy and unreal, and consequently painless. Agatha felt convinced she was half-asleep, and that she should wake up in her own room at Thorn-hurst or at Kingcombe, and find out everything to be a dream. Or even granting ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... refrained, yet the thing which I had sworn with hand and mouth I silently renewed my oath to perform. I now intend to keep it."—"What did you swear, lady?" Tristan asks simply, without effect of defiance. "Vengeance for Morold!" she hurls at him. He seems to wonder. A sort of numbness has been creeping over him; an atmosphere of dream has closed around him; her neighbourhood, her voice, no matter what words she is saying, even these angry and cruel ones, have an effect of lulling, of making the real world seem unreal. "Are you concerned ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... by a door opening on to the road which leads down to the world, or he could go by the opposite door, taking a path which rose towards sacred solitudes. He hesitated, undecided. The falling of a great drop near him made him open his eyes. After the first moment of numbness he recognised the arch on the right, where the road begins which leads down to Santa Scolastica, to Subiaco, to Rome; and on the left the path which rises toward the Sacro Speco. He noticed with astonishment that on ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... that had cut his bonds still open in her hand. They stood face to face, a little space between them, her great eyes pouring their terrified sympathy into his soul. Neither spoke, a daze over them, a numbness on their tongues, the dull shock of death's close passing ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... helpless to free himself without the axe, and so far as he knew there was no human being within ten miles of the spot. Moreover the intense cold was beginning to penetrate his warm clothing. He no longer felt the pain of his imprisoned foot. Circulation had slowed down and numbness was fast creeping up his limb. He swung his arms and beat his hands upon his breast, but in spite of all he could do the chill penetrated more deeply into his bones. He realized that if he were not rescued within a few hours he would freeze to ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... royal family. I have walked up and down these dismal chambers for hours at a time, staring at the daubs on the walls, and picking up little odds and ends of ornaments, and gazing vacantly at them, till I felt a numbness steal all over me, accompanied by a vague presentiment that I was imprisoned for life. The progress of time is a matter of no importance in Norway. To an American, accustomed to see every thing done with energy ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning, instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom erect and dauntless, to watch ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and deprived him of the possibility of coming to any decision. But this moral catalepsy was not the effect of a cowardly dejection, as has been asserted. His great mind remained erect amid the temporary numbness of his faculties; and Napoleon, when he awoke, was but so much the more terrible, and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... of numbness in Steve's arms as he climbed back on to the wooden spells, and he knew that he had been motionless quite long enough; and he could not help feeling that if he had remained there another hour clinging to the icy shrouds he would not have been able to live. But the circulation began to ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... is from numbness, torpor, narcotism: the flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of morose voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania: certain mediaeval writers ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... and die that was the loser. Not in its relations with the world, fair or ill—such, like all external things, are important only as we take them: but in its diminished capacity to feel greatly and tenderly, in its added numbness, in its less noble beat. It was thus that the cor cordium lost what no lyric passion, no triumphant exultation of success, could give to ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... his recent numbness. He realized the disturbing parallel in the actions of his grandfather and himself. He had come to the Cedars unconsciously, perhaps directed by an evil, external influence, on the night of the first murder. Now, it appeared, the man he was ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... inconveniences, Mr. Davy was now emboldened to introduce into his green bag, four quarts of carburetted hydrogen gas, nearly pure. After exhausting his lungs in the usual way, he made two inspirations of this gas. The first inspiration produced numbness and loss of feeling in the chest. After the second, he lost all power of perceiving external things, except a terrible oppression on his chest, and he seemed sinking fast to death! He had just consciousness enough to remove the mouth-piece ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Juno, pitying her disastrous fate, Sends Iris down, her pangs to mitigate. (Since if we fall before th'appointed day, Nature and death continue long their fray.) Iris descends; 'This fatal lock' (says she) 'To Pluto I bequeath, and set thee free;' Then clips her hair: cold numbness strait bereaves Her corpse of sense, and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Applebys faced life again, and were very glad. They couldn't have been long under the gas; Father's eons of drowning struggle must have been seconds. Propped up in bed, Mother refused a doctor and smiled—though confusedly, with the bewilderment of one who had felt the numbness of death. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... penetrating ever deeper the Red Desert's heart. But of the abhorred Termans we caught no sight. There was only the molten downpour of sun by day, and the desiccating numbness of cold at night. But on the sixth day, as we encamped near an underground pool located by our experts—we ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... Numbness of intellect, rigidity of tone, artificiality of expression, are fatal alike to the enunciation of Shakespearean language and to the interpretation of Shakespearean character. The system of short runs, of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... discomfort and alarm and still thought of the Frenchman. Twice I tried to say to myself, 'What nonsense! what a farce!' I tried to smile, to shrug my shoulders.... It was no use! All initiative had all at once 'frozen up' within me—I can find no other word for it. I was overcome by a sort of numbness. Suddenly I noticed that he had left the door, and was standing a step or two nearer to me; then he gave a slight bound, both feet together, and stood closer still.... Then again ... and again; while ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... left Harrigan and the numbness departed from his arms, he knew that he was growing weaker and weaker. In McTee's eyes he saw the growing light of victory, the confidence. His own wild hunger for blood grew apace with his desperation. He flung himself ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... A numbness my brain is o'ertaking... To sleep for a moment I drop: Then start!... In the east light is breaking!— I drag myself, ailing and aching, Again to the gloom ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... the words over again and again. And the numbness began to pass away. And the anger was dead. Always she had felt as if she had been led to Africa for some definite end. Did not the freed negroes, far out in the Desert, sing their song of the deeper mysteries—"No one but God and I knows what is in my heart"? And had not ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... numbness only lasted a few seconds. Obviously the three men would return in a minute or so; equally obviously his own presence here—if discovered—would mean certain ruin to him. Even while he was making the effort to collect his scattered senses and to move from this fateful and dangerous ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... The terrible numbness passed off as I worked, but now the wind grew cold, and the clouds were working up from the southwest quickly, with wind overhead that was not felt here yet. I knew that I must make some haven soon, or it was likely that I should be frozen ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... a cavern and looked into it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear that cannot move. The two sparks of light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... came. He shouted—he called loudly—no one answered. He resolved to stay there all night, but, alas! the cold was becoming every moment more biting, and the poor finger fixed in the hole began to feel benumbed, and the numbness soon extended to the hand, and thence throughout the whole arm. The pain became still greater, still harder to bear, but still the boy moved not. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he thought of his father, of his mother, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... have Vistors—really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little repose—and all that sort of thing—is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... an extempore shade of paper to guard it against the malice of the winds, and set to work at once. But he was not long in perceiving that if his body was almost entirely protected from the cold, his hands were not; a terrible numbness seized his fingers which ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Out of a curious numbness that had almost been a swoon there came to her the consciousness of a hand that rapped and rapped and rapped upon the pane. She had fled away to the farther end of the room in her panic. She had turned the lamp low at the beginning of the storm, and now it burned so dimly ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cross the floor, but her limbs refused to act. A terrible numbness had come over them, every muscle of her ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... all mud from heel to head, and with a numbness in his brain Barnabas rides, stooped low in the saddle, for he is sick and very faint. His hat is gone, and the cool wind in his hair revives him somewhat, but the numbness remains. Yet it is as one in a dream that he finds his stirrups, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... passed, the numbness that had paralyzed my brain, either from the cruel blow that felled me or the terrible shock my nerves had experienced, gradually passed away, and our situation became more vivid to my mind. I thought again of all who had gone forth that morning ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... could go no farther; his legs became stiff and refused motion, and he found himself fixed to the spot. But he still kept stretching out his arms and swinging his body to and fro. Every moment he found the numbness creeping higher. He felt his legs growing downward like roots, the feathers of his head turned to leaves, and in a few seconds he stood a tall and stiff ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of his left foot; and it writhed round in pain and bit and tore the flesh between the shin and the muscles. And Medea and her handmaids fled in terror; but Canthus bravely felt the bleeding wound; for no excessive pain harassed him. Poor wretch! Already a numbness that loosed his limbs was stealing beneath his skin, and a thick mist was spreading over his eyes. Straightway his heavy limbs sank helplessly to the ground and he grew cold; and his comrades and the hero, Aeson's son, gathered round, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... brightening of the gray. He began to suffer with the cold, and then slowly he seemed to freeze and grow numb. In an effort to roll over upon his back he discovered that his position, or his being bound, or the numbness of his muscles was responsible for the fact that he could not move. Here was a predicament. It began to look serious. What would a few hours of the powerful sun do to his uncovered skin? Somebody would trail and find him: still, he might ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... miserable refugees from Malines pouring down from the station. The courage of these Belgians is beyond all words. Save for the two in the freight station yard at Louvain, I have not seen a woman crying! It may be that they are numb, but they have none of the stupidity of numbness. And when you think that these very women will be creeping back to their homes and caring for the German wounded they find there, it gives you a ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Mr. Nowell's unbiased opinion that Billy did come. Not that he saw Billy come, but he had a vague suspicion, from a feeling of numbness some two feet from the base of the brain, that William had arrived in that immediate vicinity, and while he was recalling his scattered thoughts and feeling for any pieces of spine that might have become detached from the original column, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... was pleasant. Dreams came fused with realities; the firelight faded from consciousness or returned fantastic to our half-awakening; a delicious numbness overspread our tired bodies. The shadows leaped, became ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... that, Toby," the other told him, as he commenced with his customary early morning exercises, modeled somewhat after the type of those in use in the army, and which were best calculated to take all the stiffness and numbness out of his system, brought about by curling up under ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... on the ferns, curled up in a corner against the soft walls covered with reeds, then closed her eyes. Before long she felt a soft numbness creeping over her. She jumped to her feet, fearing that she might drop off to sleep and not awake before it was time for her to go ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... due to discouragement and resentment, there was an early recovery. When it was found that cotton-planting pure and simple, with ignoring of politics, resulted in heavy taxes for the planter; when to the first numbness there succeeded the active smart,—the whites betook themselves to the resource which in most States soon proved adequate,—the ballot, and political combination. In several States the whites were easily in the majority, and where they were slightly ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... generally said more good than evil of people, she was generally liked and tolerated by all. She was not a fashionable woman, nor an educated woman, though very popular with her neighbors at home, and she was there for numbness and swollen knees; and, having knit socks for four years for the soldiers, she now knit stockings for the soldiers' orphans, and took a dash every morning and screamed loud enough to be heard at the depot when she took it, and had a pack every afternoon, and corked her right ear with cotton, which ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... in every joint, a drowsy numbness settling on his pulse. He had faith in his driver: he ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... would not be long first, as far as the boy was concerned. He had apparently forgotten the numbness of his limbs and the peril through which he had passed, and in spite of the roughness of the ice and snow he continued to get over it in his extemporised sandals, which had the advantage of not slipping. But the day's ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... much grief on the girl's face that he turned again to the gambler and touched his arm. He could not tell why he was so interested in these two. He had witnessed many such scenes before, and they had not affected him in any way except to make him move out of hearing. But the same dumb numbness in his head, which made so many things seem possible that should have been terrible even to think upon, made him stubborn and unreasonable over this. He felt intuitively—it could not be said that he thought—that ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... to sip the coffee, and between the heat of the fire and that of the coffee, his blood began to course more freely. All the numbness passed from his brain and with it passed the sense of despair that had been expressed in his gesture, and a ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... had been strung up to a high nervous tension by the ever-present fear of running across him unexpectedly, and it had brought her infinite relief when she learned that he had gone away. Since then a strange numbness seemed to have taken possession of her. It was as though some one had closed the door on the past, very ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... frost bite is numbness and the first sign is a marble whiteness. Frost attacks first the nose, ears, cheeks, fingers ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... weakness in the limbs, pressure, trembling, warmth, weight or beating in the chest, warm wave from feet upward, quivering of heart, stoppage and then rapid beating of heart, coldness all over followed by heat, dizziness, tingling of toes and fingers, numbness, something rising in throat, smarting of eyes, singing in ears, prickling sensations of face, and pressure inside head. Partridge considers that the disturbance is primarily central, a change in the cerebral circulation, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... His brain felt like a stopped watch; it did not seem to be working at all. Even the power to suffer seemed to have left him. He felt curiously indifferent, strangely submissive to circumstances,—like a man scourged into the numbness of exhaustion. He knew at the back of his mind that as soon as his vitality reasserted itself the agony would return. The respite could not last, but while it lasted he knew no pain. Like one in a state of coma, he was ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... or start when Mr. Fullarton's words caught her ear, but a heavy, chill faintness stole over her, till she felt all her limbs benumbed, and every thing before her eyes grew misty and dim. The numbness passed away almost immediately, but still the figures around her appeared distorted and fantastically exaggerated; they seemed to be tossing and whirling round one steadfast centre, as the dead leaves in winter eddy round the marble head of a statue; that single centre-object ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... reaching the inn to creep into bed. In spite of his cross-country run he was chilled through. Little shivers ran down his back, and his hands and feet seemed separated by spaces of numbness from the warmth of his body. The brandy arrived, and he swallowed some eagerly; but it had little effect on his chilly apathy. The dinner-bell clanged below. Flint heard it, but he paid no heed to the summons. He had forgotten what it was to desire food. A blur before ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... without irony on the result of the first day's altercation but for her brother Rowsley's unusual and ominous display of patience. Twice during the wrangle she had to conceal a difficult breathing. She felt a numbness in one arm now it was over, and mentally complimented her London physician on the unerringness of his diagnosis. Her heart, however, complained of the cruelty of having in the end, perhaps, if the wrangle should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the phantom of a dead man held the sleeper by the wrist, and endeavoured to drag him out of bed. He awaked in horror, and still felt the cold dead grasp of a corpse's hand on his right wrist. It was a minute before he discovered that his own left hand was in a state of numbness, and with it he had accidentally encircled his ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... meant to be continually washed or dusted by the worn, busy fingers of the female saints. As I came to fuller realization of all these relics, my resolution flickered out and there fell upon me a strange numbness of spirit. I seemed under a spell of inaction. Everything behind those glass doors had been cherished too long to be lightly thrown away, yet was not old enough to be valuable nor useful enough to keep. I spent a long day—one ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... of the way it used to rise above "Old Peaky Top," just back of the cabin on Hiawassee. He straightened himself to obtain a better view. A sharp report rang out behind him from the vessel, and he felt a numbness under ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... plunging through the blow. She had not long to wait after that, for the approaching launch was a lean-lined speeder, powerfully engined, and she was being forced. Stella supposed it was one of the Abbey runabouts. Even with her teeth chattering and numbness fastening itself upon her, she shivered at the chances the man was taking. It was no sea for a speed boat to smash into at thirty miles an hour. She saw it shoot off the top of one wave and disappear ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Stone of the kidney. The pain in the loins and along the course of the ureter from a stone is attended with retraction of the testicle in men, and numbness on the inside of the thigh in women. It is distinguished from the lumbago or sciatica, as these latter are seldom attended with vomiting, and have pain on the outside of the thigh, sometimes quite down to the ankle or heel. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... little of that ride afterwards, or what he thought about during it. The strain of the last few minutes he had passed at Waynefleet's ranch had left him dazed, and part of his numbness, at least, was due to weariness. Several times he was almost flung from the saddle as the horse scrambled down a slope of rock. Willow-branches lashed him as he pushed through the thickets, and in one place it was only by a grim effort that he drove the frightened beast to ford a flooded creek. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... for the doctors say that one cannot walk without nerves! Young man, I advise you to beware of paralysis for I never in my life saw a patient in such great danger; you're as good as dead, I'm sure! What if the same numbness should attack your hands and knees? You would have to send for the funeral trumpeters! Still, even if I have been affronted, I will not begrudge a prescription to one as sick as you! Ask Giton if you would ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... had taken the one child she had, that she did not believe to be her own but a changeling, and had put it on the shore at the extreme edge of the tide-reach, and had left it for the space of an hour. When she came back, the child she had left with a numbness on its face and with the curse of dumbness, was laughing wild, and when she came near, it put out its arms and gave the cry of the young of birds. She lifted the "leanav" in her arms and stared into its eyes, but there was no longer the weary ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... A curious numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering of his heart, and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, he was paralyzed ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... An instant of numbness was followed by the most excruciating pain, and the arm sank limply through the water. Sahwah knew that it was broken. But even then her presence of mind did not desert her. Shoving Gladys out ahead of her with her good arm, she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the pressure against his chest was too severe. His left hand began to slip from Welch's wrist; the fingers wouldn't hold; there was a strange numbness from hand to shoulder. With a smothered groan he tried to tighten his clasp again. Then help came. Eager hands took his burden, and he felt himself being pulled back from the edge. He glanced up once and had a glimpse of somber twilight ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... curtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, I slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon the sleeper, and my eyes at the same moment upon his countenance. I looked,—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling, instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Kircher that the fingers of her hands were dead. The numbness was running up her arms to her elbows. How much longer she could cling to the straining strands she could not guess. It seemed to her that those lifeless fingers must relax at any instant and then, when she had about given ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a matter of importance. Shoes should never be worn too tight. They not only hinder free movements, but also hinder the blood circulation, and cause coldness and numbness of the extremities. Sore feet, because of ill-fitting shoes, are a detriment to happy camp life. Have good, well-fitting, roomy shoes, and fairly stout ones. Keep the feet dry. If they are allowed ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Gone. On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating. My voice's strangled shout: 'Steady pace, boys!' The still light: gladness. 'Look, sir. Look out!' Ha! ha! Bunched figures waiting. Revolver levelled quick! Flick! Flick! Red as blood. Germans. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary,—this is the victory that overcometh the world. To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial, to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose;—these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... frightened to move. I felt myself growing numb, weighted to the floor as though my feet had taken root. My arms were hanging like wood; fingers tingling, then growing cold, dead to sensation. And a numbness creeping up my legs; and spreading inward from my arms and shoulders. In a few moments more, I knew the numbness ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... those three beautiful sisters sat. The horrible quietude of a suspense that had grown all but insupportable oppressed the guests of Lady Mardykes, and something like the numbness of despair had reduced her to silence, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... descended as low as his boots. A call! Who? Why? He wanted to rush out on the landing and shout to the servant: "Not at home! Gone away abroad!" . . . Any excuse. He could not face a visitor. Not this evening. No. To-morrow. . . . Before he could break out of the numbness that enveloped him like a sheet of lead, he heard far below, as if in the entrails of the earth, a door close heavily. The house vibrated to it more than to a clap of thunder. He stood still, wishing ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... was the day of the Resurrection. Last night, being with the community, I heard one [1] of them singing how hard it is to be living away from God. As I was then suffering, the effect of that singing on me was such that a numbness began in my hands, and no efforts of mine could hinder it; but as I go out of myself in raptures of joy, so then my soul was thrown into a trance through the excessive pain, and remained entranced; and until this day I had not felt this. A few days previously I thought that the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... horses knew the way home and were eager to get there, so they did not have to be urged or guided. But it was necessary to hold a tight rein, and John's hands soon began to feel tortured and twisted with the strain upon them biting through their numbness like screws of pain. He shook his head determinedly when Nan offered to relieve him, and at last she had to wrench the reins from him in order to take her share of duty and give him a chance ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... arrived. For months she had fronted it in bravado, not concealing from herself that it lay in waiting. For years he had been sure that though the inevitable might happen to others it could not happen to him. There it was! He was conscious of a heavy weight in his stomach, and she of a general numbness, enwrapping her fatigue. Even then he could not believe that it was true, this disaster. As for Sophia she was reconciling herself with bitter philosophy to the eccentricities of fate. Who would have ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... feels like a neuro-toxin. Remember snake-bite aid? Well, the numbness is up to my groin now. No place for a tourniquet. And ...
— Attrition • Jim Wannamaker
... merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life, that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me such freshness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his hands, and gazing senselessly at the floor; across a kind of tempest of darkness pale shapes hovered about him; his heart was numb with anguish; he seemed to be falling, falling—and a bottomless abyss was opening at his feet. A familiar light rustle of a silk dress roused him from his numbness; Varvara Pavlovna in her hat and shawl was returning in haste from her walk. Lavretsky trembled all over and rushed away; he felt that at that instant he was capable of tearing her to pieces, beating ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... raised her lips to his; and the kiss, which she did not give but permitted, seemed only fraught with an ineffable sadness, the end of all things, the tearing asunder and the numbness of separation. She returned to her pose, her eyes fixed on the ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... felt myself overtaken by the same drowsiness that had enthralled Peoria Red, and a queer numbness which as it crept upwards from my feet seemed to kill my ambition to battle for life against the "Death of ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... attentively over me, without saying a word, all the while opening his chest, from which he took several flasks, sponges, a little silver vase with a long curved tube, and also several instruments, one of which seemed very keen. I watched my master closely, feeling an inexplicable numbness gradually creeping over me. My heavy eye-lids fell once or twice in spite of myself. I had been seated on my bed of straw, to which I was still chained; but now I was compelled to lean my head against the wall, so heavy had it grown. Noticing ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... Fortunately for him his course had been over a stretch of yielding bunch-grass, and not, as might have been the case, over the ragged tufa. As it was his shirt hung from his back in shreds, and he felt that his overalls were not all that their name implied. The numbness of his abrasions and bruises was wearing off. The pain quickened his senses. He realized that his hat was missing, that one spur was gone and the other was half-way up his leg. He was not pleased with his appearance, and determined to "make a slope" as gracefully ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... confessed her alleged crime. A mole or wart on any part of the body was a sure sign of commerce with the devil. It was believed that on the body of every witch was a spot insensible to pain. To discover this she was stripped, pins were run into the body, and when excess of pain had produced numbness, some such spot was pretty certain to be found. Men regularly took up with this work in both England and Scotland, and their fame as 'prickers' depended upon the number of witches they unearthed. If a suspected witch kept a black cat, did not shed tears, or could not repeat the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... time and the weariness of a soul too utterly weary to care any longer. But time works so slowly, and the utter weariness of the soul is often so prolonged before, as it were, the spirit snaps and the blessed numbness of indifference settles down upon our hearts. People who can see have the whole of the wonder of Nature working for them in their woe. It is hard to feel utterly crushed and broken before a wide expanse of mountain, moorland, or sea. Something in their strength and ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... bitter winter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... not fail, though coming this year somewhat later than the last, Diana felt like a person wakened up to life to die the second time. Her mood all changed. From a dull, miserable apathy, which yet had somewhat of the numbness of death in it, she woke up to the intense life of pain, and to a corresponding, but in her most unwonted, irritability of feeling. All of a sudden, as it were, she grew sensitive to whatever in her life and surroundings was untoward or trying. She read through Will Flandin's ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... pass in spaces of time that did be made of terror and numbness and an utter and evergrowing fury of despair. And I did be at last as that I did burn inward with a grim and dreadful energy, and to seem to grow the less tired, and to come over the Land with a stronger ease and somewhat as that I did desire things to come ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... some pretence of work at his carpenter's bench, the old man sent Star out to loose the cow and lead her to the water; and when she was gone, he tottered to his old chair and sat down heavily. There was no pain now, only a strange numbness, a creeping coldness, a ringing in the ears. If it might "seem right" to let him wait till the Huntress came by! "It's nearly time," he said, half aloud. "Nearly time, and 'twould be easier for ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... technicians worked, their attitude changed from shocked numbness to anger. Right and wrong were forgotten. They had been killed—the invisible death of radiation must already be penetrating into the caves—but they also had the chance for vengeance. Swiftly they brought their work to completion, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... to a new safe one, startles a 'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve, you'd have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question has been brought up, let's talk it over. What's your ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... through his veins and over his nerves, and every atom of his body seemed to be tingling with a peculiar burning and smarting sensation. Even as he looked he saw the color of his flesh changing and taking on the hue of the flesh of the healthy person. The numbness departed from the affected portion of his body, and he could actually feel the thrill and tingle of the life currents that were at work with incredible speed building up new cells, tissue and muscle. And still Jesus held His hands against the flesh of the leper, allowing ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... himself and others as he returned towards the fire. Had he been betrayed by Lakamba all would have been over by this. He made up a big blaze, and while it lasted dried himself, and then lay down by the embers. He could not sleep, but he felt a great numbness in all his limbs. His restlessness was gone, and he was content to lay still, measuring the time by watching the stars that rose in endless succession above the forests, while the slight puffs of wind under ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... of the Scriptural simile came to him with startling emphasis, bringing on a return of the prickling dismay. The stopping of the paddle-wheels and the rattling clangor of the gang-plank winch aroused him to action and he shook off the creeping numbness and ran aft to rummage under the cargo on the engine-room guards for his precious bundle. When his hand reached the place where it should have been, the blood surged to his brain and set up a clamorous dinning in his ears like the roaring ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... easy spot to lie on. You are always worse before storms. After sitting a little while you stiffen up, feeling much better after moving about. The tendons of your legs have a drawing sensation, and feel as if too short. There is more or less of numbness and paralysis, and a wooden sort of feeling of the leg when walking. You also have lightning-like shocks of pain through the limb, now and then. Your attacks come on every few weeks, and it is the left limb that is affected. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the numbness of paralysis creeping over him. He moistened his lips and tried to say something, but found ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... Sir Galahad moved in, sword upraised again. Mallory raised his own sword, caught the full force of the terrific down-rushing blow on the blade. His sword was cut cleanly in two, his left pauldron was cleanly cleaved, and a great numbness afflicted his left shoulder. ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... for the merciful numbness, that was like an anaesthetic in a painful operation. She had a feeling that she would awaken soon and realise fully the terrible calamity that had befallen, but just now, if she kept still it ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... act like a shock of electricity on the nerves of Nell Darrel. She felt a strange and awful numbness. With a mighty effort the girl roused herself to a consciousness of ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... that went abroad. Destitute of stimulus from without, the Indo-Aryan mind turned upon itself and consumed in dreamy metaphysics the imagination which has made its cousins the leaders in the world's progress to-day. The inevitable numbness of monotony crept over the stay-at-homes. The deadly sameness of their surroundings produced its unavoidable effect. The torpor of the East, like some paralyzing poison, stole into their souls, and they fell into a drowsy slumber only to dream in the land they had formerly ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... eddying fog-bank. Here in the thronging ranks, close at hand, men speak in low tones as they stamp upon the frozen ground or whip their mittened hands across the broad blue chests to restore circulation and drive the ache and numbness away. Here and there are some who have turned their light blue capes up over their heads, and take no part in the low-toned chat. Leaning on their muskets, they let their thoughts go wandering far away, for all men know that bloody work is coming. The engineers ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... forgiveness of my sins, and then calmly resigned myself to death, which I now believed to be inevitable. For a time, which I afterwards found to be only five minutes, but which then seemed to me like hours, I hung motionless. The pain had ceased, for the intense cold blunted my sense of feeling. A numbness, stole over me, and I seemed to be falling into a trance, from which I was roused by a sound of bells borne to me as if from a great distance. Hope again awoke, and I screamed loud and long; the woods echoed my cries, but no voice replied. The bells grew ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler |
