"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on Bannister, opening up a bewildering attack of criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through or ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,—it du always be fresh up there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again blessing ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... going right back, I only came home for you. You must go right over. Randolph is wild. Oh, it's so dear and sweet! Just like a rose! I could smother it with kisses!" ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... fifth ball, this time striking him in the face, and passing out, just missing the jugular vein. Falling, he lay unconscious with his face in his cap, into which poured the blood from his wound until it threatened to smother him. It might have done so but for still another ball, which pierced the cap and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... There was a smother of foam under the stern of the Gem, which trembled and throbbed with the vibration. Betty turned on more power, until finally the maximum, under the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... Of days and friends for whose dear sake That path of Hades unto me Will have no more of dread Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice! O Crawford! husband, father, brother Are in that name, that little word! Let me no more my sorrow smother; Grief stirs me, and I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... smother his wrath during the brief moments he was giving his orders; but no sooner had the seemingly pliant tools of his will left, than he again foamed over, and pacing back and forth, continued his cursing, as though he would spend his impotent fury ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the second term of President Diaz commenced. The success of the church party would simply throw Mexico back half a century in her march of improvement towards a higher state of civilization. It would check all educational progress, all commercial advance, and smother both political ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. You ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... at Busuntpoor for nearly the whole two months, while these tortures were being inflicted, without making any report of them. When the order for dismissing Rughbur Sing came from the Durbar, Maharaj Sing went off, saying, that he would soon smother all complaints, in the usual way, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as well ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... that smother griefe too secretly, May wast themselves in silent anguishment, And bring their bodies to so low an ebb, That all the world can never make it flowe, Unto the happy hight of former health. Then be not [so] iniurious to thy selfe, To wast thy strength in lamentation, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she bravely tried to smother in ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... novel—upon the Modern Woman. For this seems to me the woman's hour. It is mysterious and almost prophetic, it is the symbol of the true advanced woman: not one of those violent creatures who deny their sex and smother their frail wings ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... to vary that in a hundred different ways. To keep himself cool, to bear himself like a nobleman, to have a free tongue and a modest one, to endure with a smile all the evils the devil may invent on his behalf, to smother his anger, to hold nature in control, to have the finger of God, and the tail of the devil, to reward the mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put a good face on everything. In default of which the female escapes ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... endured from eleven at night till three in the morning, and it was at eleven that the tree in which clung Mapuhi and his women snapped off. Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon, still clutching his daughter Ngakura. Only a South Sea islander could have lived in such a driving smother. The pandanus tree, to which he attached himself, turned over and over in the froth and churn; and it was only by holding on at times and waiting, and at other times shifting his grips rapidly, that he was able ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... by that glittering edge, put by; Slay the insect with light; Smother that smoky glow, Scatter the silver ash like snow When thy ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... agradecido, -a thankful, grateful. agreste adj. wild, rude, rough. agrupar(se) cluster. agua f. water. aguardar await, expect. agudo, -a sharp, keen. ah! interj. ah! ahnco m. energy, determination. ahogar stifle, smother, drown. ahora adv. now, at present. airado, -a angry. aire m. air, atmosphere, wind, breeze, manner. airoso, -a airy, lively, easy, genteel, elegant, graceful. aislamiento m. isolation. ajar spoil, crumple, fade. ajeno, -a of another, ignorant, unaware; —— de ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... in the region have been growing and sanitary facilities have not been keeping pace. Already some arms of the superb natural harbors formed by the tributary creeks are noxious with discharges from boats at big marinas, and gravel dredging is stirring up silt to smother bottom life, including shellfish. As Tidewater agriculture revives and modernizes, pesticides and artificial fertilizers are coming to be as much a part of the scene there as in other farming regions, and may ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... put out my hand and thrust it into a slimy, cold mess. I had found a dead German with a gaping, putrefying wound in his abdomen. I crawled out of that shelter, gagging and retching. This time I simply couldn't smother my impulse to run, and run I did, into the next traverse, where I sank weak and faint on the fire step. I sat there the rest of the night, regardless of shells, my mind milling wildly on the problem of war and the reason thereof and ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... we men are to blame for most of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness by applying ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... eagerly round him, and with a laugh, and a word for one and all, he caught the outstretched hands, scattering his favours like a young Jove. "Yes, I've remembered you—there, don't smother me. Did you think I'd dare to show my face, Aunt Rhody, without the gayest neckerchief in Europe? Why, I waited over in New York just to see that it was safe. Oh, don't smother me, I say." The dogs came ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... merry Christmas! 'Tis not so very long Since other voices blended With the carol and the song! If we could but hear them singing, As they are singing now, If we could but see the radiance Of the crown on each dear brow; There would be no sigh to smother, No hidden tear to flow, As we listen in the starlight To the bells ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the Court House at that moment, Bill was forced to smother his resentment for the time being. There was nobody in Court except the Judge and the Usher, who were seated on the bench having a quiet game of cards over a bottle ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... footstool of one Martian to the knee of another, steadying myself by a free use of their nodding heads as I passed. And every time I jumped a ship collapsed behind me. As I staggered with my spring into the last and outermost boat the ledge was still six feet away, half hidden in a smother of foam, and the rim of the great fall just under it. Then I drew all my sailor agility together and just as the little vessel was going bow up over the edge I leapt from her—came down blinded with spray on the ledge, rolled over and over, clutched frantically at the frozen soil, and ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... abstraction, for as Caneri gazed in amazement, the renegade awoke from his trance, and became aware of the notice which his emotion had excited. He felt ashamed that a token of weakness should have betrayed him before man, and with a strong exertion strove to smother the commotion which swelled his breast. He dashed away the drop that fain would soften the lurid expression of his eye. His pride succeeded in the conflict: soon that lip recovered its sardonic curl, and his features relapsing ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... rabbits short, lay them in a basin of warm water for ten minutes, then put them into plenty of water, and boil them about half an hour; if large ones, three quarters; if very old, an hour: smother them with plenty of white onion sauce (No. 298), mince the liver, and lay it round the dish, or make liver sauce (No. 287), and send it ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... practical—maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the distrust of the conservative, he would appear to retract and try to smother the flames in a cloud of conciliatory smoke. Only the restraining hand of Lincoln prevented him from committing fatal blunders at the outset of the Civil War, yet his handling of the threatening episode of the French in Mexico ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... whole chapter to itself. But it might prove tedious reading, so suffice it to say, that with one man standing erect in the stern with a steering oar, and the others paddling like demons, the Ivory Coast boatmen invariably land their passengers, in a smother of foam which seems overwhelming, without spilling a drop of water on them. Not a visitor to this coast but has been impressed ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... tell that he was troubled, whether by wrath or grief, there was no knowin' which, an' would explode one way or t'other afore long. He must on deck for a fresh breath o' the wet night, says he, or smother; an' he would presently drop below again, says he, in command of his temper an' restlessness. I seed, too, that the lad wished t' follow—he watched the skipper up the ladder, like a doubtful dog, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... occasion of the organization of slaves at Beaufort, Mr. Lincoln exclaimed, "Slavery is a big job, and will smother us!" It will, if dealt with in ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... to confess it to himself, he made every effort to smother it, but the thought still stared him in the face—"I am not so strong in my ideals of personal character as I was a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... you might do 'er off Cape Stiff in the 'igh latitudes yonder, With her main-deck a smother of white an' her lee-rail dipping under, And the big greybeards drivin' by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... going to where it ought to go, we had to be buried alive. And he picked me up like I was that nut and tossed me over his shoulder, and said, 'Brother, go find your brother.' And I began sinking down in the sand deeper and deeper until I began to smother." ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... early spring, when the weather and ground are both cold. It requires the hot weather of June and July to do well; then it will keep ahead of most weeds, while if sown in April the weeds on foul land would smother it. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... summer, there has been such a hue and cry in the papers about this shutting up of churches; but he might as well, I can warn him, or he will preach to empty pews; it beats all, and to-day was communion day, too; I should have thought more would have turned out; but, I declare, I thought I should smother when I went up to the rails; and, to cap all, that old Mrs. Godfrey, who weighs at least three hundred, came and knelt close by me, and just completely crushed all one side of my flounces; I was provoked and indignant; this, added to the intense heat, was almost insupportable; ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Northern Islands, the Clouds are so short, and narrow, and by fickle changes are sometimes emptied upon us, sometimes so neer, as may make so little variation in the weight of the whole Atmosphere of Air, as may sometimes deceive us, or smother and hide from us the causes of fixedness, or of changes. I wish I could see a good Calendar or Journal taken in taken in Tangier, and in some of our Northern and most Southern parts of America. I have store of Hygroscopes of divers kinds; and I do remark them, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... won't, Boyee. Human nature ain't built that way. You'll smother it, and be glad you've got ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... opening of a period of misery for Christina. She worked furiously in house and barnyard, striving to smother the insistent voice that kept reiterating, "Whosoever will save ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... in a moment lighted up in the countenance of your friend. Your rencounter would be as unexpected and fortunate as that of Lady Randolph and her son, when she fears every moment to have him murdered by Glenalvon. You would fly into each others arms, and almost smother one another ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well as by shoveling sand upon it. Sometimes they cut down the smouldering brush and flung it back across the break into the inferno on the other side. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... a regular bed, like common people do. So Lon bedded him down in the guest chamber, but opened up the four windows in it and propped the door wide open so the poor fellow could have a breeze and not smother. He told this downtown the next morning, and he was beginning to look right puzzled indeed. He said the wayward child of Nature had got up after about half an hour and shut all the windows and the door. Lon thought first he was intending to commit suicide, but ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... once my soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... without answering. Evidently he had had time to control his chagrin, to smother his revolt from the future; for the thin face was bare of emotion. The depths of the eyes as usual turned back scrutiny. The man disclosed neither guilt nor the outrage of an assumed innocence; neither confession nor denial. He simply stared, straining a trifle against the eager hands ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... was, they departed in silence, and the last of their line had vanished under the horizon before the Indians could smother the indignation and resentment which the strangers had excited within their hearts. Days, however, passed away, and with them the recollection of the event. Afterwards, I chanced to meet, in the Arkansas, with the Colonel ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... hiland of which the innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with their cotton, and can't sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face, these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their Jessywhittickle ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... look northward. The wood-lot hid from her sight both dock and mooring—and all but the gables of the hotel, as well—but she soon espied the motor-boat standing away on a straight course for the mainland: driven at a speed that seemed to her nearly incredible, a smother of foam at its stern, long purple ripples widening away from the jet of white water at the stem, a smooth, high swell of dark water pursuing as if it meant to catch up and overwhelm the boat and its occupants. These latter occupied the extremes of the little ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the brigs in chase were now under double-reefed topsails, and the way in which they drove along through the mountainous sea, now soaring up to the crest of a wave in a smother of spray, showing the whole of their fore-foot and some twenty feet of keel, and anon diving furiously into a hollow, burying themselves to the windlass bitts, was a sight worth seeing. The brig to windward had taken up the pursuit ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... any. These love the world above all things and welcome no truth that would lead them away from any falsity in their religion. They tell themselves, "What is this to me? It is not to my way of thinking." So they reject truth on hearing it and if they listen to it smother it. They do much the same on hearing sermons; they retain some sayings but not any of the substance. Dealing in this way with truths they do not know what good is, for truth and good act as one; and from ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception would continue to smother in its molten liquidity the motifs which now and then emerge, barely discernible, to plunge again and disappear and drown; recognised only by the particular kind of pleasure which they instil, impossible to describe, to recollect, to name; ineffable;—if ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... craft would have driven through with scarcely a quiver, the big ship trembled with the buffets and suction of a wintry blast that drove dry snow like sand across the lookout glasses. The twelve thousand level was an unbroken cloud of snow—a gray smother where the red ship's blunt and rusty ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... she didn't catch us very often. We used to stuff up the cracks in the doors so she couldn't hear us talk and smother our heads in the pillows. Jonesy, the English teacher, was the worst." She was still looking in the glass, her fingers busy with the spray of blossoms on her bosom. "She always wore felt slippers and crept around like a cat. She'd tell on anybody. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grass flourished on every side, carriage-way and borders alike had been blotted into a springing waste, and the few sprawling shrubs which we could recognize hardly emerged from beneath the choking smother ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and surely ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... at least were astride of the crosstree of each mainmast, all armed with bows and arrows, and the ratlines on each side of the galleys were black with men who swarmed there like locusts ready to envelop and smother their prey. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... at last was, that I could not do better than smother my impatience for a whole week; taking, the while, excursions in every other direction so as, if possible, to blind any one who made a study of my movements. Then my journey to the cavern must be made by night, armed with spades, and taking with ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... playing ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... limousine next her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" assiduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his cushions in triumphant inebriety. Also, while she and Vandeford waited, ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... land where the kings of France long held their court; ardent, artistic, poetic, voluptuous, yet whose first impulses subside quickly. The softness of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease of life and joviality of manners, smother before long the sentiment of art, narrow the widest heart, and enervate the strongest will. Transplant the Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and lead to great results, as we may see in many spheres of action: look at Rabelais and Semblancay, Plantin the printer and Descartes, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... which but a few years since we ushered into the world, is now become a giant; and as well might you attempt to smother him as to entangle a lion in the gossamer, or drown him in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... felon's not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... On the other hand, it was claimed that many Democrats who could only be held by party claims would not respect a mere indorsement. Southern delegates argued that if Democrats hoped to defeat their opponents they must encourage the revolt by giving it prestige and power rather than smother it by compelling Liberals to choose between Grant and a Democrat. The wisdom of this view could not be avoided, and after adopting the Cincinnati platform without change, the convention, by a vote of 686 to 46, stamped the Cincinnati ticket with the highest Democratic authority.[1378] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... slowly paid off and gathered away the white squall broke upon them. The sea was a-smother with mist and rain. The wind whipped through the shrouds and rigging, but everything held. Taking a great bone in her teeth the old Almirante Recalde heeled far over to leeward and ripped through the water to the southward ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thought to shoot the cat, for it was for all the world like a wild beast, and one proposed one thing and one another; at last Jim, the cabin-boy, comes forward with some brimstone matches in a pan, and he lights them and lowers them down into the fore-peak by a rope-yarn, to smother it out. And so it did sure enough, for all of a sudden the cat made a spring up to the deck, and then we all chased it here and there, until at last it got out to the end of the flying jib-boom, and then Jim, the cabin-boy, followed ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the man who such doings would smother!— On, Luther of Bavan! On, Saint of Kilgroggy! With whip in one hand and with Bible in t'other, Like Mungo's tormentor, both "preachee ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... smother'd sigh, Rose the snowy bosom high Of the blue-eyed lassie. Fleeter than the streamers fly, When they flit athwart the sky, Went and came the rosy dye On ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... which the adversaries of the Christian view of the world so willingly point, are but a confirmation of its value. For they show us how divine and heavenly the gift must be, if even such errors were not able to smother its fruits. If we do not wish to suppose that mankind has foundations and ends which up to the present it is not yet allowed to know, we certainly must look for these foundations and ends where we find the best which has so far ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... accepted them, as I hear women of her fashion do whiles, I called her back and took them, full of despite, from her hands and have brought them to you, so you may return them to him and tell him I want none of his trash, for that, thanks to God and my husband, I have purses and girdles enough to smother him withal. Moreover, if hereafter he desist not from this, I tell you, as a father, you must excuse me, but I will tell it, come what may, to my husband and my brothers; for I had far liefer he should brook an affront, if needs he must, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Tom aloud. "The worm gear must have shut of itself. But I don't see how that could be. I've got to get out mighty soon, though, or I'll smother. This tank is airtight, and it won't take me long to breath up all the oxygen there is here. I must get ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... small flame burst out from the rug before the fire, and not far from the crib where Willie lay sleeping. In an instant, however, the thought "What shall I do?" was followed by the remembrance of what her mother had often said, "If in any way your dress should ever take fire, you must try to smother it at once; never run away, but throw yourself down, or wrap yourself in anything ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... a mirror had reflected the scene, I saw myself standing by the bedside, with the pillow that was to smother the sleeper in my hands. I heard the whispering voice telling me how to speak the words that warned and condemned her: "Wake! you who have taken him from me! ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... just push on hell-for-leather for the position which the turkey-expert is holding; and then if he is being attacked, and wind and tide will allow it, we will just hurl ourselves into ole man De Wet, smother him, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... absolutely declined to exchange another word with them, but ordered Captains Carpentier and St. Hilaire, by whom they had been escorted to his quarters, to conduct them out of the town again by the same road which had brought them there. There was nothing for it but to comply, and to smother their resentment at such extraordinary treatment as best they could. When they got to the old harbour on the western side the tide had risen so high that it was impossible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hearts full of false tenderness, for those women with the laudable and fine talent of knowing how to smother their husbands with caresses in order to make them oblivious ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... communicated to the crown of the plant, and that means failure. Of late years I protect my plants by inverting small boxes over them. The sides of these boxes are bored full of holes to admit air, which must be allowed to circulate freely about the plant, or it will smother. I invert a box over the plant after filling it with leaves, and draw more leaves about the outside of it. This prevents water from coming in contact with the soft, sponge-like foliage, and the plant comes out in spring almost as green ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... in excess of industry covered one of her neat white sides completely, having jumped at the conclusion that the captain had bought her. It was an expensive blunder, and a practical lesson in the chemistry of colours. A large quantity of white paint had to be bought to smother the black coat, and another lot of black paint for ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... feelingly described became known to the lady's father, she was sent away at once, and Bulwer never saw her again. Very soon after, she was forced into a marriage against which her heart protested. For three years she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and when she sunk under the conflict, and death was about to relieve her, she wrote to Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had undergone, affirming her deathless love, and begging him ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... I had to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to feed your remembers on in days when pleasures are ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal; I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stove griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire. The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good places for me in case of attack, but hard to find for ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... swift movements of some deed of violence done in the dark. As if at a given signal, the run of the smooth undulations seemed checked suddenly around the brig. By a strange optical delusion the whole sea appeared to rise upon her in one overwhelming heave of its silky surface, where in one spot a smother of foam broke out ferociously. And then the effort subsided. It was all over, and the smooth swell ran on as before from the horizon in uninterrupted cadence of motion, passing under us with a slight friendly toss of our boat. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... just die, I know I shall!" exclaimed Belle Burnette, going off into a hysterical fit of laughter, which she vainly tried to smother behind an ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... caught a root and yanked himself to the top. Again he was out of their sight. He sprang around another hulk of stone and skidded to a halt. At his feet, a sheer cliff dropped nearly a hundred feet to a white smother of surf. ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... led him on to a future gilded by Sir Hugh Johnstone's money. He longed to ruffle it bravely with the best. To hold up his head once more in official circles, and to smother the ugly floating memories ef a renegade who had served those English guns under the fierce Sikkim hill tribes against his one-time fellow soldiers. "I must have that money, with or without the girl! There must be a way to it! I ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... just stop, this minute, Kathie!" and then, when she kept right on, he threw the old sofa pillow at her, and told her to go smother herself; Nora said, "Horrid child!" in her most disgusted tone, and Nannie and Betty coaxed and coaxed, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... necessity drove him - of what was to be. Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this way. Here is the pier," but the splashing continued, and a smother of sound came to me, as if the swimmer were under water, and his voice stifled. Almost without thinking, I gripped the thick, tarry rope and let myself over the basin, until I had reached the surface of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... thrum O'er the arch'd wave that in white smother booms "Mother of Mystery, come! Fain for thee wait other brides, ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... uprooting of the tree. Mother Grizzly arose and struggled toward the dim glimmer of light, but she could not break her way out. The snow was light and dry and would not pack, and her buffetings only brought a feathery smother down upon her and the cubs. All she accomplished was to let down the frail roofing of the den and get a glimpse of the sky. She tried to climb up the drift, but sank out of sight and had to back out of the smother. Digging was futile, for the snow ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and heavier frigates. Surely we must now mean to smother the American navy. A very short time before the capture of the Guerriere an American frigate was an object of ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually setting the other way and great pains seems to be taken by the friends of ministers to prepare the public for the surrender ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... disappointment; and these were terrible trials! At last, the mother was made acquainted with her son's new mode of life, by the treasured 5s. which the poor boy thrust into her hand one evening, with a strange shy pride that brought all the blood into his face, while he kissed her with impetuosity to smother her reproaches. She asked him how he had got so much money—so much! and then he told her how, self-taught, he had learned to cut out figures—dogs and landscapes—in coloured paper, which he had taken to the bazaars and stationers' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... with the yoke, Brown as the sweet-smelling loam, Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the shepherd set her down, and before any one could interfere she had run up the steps of the dais and then the steps of the king's throne like a squirrel, flung herself upon the king, and begun to smother ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... United States troops to be stationed at Lawrence to secure "the safety of the citizens in both, person and property," asking also a like company for Lecompton and Topeka. The next day the citizens of Lawrence had the opportunity to smother their indignation when they saw the embers of the Free-State Hotel and the scattered fragments of their printing-presses patrolled and "protected" by the Federal dragoons whose presence they had vainly implored a few days before. It was time the Governor should ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband. Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they must ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... to do there arose a great doubt, For Bruin and Johnson had both just found out What neither had thought of until 'twas too late, That each was exposed to a merciless fate At the hands, or the teeth, or the claws of the other, At which neither could his astonishment smother, And neither knew what it was safest to do; 'Twas hard to hold on, but 'twas worse to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... this, the fragile poetess? Whose high soul-yearnings nought can smother— "She's stouter far than I am now, ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... came downstairs to prepare Bos'n's breakfast—the housekeeper had ceased to "go home nights" since the captain's absence—the world outside was a tumbled, driving whirl of white. The woodshed and barn, dimly seen through the smother, were but gray shapes, emerging now and then only to be wiped from the vision as by a great flapping cloth wielded by the mighty hand of the wind. The old house shook in the blasts, the windowpanes rattled as if handfuls of small shot were being thrown against them, and the carpet on the floor of ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... white muslin, lies upon the funeral pile. At the moment that the victim throws herself upon the corpse, the wood is lighted on all sides. At the same time, a deafening noise is commenced with musical instruments, and every one begins to shout and sing, in order to smother the howling of the poor woman. After the burning, the bones are collected, placed in an urn, and interred upon some eminence under a small monument. Only the wives (and of these only the principal or favourite ones) of the wealthy or noble ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!): 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... wagon-seat behind and explains the mosquito. He tells us that they are "of the order Diptera," "sub-order Nemocera," and chiefly "of the family Culicidae," and he also goes so far as to tell us that they "annoy man." As we bump along in the muskeg and the creatures surround us in a smother, he ventures to assert that "the life of the adult insect is very short" and that it is the female who stings. The Doctor is a born instructor. We learn that "the natural food of the mosquito is a drop or two of the juice of a plant." We suspect the Doctor of fagging up on "Mosquito" out ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... despair, and moaning out that he didn't love Verena, he never had loved her, it was only his hatred of their cause that made him pretend it; he wanted to do that an injury, to do it the worst he could think of. He didn't love her, he hated her, he only wanted to smother her, to crush her, to kill her—as she would infallibly see that he would if she listened to him. It was because he knew that her voice had magic in it, and from the moment he caught its first note he had determined ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... to think kindly of Rome, and rebukes all opposition to the church as bigotry or ignorance on the part of those with whom she associates. The influence is noticeable. It is fashionable to attend the Papal Church, fashionable to contribute to its prosperity, fashionable for men to smother their opinions, fashionable for the politician to seek the favor of that power that furnishes, in its subtlety and in its power to work in darkness, a ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... bringing his fist down with a thump on the table, "take care what you are doing. I tell you it has taken me three long years to smother the hopes which awoke in my heart when I was last at home. Don't awake them again, lest they should master me; unless you have some gleam of hope ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Kisse in two let's breake, Confounded with the touch, But halfe words let vs speake, Our Lip's imploy'd so much, 60 Vntill we both grow weake, With sweetnesse of thy breath; O smother me to death: Long let our ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Whether we burn gas or wood or coal, the heat which is produced comes from the power which these various substances possess to combine with oxygen. We open the draft of a stove that it may "draw well": that it may secure oxygen for burning. We throw a blanket over burning material to smother the fire: to keep oxygen away from it. Burning, or oxidation, is combining with oxygen, and the more oxygen you add to a fire, the hotter the fire will burn, and the faster. The effect of oxygen on combustion may be clearly seen by thrusting a smoldering ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... made good work of it, I tell you, and you won't do nothin' like that agin this winter—not in Warwick; but I won't touch them quail—it's a sin to break that bunch—but you don't never care to take the rabbits home, and the old woman's got some beautiful fresh onions—she'll make a stew of them—a smother, as you call it, in a little less than no time, Archer; and I've got half a dozen of them big gray snipe—English snipe—that I killed down by my little run'-side; you'll have them roasted with the guts in, I ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... mass of humanity began to writhe and swell, as a frightened crowd does in the dark, so that every one feels as if all the other people were growing hugely big, as big as elephants, to smother and crush him; and each man makes himself as broad as he can, and tries to swell out his chest, and squares his elbows to keep the weight off his sides; and with the steady strain and effort every one breathes hard, and few speak, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... no uproar. We are about to enter the sacred precincts of Assembly Hall. I feel that on account of my years of experience I must make myself responsible for the behavior of you children. Smother that giggle, Nora O'Malley," he commanded, looking at Nora with an expression of severity that set oddly on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... moments the result seemed doubtful, so doubtful that Nick finally threw Cervera heavily to the floor, the better to press the matting closely around her and so smother the flames. In this he presently succeeded, but not before she was so severely burned as to be rendered ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... him and throws it into the cellar] Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! [Pushes Nikta down] It's your doing, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... THE PASSION OF FREEDOM is one of the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity of Babylon, or in the servitude of Rome. How does the passion express ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Love's neglect is Time's abusing, They and beauty are but lent you; Take the one, and keep the other: Love keeps fresh what age doth smother, Beauty gone, you ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and removed. Sometimes in small areas they may be killed by crude sulphuric acid or may be starved by covering them with boards or a straw stack or in some other convenient way. A method that is very effective is to smother the weeds by a dense growth of some other plant, for example, cowpeas or buckwheat. Cowpeas are to be preferred, since they also enrich the soil by the nitrogen ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... would you have of me, my friend, in truth, A breath of understanding, or a glance Into your soul's dark places? Can a word Aid in your brave attempt to smother youth? Of what avail that trifling circumstance, In such a tumult could my ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... vain the hope to find in each The wisdom each denies the other; These mazes of conflicting speech All theories of culture smother. I'll raise and reap, with honest hand, The native harvest of my land; Do thou the same, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... house. That is the installation of a system of perforated pipes in the dead air spaces behind all walls connected with storage tanks of carbon dioxide under pressure. If a fire breaks out, turning on this system will flood the house with a gas that will smother all flame. Mount Vernon is a notable example of ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... detained there more than a couple of minutes, though it may have seemed much longer to the anxious lad, for his heart beat so tumultuously that it really threatened to smother him. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... path that she cannot escape from: nay oft is she nothing, he saith, Save a staff for the foredoomed staying, and a sword for the ordered death; And that he will be wiser than this, nor thrust his desire aside, Nor smother the flame of his hatred; but the steed of the Norns will he ride, Till he see great marvels and wonders, and leave great tales to be told: And measureless pride is in him, a stern heart, stubborn ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... had not the girl urged him on. It was the time of night when she had started to run away, and the same apprehension that filled her then came upon her with the evening. She longed to be out of the land which held the man she feared. She would rather bury herself in the earth and smother to death than be caught by him. But, as they rode on, she told her companion much of the habits of the curious little creatures they had seen; and then, as the night settled down upon them, she pointed out the dark, stealing creatures that slipped from their way now and then, or gleamed with a ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... fumes and smother, half a dozen men fought their way. From the bulkheads they snatched down the little fire-grenades. The Master went first. Bohannan was second, with Rrisa a close third. Leclair in his forward rush almost stumbled over Alden. The "Captain," masked and still unrecognized as ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... on with your bridle, my boy, we'll soon be out of this smother." It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it lightly over my eyes, and patting and coaxing he led me out of the stable. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shouted, "Here somebody! take this horse while ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... the storm broke in all its fury—being little short, in violence, of a West Indian hurricane. On through the mist, through the smother of foam, over the big greenish-blue waves scudded the Tartar, the lieutenant, in oilskins, standing in the bows, peering ahead for a sight of ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... became too dark to see. Then suddenly a big sea broke over his stern, and left the skiff half filled with water. This was serious. He could not relinquish the oars to bail out the water. Another such deluge would smother him. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... with arithmetic and geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... your life away. The ship's on fire somewhere forward, and what we've got to do is to pump the water over it, and try and put it out. If we can't do that, we must shut down the hatches, and see if we can't smother it." ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them from starvation. The hunting will be mighty poor next fall, for the deer and other varmints ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... haunting than even a gunpowder treason in the cellars! What did he do with the seals? Did he seal up mischievous heiresses in closets, as she had seen a door fastened by two seals and a bit of string? Perhaps the Court of Chancery was full of such prisons! And was the woolsack to smother them with, like the princes ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror which is past. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into a useful opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but for himself, he knew he had neither the needed strength nor clearness; she would smother him in decoration, overcome him by her picturesque persistence. It might be ridiculous to run away from her, but it was necessary. And he was equally clear now that for him there must be no idea of any pulpit, of any sustained mission. He was a man of intellectual moods; only at ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... have enter'd into a resolution of injoying free liberty in Love, without being Troubled or disturbed by its consequences. These mix and Cohabit together with the utmost freedom, and the Chilldren who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smother'd at the Moment of their Birth; many of these People contract intimacies and live together as man and wife for years, in the course of which the Children that are born are destroy'd. They are so far from concealing it that they look upon it as a branch of freedom upon which they Value themselves. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... with me all the time I was away, but when I reasoned with myself I would smother it as well as I could with argumentative attempts at self-assurance. I would say over and over to myself that Mary could not fail, and that even if she did, there was Jane, dear, sweet, thoughtful, unselfish Jane, who would not allow her to do so. But as far as they ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... or be stifled for a time—an apathetic temperament will seek to smother, a harsh one to bind, a strong one to subdue it—but it overcomes them all; and though a man's speech may run according to his learning, and his deeds according to his habits, yet nature thinks and speaks within him, often in direct opposition to the words that fall from his ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... widowed heart may love another— For living without love, it soon would die— There will be moments when it cannot smother Thy sweet remembrance with a passing sigh. Amidst the ashes of its dying embers For thee there will be found one deathless thought; Yes, dearest lady! while this heart remembers, Believe me, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was trying to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew the cause of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... down. She has a slight headache," Mary answered, giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I yielded to impulse, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,—this it is to be slave-masters indeed; and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was a mask of quiet dignity. The tragedy in the woman's heart made the more pathetic the comedy of the half-drunken husband. Besides, he was philosopher enough to know that more than half the drunkenness of the world was the pitiful effort to smother a heartache. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon |
