"Pestiferous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shops. But, whose fault was this? Was it Mr. Hunt's, who seems to have spent a quarter of an hour in endeavouring to convince his hearers, that to commit such acts was to prove themselves unworthy of relief; or, was it the fault of those pestiferous vehicles of falsehood, the Courier and the Times, who are incessantly inveighing against the avarice ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... though in fulfilment of his threat, Quentin sprang in, and looking hastily round, cried, as if in towering wrath, "Whaur are they? Whaur are thae pestiferous rebels?" ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... manifests life. Among animals, those calculated to inspire terror by their mysterious movements were chosen, as serpents appearing and disappearing with startling suddenness, or ugly scorpions, against whom it was difficult to protect oneself, or the fabulous monsters with which graves and pestiferous spots were peopled. Regions difficult of access—the desert, the deep waters, the high mountains—were the favorite haunts of the demons. Some of these demons were frequently pictured in the boundary stones ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... wilderness, to acquire that highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience—and they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery, and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!—none except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reconcile the contradiction, as indeed nothing can. If you are a man, you have shut your mouth hard and said nothing; and if you are only a man in the making, you have recognised that yours was quite a special case, and you yourself not guilty of your own pestiferous career. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vague impression of calling the landlady and of seeing the body carried from the pestiferous room. But whether he helped to carry it himself or not he ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... historians, but by running successively on opposing lines. He conceives that civilised Europe owes its preservation to the radiant centre of religious power at Rome, and is grateful to Innocent III. for the vigour with which he recognised that force was the only cure for the pestiferous opinions of misguided zealots. One of his authorities is the inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis, and there is no writer whom, in various shapes, he quotes so often. But when Guidonis says that Dolcino and Margarita suffered per juditium ecclesie, Mr. Lea ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... tears, and where we die a thousand times from such terrors as might frighten even the brave. We are handed over to Jews, Saracens, heretics and infidels, whose poison we always dread above everything, and by whom it is well known that some of our parents have been infected with pestiferous venom. In sooth, we who should be treated as masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics who should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the government of subordinates, as though some supremely ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... had a small flotilla on the Nile, which served to guard his right flank: the infantry marched over burning sand at some distance from the river. The miseries of this progress were extreme. The air is crowded with pestiferous insects, the glare of the sand weakens most men's eyes, and blinds many; water is scarce and bad: and the country had been swept clear of man, beast, and vegetable. Under this torture even the gallant spirits of such men as Murat and Lannes could not sustain themselves:—they trod their cockades ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... not able to determine any thing on this question, I shall content myself with collecting, into one view, the several properties of this pestiferous brood, with which we are threatened, as hints to more sagacious and fortunate readers, who, when they shall find any red animal, that ranges uncontrouled over the country, and devours the labours of the trader and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... were touched at an early day by the wise Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, when, in his practical and personal Introduction to "Utopia," he alludes to what he calls the "bad custom" of keeping many servants, and then says: "In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people; for the whole country is full of soldiers, that are still kept up in time of peace,—if such a state of a nation can be called a peace." Then, proceeding with his judgment, the Chancellor holds ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... this alone, might be traced much of the suffering he had undergone. This was it that had so weakened mind and body, as to render change of scene necessary;—this was it that exposed Acme to the air of the pestiferous marshes, and which left George himself—a broken hearted man—totally ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... laborer." Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually in search of means to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry. We waste our future resources to get this strength, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath, and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The industrious hands must already have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them. Then use the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... with Gregory White, and never a prune have I in the store-cupboard. He's at all evers playing me tricks o' that fashion. 'Tisn't a week since I sent him for a dozen o' Paris candles, and he left 'em in the water as he came o'er the bridge. Eh, Mistress Wilson, but lads be that pestiferous! You've but one, and that one o' the quiet peaceable sort—you've somewhat to be thankful for, I can tell you, that hasn't six like me, and they a set o' contrarious, outrageous, boisterous caitiffs as ever was seen ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... citizenship promising protection without honor, imposing burdens without holding out prospects of advancement; they all, in my opinion, are lacking in love and justice, and such baneful elements in the body politic must needs engender pestiferous diseases, affecting the whole and ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... inferior spirit, often drugged or doctored for unwary sailors in the pestiferous dens of filthy Calcutta ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... not for the intervention of one hundred miles of low, swampy, pestiferous country, I would insist on your coming to see me, all, all! Little gamp, and Mademoiselle Sumtare, and their appendages; for they are ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... says I. "You didn't think I expected this great, big, low-roofed market to have paws and growl, did you," says I. "I would growl if the city were to set me down in the mud of this pestiferous place. So you thought I really meant it. Well, the easy way in which some men are taken in is astonishing. They never can understand metaphor," says I. "But the bivalves and Rockaways. What of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... one ever hear such a pestiferous child!" said Mr. Button, laughing as he spoke. "His questions and his ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... had conferred upon Blaines College, and paying a high and confident tribute to his qualities as a citizen. The young acting-editor, who never wrote what he did not think, had taken much pains with this editorial, especially the sketchy part. Of course the pestiferous Chronicle took an entirely different view of the situation. "The Chronicle has won its great fight," so it nervily said, "against classism in Blames College." And it had the vicious taste to add: "Nothing in Mr. West's presidential life ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... eventually adopted. The Hanseatic League of the cities of Northern Germany and neighboring states, no doubt, had its origin in the necessitous combination of merchants to resist the attacks of the Norsemen. England sent out many expeditions to destroy the pestiferous freebooters who swarmed from the African coast, and finally, in 1815, the United States sent Decatur to Algiers to annihilate the nefarious corsairs, who had thrived and become brazen in their recklessness during the three centuries of their ascendant power. The incursions of the Algerine pirates ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... Insalubrity. — N. insalubrity; unhealthiness &c. Adj.; nonnaturals[obs3]; plague spot; malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... he looked much discomposed, though his first words were, 'Thank Heaven, it is no fever! Albinia, we must look after that poor lad; he is positively poisoned by that pestiferous river and bad living! Bowles said he was sure he was not eating meat enough. I dare say that greasy woman gives him nothing fit to eat! Albinia, you must talk to him—find out whether old Goldsmith gives him a ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... close to it a cage in which there is a half-human looking criminal lying on a mat, a new house or big room, raised for Mr. Hawley, with the swamp all round it and underneath it, and close to it some pestiferous ditches which have been cut to drain it, but in which a putrid-looking brown ooze has stagnated. There is a causeway about two hundred yards long on the river bank, but no road anywhere. The river is broad, deep, swift and muddy; on its opposite side ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... campaign against the weeds, which advance like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place—the worst of the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... writhed through the hours, while Barry slumbered peacefully and breathed in new strength. Little was aware of a subtle drone and hum all around the place; he placed it to the further credit of pestiferous insects and cursed them dully. From the river crept in a rank odor of musk and mud that mingled with the sleepy sounds to lull him, yet his brain refused to rest. He sweat and twisted in the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and the largest quantity, is to be had at the high hill of Passaman, where likewise is the best, cheapest, and most abundant produce of pepper. But the air is there so pestiferous, that there is no going thither for our nation without great mortality among the men. Fortunately this is not necessary in procuring pepper, as the Surat commodities at Tecoo are sufficiently attractive. I have even observed many of the natives to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and down the country, creating devastation and dismay in every direction. No corner of the land is safe from his ravages; no one can hope to escape the consequences of his appearance. Every day his insatiable maw must be fed with the body of a young maiden, while so pestiferous is the breath which exhales from his throat that it causes a plague of a character so violent that whole districts have been depopulated by it. He commences his career of destruction at dawn every morning, ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... baneful literature. Almost every one starting off for the summer takes some reading matter. It is a book out of the library or off the bookstand, or bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. I really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year. Men and women who at home would not be satisfied with a book that was not really sensible, I found sitting on hotel-piazzas or under the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through France he launched among the French one of his pestiferous phrases, 'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute' and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders' webs. Through this aperture there penetrated just enough ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Laws esteems nothing of more pestiferous consequence to his city than to give young men the liberty of introducing any change in their habits, gestures, dances, songs, and exercises, from one form to another; shifting from this to that, hunting after novelties, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... no self-respecting ornithologist will condescend to enlarge his list by counting in the English sparrow — too pestiferous to mention," writes Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all bird neighbors is any one more within the scope of this book than the audacious little gamin that delights in the companion ship of humans even in their most noisy ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Leaving the everlastingly pestiferous question of cost aside, what is the best all-around flooring? Well, so far no one has been able to suggest anything that seems so appropriate as a good quality of hard wood—which means oak or maple, or both—properly treated and, above all, laid down as it should be. The ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... prosaic smoke, which refuses to fashion itself into fairy forms or airy castles in obedience to romantic fancy. Mr. Leonard Grover actually swore (in Latin, of course, for he was too well-mannered to swear in English), that it was the most irritating and pestiferous smoke he had ever encountered since he left his native town of Pittsburg, where a man, by the way, has a fine chance of studying the effects of smoke both upon linen and temperament. Mr. Grover was, however, cheerful by nature and refused to be permanently ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... child. She has been constantly in that pestiferous place. All Worth would say was that she must be kept quiet and cool, but he has sent the same draughts for all three. I saw, for Terry's came here. I fancy Worth spoke out plainly to that maid of Cecil's, Grindstone; but she only looks bitter at me, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now many hours after noon, and though to the Fair Strangers it seemed they had travelled more than forty or a hundred miles, they were apparently no nearer than ever to the heart of the labyrinth: and this from the first had been the pestiferous peculiarity of that malignantly meandering maze. So they dismounted, and tied Enbarr to the branch of a tree, while they refreshed themselves with a mouthful of Toma's loaf; and Finola now put her thumb under her ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with fervor, looking back to where the object of his execrations was still discharging convulsive yelps at the retreating vehicle, "I'd give a five-dollar note to git one good lick at him. I'd make him holler 'pen-an'-ink' once! Why anybody's willin' to have such a dum'd, wuthless, pestiferous varmint as that 'round 's more 'n I c'n understand. I'll bet that the days they churn, that critter, unless they ketch him an' tie him up the night before, 'll be under the barn all day, an' he's jest blowed off steam enough to run a dog churn ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... with appeals to the "Law and Order" party to go over into Kansas and wipe out the pestiferous Free State men, who set at naught the Territorial Legislature. The following sample of these appeals we extract from a speech made by David ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... of surface-vegetation, they nevertheless will form a portion of the root-pasturage of the shade and fruit trees. The land, also, can be more evenly and deeply plowed before obstructions are placed upon it, and roots, pestiferous weeds, and stones removed with greatest economy. Moreover, the good initial enriching is capital, hoarded in the soil, to start with. On many new places I have seen trees and plants beginning a feeble and uncertain life, barely existing rather than growing, because their roots found ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... thing—the dampness which mildewed his shoes and rusted out his nettings; the day heat which kept him bathed in clamminess; the pestiferous insects; the forest with its voices like sobbings and hammerings and demoniac chatterings; the food he had to eat; the company he had to keep; the chiefs who bored him; the girls who derided him; the beachcombers who nauseated him; ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... agriculturists. They were also irrigators and engineers, compelled to study how best to regulate the supply of water, to turn the pestiferous marsh into a fruitful field, and to confine the rivers and canals within their channels. Agriculture and engineering thus had their natural home in Babylonia, and originated in the character of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... keep their courage up while going along by graveyards; I whistle while moving among the wide awake. Before attempting this barbaric disposal of the human form as a sanitary improvement, it would be better to clear the streets and "commons" of our cities of their pestiferous surroundings. Try your cremation on the dogs and cats with ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... "thinking women" had not retired when the legislature did. Editors nowadays were often surprised in their sanctums by committees of three from some pestiferous unwomanly club or other, and they had not come, alackaday, to have their handkerchiefs picked up with courtly speeches, graced with an apt quotation from "Maud." The Civic Improvement League, with a woman president, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... disapproval. "And mayhap he might have lived to learn more wisdom—may God have mercy on his soul!—if it had pleased His Majesty to dwell in our Palazzo Reale of Nikosia, where one may breathe the air of Heaven, instead of a pestiferous malaria from the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Mr. House belong to a maligned and much misunderstood class. Whenever you find anywhere in nature an activity of any kind, however pestiferous its activity may seem to you—or however good—you may be sure that if you look deep enough you will find that that activity has a use, arises from a need. The "robber trusts" and the political bosses are interesting examples of this basic truth. They have arisen because science, revolutionizing ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the teacher does his duty; otherwise all his lessons in duty are of no avail, and the school, instead of being a source of purity, delicacy, and refinement, becomes a fountain of corruption, throwing out poisonous waters, and rendering the moral influence more pestiferous than that fabled fountain of old, over which no creature of heaven ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... drowned in the rushing waters, many were borne to the other side and continued their journey. In some cases, where the current was not strong, a sort of living bridge was formed, over which immense numbers of these pestiferous insects passed in safety and dry shod. Nothing seemed to check their progress ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... footpath in the Rue Tronchet. She was waiting there for something the nature of which she was not quite clear about, but which, nevertheless, was of great importance; and, without knowing why, she was afraid of being seen. But a pestiferous little dog kept barking at her furiously and biting at the hem of her dress. Every time she shook him off he returned stubbornly to the attack, always barking more violently than before. Madame Arnoux woke up. The dog's barking continued. She strained her ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... protested almost peevishly. "Please not to suggest by pitying her that I have not represented there a fine, big, strong thing, built to stand up under anything! I could slay, with pleasure, at any time"—he diverged, carried away by a long-standing disgust,—"the pestiferous asses who call my things morbid. I am too careful to keep true to what I see. The difference between them—I mean the critics who call me morbid—and myself, is ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... magistrates and legislators in every part of the United States, to rouse themselves from apathy on this momentous subject. It is due to their country and to posterity, to strive to remove an evil, which, like the Upas, extends its pestiferous influence in every direction. Let them reflect that the object of punishing criminals is to protect society. This object may be promoted by the reformation of the transgressor; but if he is placed in a situation where contagion is inevitable, the punishment, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... which some mounted moths had been sent me by a friend in Louisiana, and when I went to examine my cocoons toward spring, to my horror I found the contents of the box chopped to pieces and totally destroyed. Pestiferous little 'clothes' moths must have infested the box, for there were none elsewhere in the Cabin. For a while this appeared to be too bad luck; but when luck turns squarely against you, that is the time to test the essence and quality of the word 'friend.' So I sat me down and wrote to my ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "They are a pestiferous lot," assented Dick, "and dangerous to our institutions. But say, father, if I go North I shall want to take Tom ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... unhealthful, unwholesome, insalubrious, noxious, noisome, pestiferous, pernicious, unsanitary, unhygienic, morbid, morbific, pestilent, insalutary; sickly, unsound, diseased, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... site of Udab (also called Adab and Usab) and the neighbouring F[a]ra, the site of the ancient Kisurra. The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world. The science of irrigation and engineering seems to have been first created in Babylonia, which was covered by a network of canals, all skilfully planned and regulated. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a planet. And on the luster of the great calm waters the Judea glided imperceptibly, enveloped in languid and unclean vapours, in a lazy cloud that drifted to leeward, light and slow: a pestiferous cloud defiling the splendour of ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... is said never to have asked him a single question relative to that glorious victory which had so astonished the world. On the contrary, all the scandalous insinuations, and licentious remarks, with which the Jacobinical foreign journalists had filled their pestiferous pages, relative to our hero and his friends in Italy, and which had found their way into the most thoughtless and depraved of our own newspapers, were preserved for his lordship's immediate amusement. Without ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... others were being prepared for a new crop by such profuse irrigation that the buffaloes seemed to be ploughing knee-deep through the thick, oozy soil. It was easy to understand how unhealthy must be the task of cultivating a rice-field, and what swampy and pestiferous odours must arise from the brilliant vegetation. 'Green as grass' is a feeble expression to those familiar with the dazzling verdure of a paddy-field. Grain cultivation in Ceylon does not, however, appear to be a very profitable occupation, and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... hath been sick. Derby gaol is a pestiferous place. They are waiting, I suppose, till he is well enough to go publicly, that all the world may be advertised ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... you pestiferous woman," old Hector cried sharply. "Had it not been for the girl he would not be living this minute, so the least he can do is to express his compliments to her. Also, since this disagreeable topic has again been aired, let me remind you that the lass isn't going to marry Donald. She came out here, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.(181) If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... purest of their brethren— with the plague of sin. A deadly sickness, indeed! Feeling its symptoms within the breast, men concealed it with fear and shame, and were only the more cruel to those unfortunates whose pestiferous sores were flagrant to the common eye. Nothing save a rich garment could ever hide the plague-spot. In the course of the world's lifetime, every remedy was tried for its cure and extirpation, except the single one, the flower that grew in Heaven ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forward in the soft bank, or out into the stream itself, and then, with its end against his shoulder, urging and teasing the craft a few feet at a time against the strong current. Jose imagined, as he dully watched him, that he could see death in the pestiferous effluvia which emanated from the black, slimy mud which every plunge of the long pole brought to the surface ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... then an hour of fever, then the hideous delirium, then—the Yellow Death! On the street corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtaken by the disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... procrastinated. But it is not easy to restrain the hound when within sight of the game which it has long pursued. Before the eyes of Sir Edmund lay that pestiferous paper which had given him such annoyance. His impatience was no longer to be restrained. In the midst of the long-drawn-out oratory of the members he rose and stepped towards the table to seize the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... spy," he preluded, "is the signal for the ringing of joy-bells on this earth; not only because he is one of a pestiferous excess, in point of numbers, but that he is no true son of earth. He escaped out of hell's doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to puff out a bad light, and send him back. Look at this fellow in whom conscience ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... maintenance of the Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to forget all its merits? You might say the same of the Consuls; for the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... man has discovered for this often pestiferous weed with which nature carpets moist soil the world around is to feed caged song-birds. What is the secret of the insignificant little plant's triumphal progress? Like most immigrants that have undergone ages of selective struggle in the Old World, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... early at this pestiferous old slaughter-house,' said that gentleman, poising himself on one leg, and shaking the other ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... strengthened its fortifications, to resist, as he said, the threatened attacks of Duke Eric of Brunswick and his German mercenaries. A printing-press was established in the place, whence satirical pamphlets, hymn-books, and other pestiferous productions, were constantly issuing to the annoyance of government. Many lawless and uproarious individuals enjoyed the Count's hospitality. All the dregs and filth of the provinces, according to Doctor Viglius, were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... even than that which lies between Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharfs, and in the lumber trade. But my readers will, not thank me for detaining them in a pestiferous atmosphere, among such unpleasing scenes; we will therefore ascend into the High-street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercers' stores, and articles of luxury of every description. This street and several others were at this period impassable ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... houses infested by robbers and marauders. Some incidents reported of this plague are ghastly in their horror. The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury, battering their assailants with the pestiferous bodies ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... void now of all dignity, all gaiety, all wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom. Six years passed, when Louis was smitten by confluent small-pox and a few poor women were left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[154] None could be found to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the half-suppressed curses of the people. Before ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... will be more properly called king than Tarquin, who was able to govern neither himself nor his family; he will deserve to be called the master of the people more than Sylla, who was only the master of three pestiferous vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; he will be called rich more properly than Crassus, who would never have desired to cross the Euphrates without any legitimate cause for war, if he had not been in want of something. Everything will be properly said to belong to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... even 'Typha Angustifolia', there is not the hardiest and fiercest prowler of the roof and the fire-escape but would fly the sound of my voice and leave me forlorn amid the withered foliage of my dream. The street sparrows, pestiferous and persistent as they are, would forsake my sylvan pageant if I spoke of the Bird-foot Violet as the 'Viola Pedata'; and the commonest cur would run howling if he beard the gentle Poison Dogwood maligned as the 'Rhus ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... days, Gertrude had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in. Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached. Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, her ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... were intended had lost her master and both mates by sickness, and the merchant therefore sold them to me. We had not altogether escaped, and several of our men who were perfectly healthy when we entered the harbour fell victims to the fever engendered by the pestiferous climate. We were compelled to fill up their places with others, who afterwards ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... result of the overthrow of all civil government and religious belief. It appears, still more wonderfully, that he contemplates this state of things as the ideal SUMMUM BONUM. In short, it is quite impossible that there should exist a more pestiferous mixture of blasphemy, sedition, and sensuality, than is visible in the whole structure and strain of this poem—which, nevertheless, and notwithstanding all the detestation its principles excite, must and will be considered ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... remission for all their sins to all who would do their utmost to extirpate and totally root out those workers of iniquity who in the kingdom of Ireland had infected and were always striving to infect the mass of Catholic purity with the pestiferous ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... provisions. Their principal residence was a small key, about a quarter of a mile round, lying near to Barbarat, and named by them the Castle of Comfort, chiefly because it was low and clear of woods and bushes, so that the free circulation of wind could drive away the pestiferous musquitoes and other insects. From hence they sent to the surrounding islands for wood, water and materials to build two houses, such as they ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... that Demosthenes made a wittie, copious, and ingenious o- racions, when the Athenians were minded to giue and be- [Sidenote: Philippe the kyng of the Macidonia[n]s[.]] take to the handes of Philip kyng of the Macedonians, their pestiferous enemie moste vile and subtell, the Orators of A- thens. This Philip forseyng the discorde of Grece, as he by subtill meanes compassed his enterprices, promised by the faithe of a Prince, to be at league with the Athenians, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... many sharp practices, indeed, having been resorted to by a few conscienceless publishers, and by a certain class of unscrupulous agents, that buyers have become wary, not to say weary, of being made the victims of their deceptive inventions. It is indeed lamentable that a few such pestiferous schemers should thus bring a certain degree of reproach upon the entire publishing business. It is a common practice among these soi-disant publishers—many of whom possess neither capital, credit, nor sense of honor—to buy some lot of etchings or old prints from a junk-shop, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head—and even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the sanction of her name to an undertaking by a person of whose history and principles nothing satisfactory ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "These yere pestiferous chilluns!" exclaimed the colored man, trying to mop up the flood. "And dem cups was near 'nough to las' me clear ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... separated by a low strip of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... require to get an hour's rest." I need scarce say that the hour was spent in hard drinking in that stagnant atmosphere; and we then all descended through the trap-door, by means of a ladder, into a bare-walled dungeon, dark and damp, and where the pestiferous air smelt like that of a burial vault. The scene which followed was exceedingly repulsive and brutal—nearly as much so as some of the scenes furnished by those otter hunts in which the aristocracy of the country ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... midshipman, and had been living with the others. Delisle went for the boy; and as he passed by, on his return, I saw that he looked especially sad. That evening notice was brought us that Captain Williams was dead, and his poor young midshipman son was left an orphan; and a prisoner in that far-off pestiferous land. Delisle brought the boy back with him, and with all the kindness of his heart endeavoured ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... commendation of the design of the Botanic Garden at Manchester, and similar establishments in other large towns of Britain. What can be a more delightful relaxation to a Lancashire Mechanic than an hour or two in a Garden: what an escape from the pestiferous politics of the times. At Birmingham too, there is a Public Garden, similar to that at Manchester, where we hope the Artisan may enjoy a sight at least of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... courage, which somewhat resembles the light usually carried by a miner,—sufficiently competent, indeed, to afford him guidance and comfort during the ordinary perils of his labour, but certain to be extinguished should he encounter the more formidable hazard of earth-damps or pestiferous vapours. It was now, however, once more rekindled, and with a throbbing mixture of hope, awe, and anxiety, Waverley watched the group before him, as those who had just arrived snatched a hasty meal, and the others assumed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... long breath before proceeding. "A short time after this, the regiment of her lover was ordered out to India, in which pestiferous country he took a malicious fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... sometimes gallant soldiers, so soldiers often prove brave robbers, so near an alliance there is between those two sorts of life. But this bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many servants, is not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such a state of a nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers about noblemen: this ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... "first-water" stones. At the slightest agitation all the accumulated ooze and filth of generations—rags and decomposing frogs and things unmentionable—rise to the surface in turbid clouds. The element wells out hot, from under the neighbouring Kasbah, with a pestiferous mineral aroma. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... was in the hands of an English unit. Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down which they rolled to the road. The peasants used to collect these pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts. Little wonder that illness spread! In the summer Lady Paget's hospital withdrew to some great barracks on the hill. The paths were made of Turkish tombstones, which were always used in Uskub ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... one of the largest detective agencies in the United States. They make a specialty of bank work and from the number of forgers apprehended and convicted know just how the work is done. A careful reading of this chapter will put bankers and the public on their guard against the most pestiferous rascals they ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... all trades and all kinds, if that animal, calling itself the proprietor, should go to a man of science and say: 'I want an individual of the bimanous species, able to live in holes full of old boots, pestiferous with rags, and ten feet square; I want him such that he can live there all his life, sleep there, eat there, be happy, get children as pretty as little cupids, work, toil, cultivate flowers, sing there, stay there, and live in darkness but ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... the shores of England. The unhappy passengers knew that they were never likely to see those shores again; they had been torn from their families, their relatives and friends, and were going to a pestiferous climate, to be employed in the open air under a burning sun, like the negroes from Africa,—a climate which, under such circumstances, is sure to prove fatal to Europeans. Stephen, notwithstanding what ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... therefore inform him, that their strong Holds have all the open Places cover'd with Canvass stretch'd from Side to Side; upon which is strew'd an Herb so venemous, that, in six Hours after it has been expos'd to the Sun, it emits so pestiferous a Stench, that no Fowl can approach it by many Yards, but what will fall dead; and this Stench, by the Effluvia mounting, is no way offensive to those below. This is the Reason their Sieges are rather Blockades, and no fortify'd Town was ever ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... bird-men must clearly acknowledge that he is a very undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the foregoing account, can scarcely ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... who had but little faith in physicians, laughed, and exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, when you see so many men alive in England at this instant, why should you believe in the impossibility of your living even in this pestiferous country?" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... miles in quest of employment on canals at 62-1/2 cents to 87-1/2 cents per day, paying $1.50 to $2.00 a week for board, leaving families behind depending upon them for support. They labor frequently in marshy grounds, where they inhale pestiferous miasmata, which destroy their health, often irrevocably. They return to their poor families broken hearted, and with ruined constitutions, with a sorry pittance, most laboriously earned, and take to their beds, sick and unable to ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... abroad his murky "wings with dreadful shade contiguous," and fills the land with tears of blood—you look over this frightful aceldama and mourn at the soul-chilling spectacle. When infidelity and licentiousness exhale their pestiferous breath, to poison the moral atmosphere and destroy the rising hope of our country, by undermining the virtue of our youth; the Christian's heart is pained, and every effort is put forth to stay the march of desolation. In short, whatever tends to increase the prevalence of vice, must ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... displeasing to the Quirinal, and disapproved of the secret intrigues with the Italian Government. According to their leader, who was the very eminent personage Donna Rosetta now proposed calling upon, other measures should be adopted to liberate the Holy Father from the pestiferous influence of a rationalist varnished over with mysticism. These things Donna Rosetta had learned from the Abbe Marinier, who smiled knowingly about them in her salon. It was inconceivable how many poisonous accusations were being sown ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... wait upon decay. These carrion-hawks enjoy the protection of law, a heavy fine being imposed for wantonly killing one.[7] It is during the rainy season that this port earns the reputation of being one of the most pestiferous spots on the globe. The air is then hot and oppressive, reminding the geologist of the steaming atmosphere in the carboniferous period; the surrounding plains are flooded with water, and the roads, even some of the streets of the city, become impassable; ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... a full account of my first, my last, my only real sweetheart, for I considered the professions of that pestiferous jackeroo as merely a grotesque ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... influence of the white sansculotte, the riff-raff, the idlers, the rowdies, and the outlaws. As between the Negro, no matter how illiterate he may be, and the "poor white," the property-holders of the South prefer the former. Excepting a few impudent, half-educated, and pestiferous pretenders, the Negro masses of the South are honest, well-meaning, industrious, and safe citizens. They are in sympathy with the superior race; they find protection and encouragement with the old slave-holding class; if left alone, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... murthered her! Perfumes some creature kill: she has so long In that darke Dungeon suck't pestiferous breath, The sweete has stifled her. Take hence the body, Since me it hated it shall feele my hate: Cast her into the fire; I have lost her, And for her sake all Christians shall be lost That subjects are to me: massacre all, But thou, ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... on the part of the fox, considering the value of his head-gear. A young mountaineer down the ravine was reminded, by the sharp, abrupt sound, of a premium offered by the State of Tennessee for the scalp and ears of the pestiferous red fox. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... cries and groans were occasionally heard in the village below from the shrieking shade of the guilty Eleanor, who murdered her uncle. At midnight she was said to fly from the fairies, who followed her with writhing serpents, their tongues glistening with poisonous venom and their pestiferous breath turning black everything with which they came in contact, and thus her soul was tortured as a punishment for her horrible deeds. Amongst the woods glided the pale ghosts of the Abbot Bertrand and the mother ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Porto Rico has little. No poisonous serpents are found, but pestiferous insects, such as tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, ticks, fleas, and mosquitos, supply this deficiency in a measure. All sorts of domestic animals are raised, and the excellent pasture-lands support large herds of cattle for export and home consumption, and ponies, whose superiority ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... before Jenner had known of the curative value of cow-pox over small-pox, so the peasant women of Poland had learned that the annoying skin disease from which they suffered was caused by an almost invisible insect, and, furthermore, had acquired the trick of dislodging the pestiferous little creature with the point of a needle. From them a youth of the country, F. Renucci by name, learned the open secret. He conveyed it to Paris when he went there to study medicine, and in 1834 demonstrated it to his master Alibert. This physician, at first sceptical, soon ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... that he is a French music-master whom she hired to marry her in order that she might escape from a pestiferous person named Count Ladislas Vassilan," replied Curtis with cool directness. "She brought the obliging individual with her from Paris for the purpose, and paid him a thousand dollars as a sort of retaining fee. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... silent. For the first time in his pilgrimage, a feeling of deep despondency fell over the soul of Alroy. His energy appeared suddenly to have deserted him. A low hot wind began to rise, and fan his cheek with pestiferous kisses, and enervate his frame with its poisonous embrace. His head and limbs ached with a dull sensation, more terrible than pain; his sight was dizzy, his tongue swollen. Vainly he looked around for aid; vainly he extended his forlorn arms, and wrung them to the remorseless heaven, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Missouri question, the pestiferous effects of slavery had become too obvious to escape the observation of the most superficial statesman. The new free States admitted into the Union enjoyed tenfold prosperity compared with the new slave States. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... The pestiferous skunk is universal; and there are two quaint-looking weasels, intensely black in colour, and grey on the back and flat crown. One, the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that hunts in companies; and when these long-bodied creatures sit up erect, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the eighth heaven of bliss and then some, as the result of my diplomatic mission. Of course the task of preparing pupils out of the pestiferous Polydores devolved upon her, but she was actively aided by the eager and willing Huldah and between them they pushed the project that promised such an elysium with all speed. The prospective pupils themselves ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... legs?' And one of the grooms that was civil and had of me trinkgeld, stood now at his cottage-door and asked us in. There we found his wife and children of all ages, from five to eighteen, and had but one room to bide and sleep in, a thing pestiferous and most uncivil. Then I asked my Servant, knew he this prince? Ay, did he, and had often drunk with him in a marble chamber above the stable, where, for table, was a curious and artificial rock, and the drinking vessels hang on its pinnacles, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... given direction. And it is easy to conceive how, under any less beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents of the earth might either have been covered with enormous lakes, as parts of North America actually are covered; or have become wildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the water would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the year desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole earth is not prepared for the habitation ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... the venom he had absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the enchantress breathed on me with her pestiferous breath, and, falling to the ground, I crawled like a toad before her. Ulin then waved her hand, and sleep overpowered me. When I awoke I found myself between the merchant of Delhi and the Princess of Cassimir, who, like me, had felt the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... here," announced Jed Wallop. "But you might strike something jest as bad, especially if the snow keeps on gittin' deeper. The wolves in this neighborhood git mighty pestiferous when they can't git ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... above all else was salt. Their country contained no saltpans, and they were cut off from the sea by a strip of pestiferous jungle, which, moreover, belonged to the Portuguese or was supposed so to belong. Fortunately I had brought with me a small bag of salt; it contained about a pound in weight. Men used to come from long distances to beg for a pinch. As I did not want the bag to be seen, it was my practice, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... pestilential, baneful, foul, noisome, poisonous, deadly, harmful, noxious, ruinous, deleterious, hurtful, perverting, unhealthful, destructive, injurious, pestiferous, unwholesome. detrimental, insalubrious, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... necessarily last served, could be accommodated. And though I was assured that medical and surgical aid was administered to them wherever it was possible, the blood that dried upon their skins and their garments, joined to the dreadful sores occasioned by this neglect, produced an effect so pestiferous, that, at every new entry, eau de Cologne, or vinegar, was resorted to by every inhabitant, even amongst the shopkeepers, even amongst the commonest persons, for averting the menaced ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... A most pestiferous variety of caterpillar has infested the tops of my cherry-trees this summer, and during the general's encampment near Mrs. Cobb I happened several times to be mounted on my step-ladder, busy with my pruning-shears, when he was decoying her around her garden—just over the fence—buckled in to ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... eyes, rude shoes of cowhide or pigskin made all of one piece bound over the foot, and a short, large-bore musket, completed the hunter's grotesque outfit. Often he carried wound about his waist a sack of netting into which he crawled at night to keep off the pestiferous mosquitoes. With creditable regularity he and his apprentices arose early in the morning and started on foot for the hunt, eating no food until they had killed and skinned as many wild cattle or swine as there were persons in the company. After having skinned the last animal, the master-hunter broke ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... new disease! I know not, new or old, But it may well be call'd poor mortals' Plague; For like a pestilence it doth infect The houses of the brain: first it begins Solely to work upon the phantasy, Filling her seat with such pestiferous air, As soon corrupts the judgment, and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memory, Still each of other catching the infection, Which as a searching vapour spreads itself Confusedly through every sensive part, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... good-natured Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as he gazed toward ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... which they said, "We present his Excellency Stephen S. Harding, governor of Utah, as we would an unsafe bridge over a dangerous stream, jeopardizing the lives of all those who pass over it; or as we would a pestiferous cesspool in our district, breathing disease and death." And the chief justice assured this jury that they addressed him "in no spirit of malice," and asked them to accept his thanks "for your cooperation in the support of my efforts to maintain and enforce the law." It is to the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... are fissures in the rocks exhaling pestiferous emanations; these are the spiracula, the breathing-holes, of the dragon within. The dragon legends of Naples and Mondragone are probably of this origin, and so is that of the Roman Campagna (1660) where the dragon-killer died from the effects of this poisonous breath: ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... transplanted to a better world, if there is such a place. She is too good and pure for this cursed, pestiferous earth." ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... practice of it is so easy and lazy and uppish that it is very common, but its cry is drowned by a louder and more sincere one. We who do not want to know, also do not want to go blind, to go mad, to be disfigured, to be barren, to become pestiferous, or to see such things happening to our children. We learn, at last, that the majority of the victims are not the people of whom we so glibly say, 'Serve them right,' but quite innocent children and innocent parents, ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... lawful birth was what straightened him up and made a man of him for a moment, removing his doubts upon that head and convincing him of his royal right; and if any could have hanged his hindering and pestiferous council and set him free, he would have answered Joan's prayer and set her in the field. But no, those creatures were only checked, not checkmated; they could ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... cent increase in salary, and let you have the further benefit of my services. But I want it distinctly understood by every one present," he added, as he faced around to the others, "that I wouldn't have those pestiferous Puddingham cuff-buttons as a gift! Comprenez vous cela, Mr. Hemlock Holmes of Baker Street, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... to "destroy the works of the devil." That is the entire ministry of destruction. Nothing beautiful does He destroy, nothing winsome: only the insidious presences which are the foes of these things. He will destroy only the pestiferous microbes which ravage the vital peace of the soul. Our Lord is the enemy of the deadly, and therefore of "him that had the power ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... doubt, the most pestiferous for whites in the whole world. The coast of Africa, which enjoys a dreadful reputation in this way, is not so deadly in its climate as is Chagres. The thermometer ranges from 78 deg. to 85 deg. all the year, and it rains every day. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... "TASTE." These three striking instances of the fatality of the Bibliomania occurred—the first in the year 1764; and the latter in 1773. The following year witnessed the sale of the Fletewode[45] library; so that nothing but despair and havoc appeared to move in the train of this pestiferous malady. In the year 1775 died the famous Dr. Anthony Askew, another illustrious victim to the Bibliomania. Those who recollect the zeal and scholarship of this great book-collector, and the precious gems with which his library[46] was stored ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had a poor, sordid kind of childhood in outward circumstances. But mine was spiritually sordid—hideous, repulsive. There are some plants which spring from and flourish in mud and slime; they are but a flabby, pestiferous growth, as you may suppose. I was, to begin with, a human specimen of that kind; I was in an atmosphere of moral mud, an intellectual hot-bed. I don't know what there was in me that set me against the life; that I never ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... "The most pestiferous and deadly Heresie of all others, because there is not almost any one particular erroneous and schismaticall phantasie, whereof the Familie of Loue hath not borrowed one braunche or other thereof, to peece vnto themselves ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... agony from these little seat-worms, which are left unmolested to torment them, because the parents are unfamiliar with the meaning of the symptoms manifested, and therefore pay no heed to them. We have been thus particular in describing the symptoms indicating the presence of these pestiferous parasites, in order that they ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... to say, Mr. Carvel," he answered with much humility; "to speak truth, 'twas zeal to my employers, and methought to you, that caused you to retrace your steps in this pestiferous storm. I travel," he proceeded with some importance, "I travel for Messrs. Rinnell and Runn, Barristers of the town of New York, and carry letters to men of mark all over these middle and southern colonies. And my instructions, sir, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... infected with it, and fleas transmit it from them to human beings. It was probably brought in by pestiferous rodents hidden inside packages of vegetables, as it appeared in a district where crates of vegetables are opened in large numbers, and did not appear in the vicinity of the piers, although shore rats are abundant there, and if ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... according to my poor judgment," replied the Palmer. "No one is bound to faith with those who mean to observe none with him. Anticipate this treachery of your uncle, and let his now short and infirm existence moulder out in the pestiferous cell to which he would condemn your youthful strength. The royal grant has assigned you lands enough for your honourable support; and wherefore not unite with them those of the Garde Doloureuse?— Eveline Berenger, if I do ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... right-hand men, and of course duly qualified preachers of his 'word,' though unable to speak five minutes without taking the same number of liberties with the Queen's English. Swift was provoked by the prototypes of these pestiferous people, to declare that, 'formerly the apostles received the gift of speaking several languages, a knowledge so remote from our dealers in the art of enthusiasm, that they neither understand propriety of speech nor phrases ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... the French King rode in all honour, albeit a prisoner, at his conqueror's side; or later, when fallen Richard, shorn of all royal dignity, rode abject and forlorn through the city, and caps were flung up for his usurping cousin. But oh, the horror of closed shops and deserted houses, and pestiferous wretches running by the coach door in their poisonous rags, begging alms, whenever the horses went slowly, in those narrow streets that lay between Fareham ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... perhaps—or her mother's—and she shivered at the thought. The long train wandered on under its shroud of dust, and stood still when it reached the Necropolis; then the sledge with the bier came back empty on red hot runners—but she was not one of the mourners—she was imprisoned in the pestiferous house. Then, when she was freed again—she saw it all quite clearly—two heads had been cut off in the courtyard of the Hall of justice: Orion's and Paula's—and she was left alone, quite alone and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there is a strike in the West Virginia mines, and it has sent a mass of ruffians out looking for work. We need all the people we can get, but they are a pestiferous outfit. I am opening up a camp in Bear Run, and our orders are enormous already, but I hate littering the valley with these swine. They are as insolent and dirty as Turks. Pete says the village smells, and has taken to the woods. Onnie says the new Irish are black scum of Limerick, and Jim Varian's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... far as cultivation extends, two or three splendid crops during the same year reward the industry of the husbandman. But even in the plain of Damascus the land is cultivated for only a few miles beyond the gates of the city. The water that would fertilize the whole plain flows uselessly into pestiferous marshes, and the wide plain within sight of the Damascus garrison is abandoned to the Bedawin of the Desert and the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Christina, than he proceeded without delay to entrench himself, and immediately on running his first parallel, dispatched Antony Van Corlear to summon the fortress to surrender. Van Corlear was received with all due formality, hoodwinked at the portal, and conducted through a pestiferous smell of salt fish and onions to the citadel, a substantial hut built of pine logs. His eyes were here uncovered, and he found himself in the august presence of Governor Risingh. This chieftain, as I have before noted, was a very giantly man, and was clad in a coarse blue coat, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... fellowes pretend to be witty; for understandinge, so manye have lost there witts as ... they have fisht for it and in som drawenett or other have caught it. But where might these lost shrewes bee? I suspect this pestiferous Je vous prie hathe putt some slovenly tricke or other to cheate my mayster boathe of ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the bark of the decaying wood; others were of gigantic proportions, equal in circumference to the trunks of the enormous trees amid which they grew. No vegetables except moss and toadstool-like productions could exist in that airless and pestiferous region. In every direction lay the trunks of enormous trees blown down by some hurricane, so completely rotted by damp that a stick run into them went right through. They lay like vast skeletons, serving to nourish the mushrooms which ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... sob hysterically with rage and exhaustion, tore her own hair and wailed: 'Oh Jesus! Oh little child Jesus! Oh Mary! Look at this pestiferous woman...curse those heathen...oh! oh!...' she was only able to roar, leaning against ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... one farmer's way of speaking to you, or the kind of biscuits his wife offered you, you could move on to the next, and he would take you in at four bits more per day. It was the nearest approach to a working-man's paradise that Jimmie had ever encountered. There was really only one drawback—the pestiferous draft-boards that never stopped snooping round. They were for ever hauling you up and threatening and questioning you—putting you through the same scene over and over. Why couldn't the fools give you a card, showing that you had been through the mill, and let ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... dislodgment. A hot, windy day is a good time to hoe between your plants, because the wind and sun kill the uprooted weeds in a short time. They dry up, and there is but little to remove. On a damp cloudy day if a disturbed bit—no matter how small—of the pestiferous couch grass rolls near the base of a plant and remains there, it will send down its roots among those of the plant, and it is almost impossible to get them out without taking ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan
... be cleared up in our night's adventures was now soon explained. Our guide, through ignorance or thoughtlessness, had allowed us to take up our bivouac within a very unsafe distance of one of the most pestiferous swamps in the whole province. Shortly after we had fallen asleep, a party of Mexican travellers had arrived, and established themselves within a few hundred yards of us, but on a rising ground, where they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... were mostly effected by their boats, which were sent up the rivers to lie in wait for the slavers, or to attack them when they were known to be at anchor. This species of service caused a great mortality among their crews, as a night spent in the pestiferous miasma of an African river was sufficient to produce fever among all those exposed to it, while the hot sun of the day was almost equally trying to English constitutions. Thus for many years the mortality among the blockading ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... that her strength was scarcely equal to taking care of her mother, and the few lighter duties of housework. Therefore, though the June sunshine rested on the little garden, and all nature seemed in the rapture of its early summer life, poor, practical Edith saw only the pestiferous weeds that threatened to destroy her one slender prospect of escape from environing difficulties. At last she turned away. To the sad and suffering, scenes most full of cheer and beauty often seem the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... these mosquitoes couldn't pull Bully and Bawly out of bed, for the pestiferous insects weren't strong enough, they nipped the frog boys all over, until their legs and arms and faces and noses and ears smarted and burned terribly, and their mamma had to put witch hazel and talcum ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... favorable moment had passed by, and even then the battalions of the rebels were gathering in readiness to be hurled upon our devoted army. While the regiment, whose fortunes have been more intimately connected with our story, was retiring from the pestiferous swamp, the commanding general received information of the approach of Stonewall Jackson. These proved to be sad tidings; for the anticipated triumphal march into the rebel capital was changed into a bloody but glorious retreat. The battles which were to be fought for a victorious advance were made ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... did, and then to my task. For it is that great torture, that infernal plague of mortal men, omnium pestium pestilentissima superstitio, and able of itself alone to stand in opposition to all other plagues, miseries and calamities whatsoever; far more cruel, more pestiferous, more grievous, more general, more violent, of a greater extent. Other fears and sorrows, grievances of body and mind, are troublesome for the time; but this is for ever, eternal damnation, hell itself, a plague, a fire: an inundation hurts one province ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... yet other illustrations of the pestiferous influence of Romanism on the temporal happiness of its subjects. We have already alluded to the determined manner in which the Pontifical Government has hitherto withstood the introduction of railways. And ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... do this, I had a long and agreeable conversation with the General, who spoke of the Puritans with intense disgust, and of the first importation of them as "that pestiferous crew of the Mayflower;" but he is by no means rancorous against individual Yankees. He spoke very favourably of M'Clellan, whom he knew to be a gentleman, clever, and personally brave, though he ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... sell out to you for eight thousand; he pockets one thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old granddad is paid off. Then you and I ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... I own. A butcher of the olden time, Who furnished roasts and steaks most prime, In the old George Street Market House, Where cats held many a grand carouse, Ere rats to Bytown emigrated In swarms pestiferous and hated. And if I have forgotten one, Whom memory could not fasten on, Let him feel no neglecting smart, I have not passed him with my heart, I've done my best 'neath friendship's spoil, So Lower ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... to certain climatic peculiarities of Hades, it seemed more like midsummer. The mercury in the club thermometer was nervously clicking against the top of the crystal tube, and poor Cerberus was having all he could do with his three mouths snapping up the pestiferous little shades of by-gone gnats that seemed to take an almost unholy pleasure in alighting upon his various noses ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... fire in the night, resembling flashes from the strokes of steel upon flint, is a curious creature. About the beginning of summer, when these insects are very numerous, they illuminate the woods, and strike a stranger with astonishment. Millions of pestiferous gnats, called Musketoes, are hatched during the summer, and swarm over the country in such numbers, that, during the day, it requires no small trouble for the inhabitants to defend themselves in every quarter against them; and, during ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt |
