"Harrowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obstructed her utterance for a time. 'How can you turn upon me so when I schemed to get you here—schemed that you might win her till I found you were married. O, how can you! O!... O!' She wept; and the weeping of such a nature was as harrowing as the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... roots—and the furrows I drew would have brought the laughing to Dan McBride; but the soil was not so black, but where the rabbits had burrowed there was good green grass among the red scrapings. The sowing and the harrowing were the easy job after that, and I mind me how I leaned on that dyke and gazed on the first three acres won out of the hill, when the green breard was showing, as a man might gaze on his first-born son. In these night trakings in the hills I learned ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... of the cut or moulded blocks, and peat as obtained by plowing and harrowing the surface of drained peat-beds—may be used to advantage in the stair grate, fig. 1, which was introduced some years ago in Austria, and is adapted exclusively for burning finely divided fuel. It consists of a series ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... by an eye-witness, pictures with terrible vividness the scenes which followed. Many cases are described with harrowing detail, and of one Blandina it is said: "From morn till eve they put her to all manner of torture, marvelling that she still lived with her body pierced through and through and torn piecemeal by so many tortures, of which a single ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... intelligence are admitted into those papers which the emperor is willing his subjects should know. The freedom of republican America is carefully excluded. The slavery which disgraces our land is ostentatiously exhibited in harrowing descriptions and appalling engravings, as a specimen of the degradation to which republican ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... just used it!" said Marta. But coming from a man sobbing it sounded differently. His hands fell away from his face as if they were a dead weight. She saw him a wreck of a human being with only his eyes alive, regarding her in harrowing wonder ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of New England life and character. The poor young orphans have a dismal time of it among their hard and coarse relatives. The sterner forms of Puritanism are well depicted. The scene at the funeral of poor Demis, with its harrowing and denunciatory sermon over the corpse of the innocent girl, is powerful and true. The character of the 'help,' Debby, is drawn from life, and is admirably conceived and sustained. The book is, however, melancholy and monotonous. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can omit to mention that black-eye business. That kind of an anecdote would be harrowing to the minds of literary inclined gentlefolks. You can reminisce about how you helped me carry wood while I recited passages of poem out of that ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... remarkable. He showed no fear of the crabs, and darted around so quickly that he caught every one in the room. The one-legged one that Harvey had thrown out of the window was never found. Perhaps it made its way back to the river, and told of its harrowing experiences on land, and especially how it had lost ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... public. After the gentle sex had to a great extent given up the habit, some strong minded females were to be found who retained it. Mrs. Siddons, when she came off the stage after dying hard, as Desdemona, or harrowing the hearts of her audience by her representation of Jane Shore, could composedly ask those around for a pinch of the precious restorative. When we consider the beneficial influence which snuff has exerted over mankind generally, we cannot help regretting that its virtues ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... into a a Massive, Damask-covered Chair with heavily-carved Arms of highly-polished Oak, and sounded the Tiny, Tintinnabulating Call-Bell for Something to Counteract the Effects of the Too-exhilerating Potables of my Friend, and his no less Harrowing Stories! ...
— Love Instigated - The Story of a Carved Ivory Umbrella Handle • Douglass Sherley
... It is always harrowing up somebody—the stage child; it really ought not to be left about as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother it fishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly severed forever from her lover, and asks her in a ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... appreciative echo in his heart. When at last he handed me a long box with a gorgeous medal and ribbon, and bade me good-bye, I vowed I could sing "God save the King" louder than ever if I could do so without harrowing the feelings of my more ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... There, by the patient's bed, I came on Linda, Harriet's half-sister! (Reputed so, at least, but here's a doubt.) I questioned her, and now am satisfied Treason and forgery have been at work, Defeating Harriet's sisterly intent; Moreover, that the harrowing surmise, Waked by a servant's gossip overheard, Is, in all probability, the truth! And, if we so accept it, what can I Advise but Harriet's complete surrender Of all her fortune to the real child And proper heir of Albert ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... bill was presented in both Houses of Parliament for the immediate abolition of negro apprenticeship. Many harrowing details of the cruelties practiced were cited. Mr. Gladstone returned to the championship of the planters with increased power and success. His long, eloquent and powerful speech of March 30th, although on the unpopular side of the question, is regarded ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... certain ship, the 'Francis Todd,' from Newburyport, came to Baltimore and took in a load of slaves for the New Orleans market. All the harrowing cruelties and separations which attend the rending asunder of families and the sale of slaves, were enacted under the eyes of the youthful philanthropist, and in a burning article he denounced the inter-State slave-trade as piracy, and piracy of an aggravated ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... for himself by yielding to the specious processes of Morton and Carrington. Yet, she could imagine no scheme that offered any promise of success.... She grew thinner, so that her loveliness took on an ethereal quality. Her nights were well nigh sleepless; her days became long hours of harrowing anxiety. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... alike the just and the unjust, and the loving sympathetic slave boy witnessed the suffering and death of his little white friend. Then grief took possession of the little slave, he could not bear the sight of little Dick's toys nor books not [TR: nor?] clothing. He recalls one harrowing experience after the death of little Dick Buckner. George's grandmother was a housekeeper and kitchen maid for the white family. She was in the kitchen one late afternoon preparing the evening meal. The master had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... pine-top: it is of no value;—the other is a long, fine brush, the middle being no coarser than the outside. It should be planted with a seed-drill, to make the rows straight and narrow for the convenience of cultivation. Harrowing with a span of horses, with a V drag, one front tooth out, as soon as the corn is up, is beneficial ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... eye can stare in stony trance Whose hair can rouse like warrior's lance, 'Tis hard for such to view, unfurled, The curtain of the future world. Yet, witness every quaking limb, My sunken pulse, mine eyeballs dim, My soul with harrowing anguish torn, This for my Chieftain have I borne!— The shapes that sought my fearful couch A human tongue may ne'er avouch; No mortal man—save he, who, bred Between the living and the dead, Is gifted beyond nature's law Had e'er survived to say he saw. At length the fateful answer ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... endurance permits.) Whatever puffing accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, no foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but never where they are needed, and never the proper application. Of all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days following a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds of the noblest men on earth, uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to death, or die from exhaustion, either actually untouch'd at all, or merely ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... There was no time to say more. He ran. Another second and he was at the top, over the railing, and in the good, honest, public high-road again, safe. A hoarse shout of 'Got yer!' from below told a harrowing tale of capture. The stranger had fallen into the hands of the enemy. Very cautiously Barrett left the road and crept to the railing again. It was a rash thing to do, but curiosity overcame him. He had to see, or, if that was impossible, to hear ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... any case, that by harlotry, licentiousness and prostitution the grandest intellects are overturned and the most harrowing discords produced in society. As long as society tolerates conditions of ignorance in regard to sexuality, and fosters or permits establishments having for their avowed purpose the excitement of the passions and the obliteration of the virtues, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... firing an anvil at the peace jubilee in Cincinnati, the powder on the anvil being the only powder John Kollander ever had smelled. But his descriptions of battle and the hardships and horrors of war were none the less vivid and harrowing because he had never crossed ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to carry all the products of the valley by rail. Millions of dollars' worth of merchandise were delayed at the bars. As early as 1726 attempts had been made to deepen the channels through the river's mouths by harrowing. But the first government effort was in 1837, when an appropriation was made for a survey and for dredging with buckets. Again in 1852 another appropriation was made; and a board, appointed by ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... down!' said Caffyn to himself, with one of his peculiar impulses to safe and secret malevolence. 'If you will get them all together, dear Mrs. Langton,' he replied, 'I'll see what I can do.' And accordingly he entertained them with a harrowing little poem about a poor child dying of starvation in a garret, and dreaming of wealthier and happier children enjoying themselves at parties, which made all the children uncomfortable, and some of the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... cabin a prey to the most harrowing thoughts. Here he was anchored to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... at the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,—the geese especially. One seldom sees more ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... by this harrowing narrative, Francine turned her head lazily toward the house. The door was thrown open at the same moment. A lithe little person rapidly descended the steps that led to ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... mournful humour, and with a narrative rather than a dramatic background—the portraiture of a condition; and, because the man displayed is neither so noble nor so human, the pathos surcharging the work is neither so harrowing nor so tender. Yet the two works are akin in majesty of ideal, in the terrible topic of mental disease that shatters a king, and in the atmosphere of desolation that trails after them like a funeral pall; and it is not a wonder that Alfieri's Saul should be deemed the greatest ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... a rough road in a lumbering old Spanish stagecoach, and the thrilling, harrowing events that succeeded their arrival at the Posada, it is little wonder that Mrs. Forest took to her bed early in the day on the verge of a nervous collapse, or that Colonel Van Ashton, contrary to his habit, retired early in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... his gratitude that his parting soul had been soothed by these pious and friendly offices. By a revulsion of feeling, he then bewailed again the sad fate of his wife and of his young children. The Bishop entreated him anew to withdraw his mind from such harrowing reflections, and to give himself entirely to God. Overwhelmed with grief, Egmont exclaimed with natural and simple pathos—"Alas! how miserable and frail is our nature, that, when we should think of God only, we are unable to shut out the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have undoubtedly been through a most harrowing experience. If you have any untoward symptoms, possibly I ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... with Gahan of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be dashed to destruction he presently found himself deposited gently upon the soft, ochre moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse off for his harrowing adventure than in the possession of a slight swelling upon his forehead where the metal hook had struck him. Scarcely able to believe that Fate had dealt thus gently with him, the jed arose slowly, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suffered vicariously with this altruistic dolt. His suffering now was not vicarious. For three days he endured on the raw of his own soul tortures even more ingeniously harrowing. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... garden enclosed, not a wilderness. The garden soil is a cultivated soil, very different from the roadside or the wilderness. The idea of a garden is culture. The ground has to be prepared, to be broken up by ploughing, to be mellowed by harrowing, all the stones removed, the roots of all natural growth dug up, for the good things we are seeking are not natural growths and will not grow in our soil. We all start on the old basis and try to improve the old nature, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... and disappeared; while the boys, in the silence of intense anxiety, crowded as close as they dared to the edge of the wharf, and the Lascars looked down from their bulwarks in stolid admiration. There were some moments of harrowing uncertainty, and then a shout arose from the boys, which even the swarthy sailors imitated, after a fashion; for cleaving the bubbled surface came the head of brave John Connors, and, close beside it, the dripping curls of Bert Lloyd, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... me the blues," grumbled Elfreda. "I don't want to think about my 'real life' or any other solemn old subject. There's a time to reflect, but this isn't the time. I'd rather save all my harrowing reflections until just before commencement. Then we might give a misery party and invite our friends to glower ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... They spent a horrid, harrowing night, for now the general distress was brought home to them more poignantly than ever. At dawn they learned that these people were actually dying of neglect. The faint light betrayed the presence of new corpses lying upon the station flagstones. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... certain degree made necessary, these cruelties. It was at this point that he began to speculate on the origin and nature of slavery. Meanwhile he became, in the course of his life on the plantation, the witness of other scenes quite as harrowing, and the memory mingled with ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... established, for it was as destitute of sustenance as the arid plains of the Arabian Desert when the great Napoleon undertook to cross it with his beaten army. All, with the exception of water; we had plenty of that. Passing over a part of the battlefield about the 5th of September, the harrowing sights that were met with were in places too sickening to admit of description. The enemy's dead, in many places, had been left unburied, it being a veritable instance of "leaving the dead to bury the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... breathing corse, I have moved, a skeleton; And though I address or see Never but one man alone, Who my sorrows all hath known, And through whom have come to me Notions of earth, sky, and sea; And though harrowing thee again, Since thou'lt call me in this den, Monster fit for bestial feasts, I'm a man among wild beasts, And a wild beast amongst men. But though round me has been wrought All this woe, from beasts I've learned Polity, the same ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... He said a report had gone out that two devils were passing through the country. The dinner was one of those incongruous Turkish mixtures of sweet and sour, which was by no means relieved by the harrowing Turkish music which our host ground out ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... came to Phillis's eyes. But Mrs. Cheyne never once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the pair of tiny ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and pillows of some poor tormented wretch, calling on God and man to end his misery. There is a hidden instinct—of a low and cowardly kind, but human nevertheless—which bids us turn away from spectacles of agony whether harrowing or repulsive, until the good angel comes and whispers that we must trample on such coarse impulse and do our duty. "Show pity," said the wise old Frenchman, "do anything to alleviate distress, but avoid actually feeling either compassion or ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... most harrowing to Leonard was that, at every turn, the active part fell to Arthur, while him fate held mercilessly to the passive; and his soul writhed in unworded prayer for any conceivable turn of events that would give him leave to act, ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... a little strange how the boys could come to converse as they did while surrounded by such gruesome sights; but after several hours' familiarity with such scenes these begin to lose some of their harrowing features. And while Rob and his chum were still shocked by frequent sights, they did not feel the same weakness that had, in the beginning, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... still further harrowing experience for Zeke after reaching the Southern Railway's terminal on the pier at Pinner's Point, in Virginia, for here he was hurried aboard the ferry-boat, and was immediately appalled by the warning blast of the whistle. Few bear that strident din undismayed. This ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Hone's Ancient Mysteries; in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants.. . anciently performed at Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the publications of the Shakespearean and other societies. See especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play, edited from the original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell, London, 1840. One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth. Says Hase (as above, p. 42): "In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... that Madame Zattiany has decided to come out of her shell at last," said Judge Trent, shaking vigorously. "I've been urging it for some time. But she has had a long and harrowing experience, and seemed to want only to rest. I think the stir she made at your first-nights, Clavering, had something to do with it. There was a time, you know, when she never appeared without making a sensation—like poor ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... but not unless. Fancy the poor critic going through a volume and saying to himself: "Now is this Shanks or is it Graves trying to score off him by a parody? Again, is this one of the Sitwells writing like Sassoon in order to drive the grocers to delirium?" But, harrowing thought, perhaps it is neither, but only some admirer of the Georgian Mind at Capetown or Melbourne, who has produced for his own use an amalgam of several styles. The mere writing about it is making me so uncomfortable that I must ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... are too harrowing," said Horace mildly. "The body of the gown—isn't that what you call ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... come back to-morrow, beginning precisely where he had left off. But he was not born in England; only educated there—which is something. A few more of our public men would be the better for a little Harrowing. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... listened with gasping attention for the sound of the ocean mingled with my father's groans; and then wept untill my strength was gone and I was calm and faint, when I have recollected all this I have asked myself if this were not madness. While in London these and many other dreadful thoughts too harrowing for words were my portion: I lost all this suffering when I was free; when I saw the wild heath around me, and the evening star in the west, then I could weep, gently weep, and be ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... heard was true; and from time to time some gentleman passing to or from the hunting-field would drop in, when Tommy was produced and proved to be speechless, while Mrs. Fry told the tale with every harrowing detail. The great Lord Fitzdenys himself came once, and the doctor regained favour in Mrs. Fry's eyes by bringing another doctor to see what he called "this interesting case;" and as none of the gentlemen ever went away without giving a few pence ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... thirty French Lords and Valets, and the glory of Most Christian King irradiating him. Very diligent for the first six months, till September or October next, which we may call his SEED-TIME; and by no means resting after nine or twelve months, while the harrowing and hoeing went on. In January, 1742, he had the great satisfaction to see a Bavarian Kaiser got, instead of an Austrian; and everywhere the fruit of his diligent husbandry begin to BEARD fairly above ground, into a crop ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... trenches we have just left, and seeming already to overflow them. But our eyes and ears are violently monopolized by the two batteries between which we are passing; they are firing into the infinity of the attackers, and each shot plunges into life. Never have I been so affected by the harrowing sight of artillery fire. The tubes bark and scream in crashes that can hardly be borne; they go and come on their brakes in starts ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... true—John Baxter was dead. His violent outbreak of the previous afternoon had hastened the end that the doctor had prophesied. There was no harrowing death scene. The weather-beaten old face grew calmer, and, the sleep sounder, until the tide went out—that was all. It was like a peaceful coming into port after a rough voyage. No one of the watchers about the bed could wish him back, not even Elsie, ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... believed that the shock destroyed his reason. At any rate, the fact remains that that term (the summer term, mark you) he won two prizes. In the following term he won three. To recapitulate his outrages from that time to the present were a harrowing and unnecessary task. Suffice it that he is now a Regius Professor, and I saw in the papers a short time ago that a lecture of his on 'The Probable Origin of the Greek Negative', created quite a furore. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... never put my foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to my secret soul. I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the remainder of the winter. I was given to understand that Belle Marigold was actually engaged to Fred Hencoop. And she might have been mine! Alas, that ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... little caravel, holding four sick, battered, Portuguese sailors and a Spanish pilot, all of them little more than living skeletons, was blown on the Madeira shore near where Christopher dwelt. Their tale was a harrowing one. They had started, they said, months before from the Canaries for the Madeiras, but had been blown far, far, far, to the west; and then, when the wind quieted down so that they could try to get back, their ship became disabled and ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... be needlessly harrowing to dwell on the sights of horror we encountered at every turn. We pressed on, rapidly yet cautiously, our feet dabbling in blood wherever we trod. As we proceeded down a street about ten feet broad, we heard in front sounds as of voices shouting and singing. The avenue ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... and all is confusion and uproar. The first thought is for the corpse; but who is to lift such a heavy weight and carry it to a place of safety without the dreaded jolting, almost as painful to the survivors as would be cremation itself? Such harrowing thoughts are usually cut short by the entrance of six or eight sturdy men from the nearest guild, who, armed with the necessary ropes and poles, bear away the coffin through flame and smoke with the utmost gentleness ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... becomes the nucleus of a pearl of romance. Mr. Marion Crawford, in a recent work, describes his hero, who is a novelist, at work. This young gentleman, by a series of faults or misfortunes, has himself become a centre of harrowing emotion. Two young ladies, to each of whom he has been betrothed, are weeping out their eyes for him, or are kneeling to heaven with despairing cries, or are hardening their hearts to marry men for whom they "do not care ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... affected," said she, wiping the glasses of her spectacles, "by any novel, excepting the 'Tale of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy', which is indeed pathos itself; but your plan of omitting a formal conclusion will never do. You may be as harrowing to our nerves as you will in the course of your story, but, unless you had the genius of the author of 'Julia de Roubignd,' never let the end be altogether overclouded. Let us see a glimpse of sunshine in the last chapter; it ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the Second Dragoons, with whom Governor Cumming was making the trip, had a harrowing experience. There was much confusion in organizing his regiment of six companies at Fort Leavenworth, and he did not begin his march until September 17, with a miserable lot of mules and insufficient supplies. He found little grass for the animals, and after ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... happen) Rose smothered her alarm clock at the first warning snarl. She was wide-awake at once, as are those whose yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows are all alike. Rose never opened her eyes to the dim, tantalising half-consciousness of a something delightful or a something harrowing in store for her that day. For one to whom the wash-woman's Tuesday visitation is the event of the week, and in whose bosom the delivery boy's hoarse "Groc-rees!" as he hurls soap and cabbage on the kitchen table, arouses ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... much to their astonishment and not a little to their delight, found themselves somewhat in the hero class. Their exhausted, wild-eyed, haggard appearance gave more color to the story of the harrowing experience they claimed to have undergone in rescuing Hazelton from that awful field of carnage up by ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... unfriendly the forest had once looked to me in like circumstances, so that I had felt suddenly thrust outside into empty spaces. Almost was I tempted to intervene; but I liked Dick, and I wanted to do him good. This experience was harrowing, but it prepared his mind for the seeds of wisdom. By the following morning he had chastened his spirit, forgotten the assurance breathed from the windy pages of the Boy Trapper Library, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... threw the coins to the old man and the child, left the footway, and turned towards the houses; the harrowing sight of the Seine fretted him ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... true I am thus strongly armed, and I thank you, my dear Fabian, for confiding in my faithfulness."—As was usual a few cheering sun-beams followed the cooling shower.—"Forgive me, my dear husband, for harrowing your feelings; but there are times when even ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... you have not said a word respecting your mother." His face flushed, and the tears started in his eyes, as he replied, in a broken voice, "She's dead! Only think, Ellis, she died within a stone's throw of me, and I searching for her all the while. I never speak of it unless compelled; it is too harrowing. It was a great trial to me; it almost broke my heart to think that she perished miserably so near me, whilst I was in the enjoyment of every luxury. Oh, if she could only have lived to see me as I am now!" continued he; "but He ordered it otherwise, and we must bow. 'Twas God's will it should be ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and sow'd with the mark of the cyder-press, crab-kernels, &c. kept secure from cattel till able to defend it self; it would yield excellent stocks to graff and transplant: And thus any larger plot, by plowing and cross-plowing the ground, and sowing it with all sorts of forest-seeds; breaking and harrowing the clods, and cleansing it from weeds with the haugh, (till the plants over-top them) a very profitable grove may be rais'd, and yield magazin of singular advantage, to ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... may thus be said to have had two tails—one in connection with his body, the other with his career. This tale, though short, is very harrowing, and as it is intimately connected with Crusoe's subsequent history we will relate it here. But before doing so we must beg our reader to accompany us beyond the civilized portions of the United ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... shoulder I noted to my dismay an enormous land-crab towing our dory seaward. It was a harrowing moment. As agreed upon, we waited for Triplett to take the initiative and in the interim I took a hasty inventory of our reception committee. The general impression was that of great beauty and physique ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... his questioner curiously. He looked about at the other men. The strain was increasingly telling on them. Old men, all of them, the difference that the last three days had made in their appearance was startling. A furtive, harrowing fear was apparent in most of ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... out, and clamare, to cry), is a figure by which the speaker instead of stating a fact, simply utters an expression of surprise or emotion. For instance when he hears some harrowing tale of woe or misfortune instead of saying,—"It is a sad story" he ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... that bright domain! The loved and the redeemed are there, why lure me back again? The cadences of gladness to your hearts may yet be dear; They have no melody for mine, all, all is desert here. The sunshine still is bright to you, the moonlight and the flowers; To me they tell a harrowing tale of ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... waste pipes. If you are careful when you use the shower and not splash the water too much over the wood floor, I guess we can get along with this arrangement. This, however, doesn't include the cost of bringing the water down from the spring. I thought, inasmuch as our plowing and harrowing had been done so soon, you could take the time off, Joe, to dig the ditch and put in the pipe yourself. A one-inch galvanized genuine wrought-iron pipe will cost ten cents per running foot and a two-inch pipe twenty-two ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... next day, a friendly letter, declining his request in the kindest manner I could, but enclosing a five pound note. It happened that my letter to Mr. Coleridge passed on the road, another letter from him to myself, far more harrowing than the first. This was the last letter ever received from ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... follows is fierce and harrowing. What follows continues to hold that great audience spellbound to the close. The score is four to nothing in favor of Harvard; but the Yale team, smarting from defeat, throw themselves into the ever-recurring ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... of the harrowing tales that were flying about the table over the fish chowder was Mr. Aubrey Templeton, the young lawyer from St. John's who had arrived on the steamer that afternoon. Just opposite to Mr. Templeton at the table sat Jimmie Thomas, who, being a bachelor, ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... and with gayest confidence: "Uncle has been looking about casually. There are so many regiments forming, so many recruiting stations that we—we haven't decided—have we, uncle?" And she gave Berkley a wistful, harrowing ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... protecting genius. Janus was the god of beginnings, Terminus was the god of the boundary, Silvanus of the forest, Vertumnus of the circling year. The farmer, in each part of his labor,—in harrowing, plowing, sowing, etc.,—invoked a spirit. So marriage, birth, and every natural event had each a sacred life of its own. Not less than forty-three distinct divinities are spoken of by name as having to do with the actions of a child. Thus the number ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... countermarching about the 'Low Countries' through a glorious campaign, retire on the first pinch of cold weather into snug winter quarters in some fat Flemish town, and eat and drink and fiddle through the winter. Boney must have sadly disconcerted the comfortable system of these old warriors by the harrowing, restless, cut-and-slash mode of warfare that he introduced. He has put an end to all the old carte and tierce system in which the cavaliers of the old school fought so decorously, as it were with a small sword in one hand and a chapeau bras in the other. During his career there has been ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and it was painful to think of his dying alone in poverty. His extravagance and the shifts by which he evaded his creditors were known, and Blake could imagine how hard he would be pressed when he lay sick and helpless. It must have been a harrowing experience for a young girl to nurse him and at the same time to ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... love's delicious diadem With rapturous longing he awaits, Nor in his dreams anticipates Hymen's embarrassments, distress, And freezing fits of weariness. Though we, of Hymen foes, meanwhile, In life domestic see a string Of pictures painful harrowing, A novel in Lafontaine's style, My wretched Lenski's fate I mourn, He seemed for ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... deeply, refinement too has advanced: there is less simplicity, but merely painful detail is subordinated to general expression and skill of drawing and color. It is where the two meet, as in Rubens, that the result is most harrowing: the picture I have just spoken of is the only one of his in which I ever saw any sign of delicacy or tenderness, any appeal to the deeper and more exquisite emotions. Nevertheless, by degrees his genius helps one to surmount his realism. On my first visit to Antwerp ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... existed of leaving the ghastly evidence of the murderous deed undisturbed,—the presence of the mangled corpse,—the bustle of the inquest, at which her attendance was required,—all these circumstances produced a harrowing effect upon the young girl's imagination. But when all was over, a sorrowful calm succeeded, and, if not free from grief, she was tranquil. As to Thames, though deeply and painfully affected by the horrible occurrence that had marked ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... still more harrowing nature now arose between the Pope and the Council of Basle. Duke Philip of Milan availed himself of this opportunity to retrieve the sacrifices he had made in a treaty which the Pope had led him to sign with the Venetians. He forged a decree which, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... what was not our joy as we turned over the tiny pages together and feasted our eyes upon the vivid pictures and perused the absorbingly interesting text! What wonder that together we wept tears of sympathy at the harrowing recital of the fate of ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... every mood, to grief, to delight, to lassitude. When she suffers, in the scene, for instance, where Armand insults her, she is like a trapped wild beast which some one is torturing, and she wakes just that harrowing pity. One's whole flesh suffers with her flesh; her voice caresses and excites like a touch; it has a throbbing, monotonous music, which breaks deliciously, which pauses suspended, and then resolves itself in a perfect chord. Her voice is like a thing detachable from ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... however, when he returned to find that a visitor had called, and that this visitor was the mother of the little boy that Harry Lossing had saved from the car. The two women gave him the accident in full, and were lavish of harrowing detail, including the mother's feelings. "So you see, 'Raish," urged Mrs. Ellis, timidly, "there is some reason ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... her eyes towards him, but they were vacant and wandering. It was soon evident that her reason was impaired, and the spirit still inhabiting that lovely tenement was irrevocably obscured. Cruel had been her sufferings. Crimes too foul to name—but we draw a veil over the harrowing recital! When the last horrible act was consummated the light of her soul was put out, and her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... harrowing were done for Peter. The soil was just the sort potatoes thrive on, a sandy loam. After the furrows had been made about six inches deep and two feet apart, Peter put a sprinkling of chemical fertilizer ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one. This comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... conversation, which must of course be of a very local description, although it is brightened with many a quiet touch of wit, of which the natives possess a great original fund, and Melancthon, having finished in the forenoon harrowing in his buck-wheat, has now gone with his axe to hew at a house-frame which he has in preparation, and Sybel and I having settled our affair of warp and woof, it is now time for me to proceed. She with her large Swiss-looking sun-hat, placed lightly on her brow, accompanies ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... here faithfully copied from reality, unlike the conventional village and villager of opera comique, and the pleasing sentiment that runs through the tale, were found refreshing by audiences upon whom the sensational incidents and harrowing emotions of their modern drama were already beginning to pall. The result was a little stage triumph for Madame Sand. It helped to draw to her pastoral tales the attention they deserved, but had not instantly won in all quarters. Theophile Gautier writes playfully of this piece: "The success ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a prey to the most harrowing anxieties. Don Ambrosio saw that the mask had fallen from his face, and that the nature of his machinations was revealed. He had gone too far to retrace his steps, and assume the affectation of tenderness and respect; indeed, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... by a woman desirous of bringing action against her husband for a divorce. She related a harrowing tale of the ill-treatment she had received at his hands. So impressive was her recital that the lawyer, for a moment, was startled out of his usual professional composure. "From what you say this man must be a brute of the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... unfold of their own miseries, equal, if not double that of the luckless creatures who board. That housekeeping has its joys it would be vain to deny, but we need no ghost come from the grave to inform us that the secrets of the kitchen are as numerous and as harrowing, as all can attest that ever had occasion to keep house ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... times make no accurate profession of their tenure; such as were made probably in many cases aroused distrust. Information was invited from third parties, and straightway the land courts were the scene of harrowing litigation.[443] It could at times be vaguely ascertained that, while a portion of some great domain was held on occupation from the State, some other portion had been acquired by purchase; but what particular part of the estate was held on either tenure was undiscoverable, for titles had been ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... that watched me so reverently, but I dared not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had its questions. How was I to get out of the most perilous trap into which a sane man—if sane I was—ever thrust himself? There was no sign that we were being pursued, but it was a harrowing puzzle how, without drawing suspicion upon the runaways, to get them once more separated from me and the coach while I should vanish as a lady and reappear as ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... her example how to adjust chairs, books, and mats in straight lines, to fold articles without making odd corners and wrinkles; at last I improved so much that I could find what I was seeking in a drawer, without harrowing it with my fingers, and began to see beauty in order. Alice had a talent for housekeeping, and her talent was fostered by the exacting, systematic taste of her husband. He examined many matters which are usually left to women, and he applied his business talent to the art of living, succeeding ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... will sympathize with the subject of the harrowing tale, the history of Sackville Maine, I am now about to recount. The pleasures of Clubs have been spoken of: let us now glance for a moment at the dangers of those institutions, and for this purpose I must introduce you to my ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it end, this appalling strife, With its reckless waste of human life, Its riving of highest, holiest ties, Its tears of anguish and harrowing sighs, Its ruined homes from which hope has fled, Its broken ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... Marguerite Verne that our thoughts carry us back to the ill-fated queen and as we note the striking personal resemblance, thank a kind Providence that the maiden's lot has been cast in happier days and in a land not blighted by the harrowing ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... heart of its strength. It is this that calls out the heroic in him as never does the dart of the savage, the weapon of the fanatic or the fury of the mob. To hold on true to his purpose in the face of such soul-harrowing indifference is the crowning act of heroism upon the part of our missionaries. No one of them has ever drawn back and given up his work for fear of death at the hands of his persecutors, but it must be said ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... Bhima and Duryodhana) with clubs. Then comes Saraswata, and then the descriptions of holy shrines, and then genealogies. Then comes Sauptika describing incidents disgraceful (to the honour of the Kurus). Then comes the 'Aisika' of harrowing incidents. Then comes 'Jalapradana' oblations of water to the manes of the deceased, and then the wailings of the women. The next must be known as 'Sraddha' describing the funeral rites performed for the slain Kauravas. Then comes the destruction of the Rakshasa ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... violence. News of the rioting and disorder came to the Assembly from every province and filled its members with the liveliest apprehension. A long report, submitted by a special investigating committee on 4 August, 1789, gave such harrowing details of the popular uprising that every one was convinced that something should be done ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... incurable wound. The brave knight, Gurnemanz, dragged his master fainting from the garden, his companions of the Sangrail covering their retreat. But, returned to Montsalvat, the unhappy king awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of the sacred spear, and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an incurable wound. But who ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... scene is harrowing in the extreme. The bills describe it as Mrs. Brownrigg's "wash-house, kitchen, and skylight"—the sky-light forming a most impressive object. Poor Mary Clifford is chained to the floor, her face begrimed, her dress in rags, and herself exceedingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... few minutes' delay for all to have ended happily. Why did not the poet take the opportunity offered and spare us the harrowing scenes at the end? Why could he not have lowered the curtain on the lovers united with Marke's full approval? Dramatically there was no reason why he should not have done so, but poetically it was impossible. The whole of the story is brought about by ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... dictation of his wife, not the result of any change in his own feelings. They regarded his wild words as only the incoherent utterances of a mind bewildered by horror, and were anxious to put an end to the harrowing scene, and remove the stricken man as soon as possible from the observation of a mixed crowd that was now rapidly assembling from all directions, many of whom knew Captain Wilde only in his unpopular capacity of exciseman, and would therefore be apt to suspect a darker ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... most harrowing scenes are daily witnessed here. A wife came on yesterday only to learn that her dear husband had died the morning previous. Her lamentations were heart-breaking. 'Why could he not have lived until I came? Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent her ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the real controversy of the question. You, Sir, who are well acquainted with the details, know to what extent I have softened the picture, and how much I have suppressed of the Acta Martyrum, particularly in holding back physical agony, and in opposing agreeable images to harrowing torments. You are too just not to distinguish between the objections of the subject and the errors ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... are compacted together, capillary action in this case taking place more freely, and effecting evaporation from a greater depth of soil. The stirring of the surface portion of the soil, as for example by hoeing or harrowing, has for this reason an important influence in lessening the amount of evaporation, and minimising the risks of drought, by breaking the capillary attraction. The amount of evaporation which takes place from a soil ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... when the store laughed at that, Baumgartner swore that he would possess half of the farm before he died; and as Pressel and his wife died, and Seffy grew up, and as he noticed the fondness of the little red-headed girl for his little tow-headed boy, he added to his adjuration that he would be harrowing that whole farm before he died,—without ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the emperor, "I am convinced that miserable Jomini imagines that he acted in a very noble and highly-dignified manner. A traitor who is ashamed of another traitor, and blushes for him! Ah, Caulaincourt, what a harrowing spectacle! These acts of treachery will in the end make me unhappy! [Footnote: Napoleon's words.—Constant's "Memoires," vol. v., p, 245.] For does not Austria, too, wish to betray me? Has she not entered into an alliance with me, and does she not now wish to forsake ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... round stone, buried in the grass, and the touch of that stone thrilled me from head to foot with sudden dread. Hastily I tore open waistcoat and shirt, and pressed nay hand above his heart. In that one moment I lived an age of harrowing suspense, then breathed a sigh of relief, and, rising, took him beneath the arms and began to half drag, half carry him towards ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... until they were relieved by the colonel of the 44th regiment from England. Then came the Civil War. Henson was too old to go, but his relatives enlisted. He was charged with having violated the foreign enlistment act and was arrested and acquitted after some harrowing experiences. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... This soul-harrowing materialism haunted Tolstoi during all the years of his youth and early manhood, and threw him constantly into fits of melancholy and inner brooding. He could neither dismiss the subject from his mind, nor could he bring into the area of his mortal consciousness ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... proof wanting that this Golgotha style of writing is likely to become contagious, and to be pushed to a more harrowing extravagance at each successive imitation, Mr. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Belford.— Curses him for his tormenting abruption. Clarissa never suffered half what he suffers. That sex made to bear pain. Conjures him to hasten to him the rest of his soul-harrowing intelligence. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... battery began dropping into that field at the rate of several a minute. Every foot of it was torn up, and the French soldiers from their retreat in the woods saw their equipment being blown to pieces in every direction. The spectacle was harrowing, but the reflection that the aviator undoubtedly thought that he had turned his guns on a field full of men was cheering to them in ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... harrowing experience in the Hollis driveway, he had seen Ruth Nelson but twice. She had spent the winters at boarding-school, and in the summers she traveled with her aunt. She was still the divinity for whom he shaped his end, the compass that always brought him back to the straight course. He ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... dames call "taking the dress" attracted the entire Court to their church. The Queen herself desired to be present at so harrowing a spectacle, and by a curious contradiction, of which her capricious nature is capable, she shed floods of tears. La Valliere seemed gentler, lovelier, more modest and more seductive than ever. In the midst of the grief ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... with the maddening stings of outraged innocence and womanly delicacy stilled forever. Oh! the coveted peace of lying under the sod, with only nodding daisies, whispering grasses, crystal chimes of vernal rain, solemn fugue of wintry winds between her tired, aching eyes and the fair, eternal heavens! Harrowing days and sleepless, horror-haunted nights, invincible sappers and miners, had robbed her of strength; and the uncontrollable shivering that now and then seized her, warned her that her nerves were in revolt against the unnatural strain. The end was not far distant, she must endure a little longer; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... is only charged with persecuting and oppressing the avowed enemies of his Government, while Hindman, if guilty as charged, has practised cruelties unnumbered" on his people. Other representatives spoke in the same vein. Baldwin of Virginia told harrowing tales of martial law in that State. Barksdale attempted to retaliate, sarcastically reminding him of a recent scene of riot and disorder which proved that martial law, in any effective form, did not exist in Virginia. He alluded to a riot, ostensibly for bread, in which an Amazonian ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... you now must come from other than man, but I could not help saying these few words to you; and I know that no persons unconnected by blood with your family, and enjoying such brief personal acquaintance with your son as myself; and mother and sisters, can be more sincerely or deeply moved at the harrowing record of his untimely fate. Indeed, it has cast a gloom over every one; and the hardest heart could not but be affected by such a noble spectacle as the last days of his glorious ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the guilty man passing the weary hours indulging in alternate hopes of escape, and oppressed with harrowing fears ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... There came a day, later, when he and Scotty worked side by side on the blood-stained rocks of the desert, helping to remove the dead and wounded; when they saw their General's body lowered into its lonely grave, and witnessed the hundred harrowing sights of a battlefield; and then and there, much of the boyish glamour of battle faded before the horrible reality. But that time had not yet come; and, like Napoleon, Dan was convinced that ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... the very poorest class in London, I have as yet only partially uncovered the picture. We will draw the curtain back a little further, not to present the entire truth in all its fidelity, for that would be too harrowing. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... O'Hara carried the jury back to the point from which he had set out. With tears in his voice he recounted the scene of the parting between the prisoner and his children. He drew a harrowing picture of the unhappy fate of wife and children left defenceless and in poverty to become the prey of such men as Rosenblatt. He drew a vivid picture of that age-long struggle for freedom carried on by the down-trodden peasantry of Russia, and closed ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the following morning moves to a Hotel which, by good or ill chance, is adjacent to the lupanars of the city. His window opens on another yard in which other cats, alas!—of the human species this time—are caterwauling, harrowing the soul of him and the night. He makes a second remove, but finds himself disturbed this time by the rut of a certain roebuck within. Nature, O Khalid, will not be cheated, no more than she will be abused, without retaliating soon or late. True, you ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... her engagement promptly. But when Garnet, by mail, still flattered and begged, the poetess, with no notion of relenting, but in her love of dramatic values and the gentle joy of perpetuating a harrowing suspense, had parleyed; and only just now had her tyrannical son forced a conclusion unfavorable to the unfortunate suitor. So here in his office March ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... upon. Part of his plan was to see just enough of Miss Harding to insure a place in her mind at all times; but not enough to suggest that he was forcing himself upon her. Rightly, he assumed that she would appreciate thoughtful deference to her comfort and safety under the harrowing conditions of her present existence more than a forced companionship that might entail too open devotion on his part. And so he raised his cap and left her, only urging her to call upon him at any time that he might be of service ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... men went off toward the ferry. The lad very sensibly decided this was no time to deliver a love letter to Mr. Lapelle, so forthwith returned it to the sender, who, after listening bleakly to a somewhat harrowing description of her lover's unsteady legs and the direction in which they carried him, departed for home fully convinced that something dreadful was going to happen to Barry and that she would ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... forlorn the Damsel, crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur Of Puss, that with verminicidal claw Struck the weird Rat, in whose insatiate maw Lay reeking malt, that erst in Ivan's courts we saw Robed ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... repertoire after all, for whether the piece be melodrama, farce, genteel comedy, or harrowing tragedy, it has to be ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to, or disrespectful of, Alida de Barberie. I will not deny that a harrowing idea possessed me,—but I see my error, and repent ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and hoe-excavators, and burring in afterward with half-cone burrs. The cavity was deep, and Trina began to wince and moan. To hurt Trina was a positive anguish for McTeague, yet an anguish which he was obliged to endure at every hour of the sitting. It was harrowing—he sweated under it—to be forced to torture her, of all women in the world; could anything ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... cannot be stored up in sand as in clay, and it should be our aim to give our strawberries the food they need in a form that permits of its immediate use. Therefore, in preparing such land, I would advise deep plowing while it is moist, if possible, soon after a rain; then the harrowing in of a liberal top-dressing of rotted compost, or of muck sweetened by the action of frost and the fermentation of manure, or, best of all, the product of the cow-stable. Decayed leaves, sods, and ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... sale, etc. Robert was a very intelligent young man, and from long and daily experience with the customs and usages of the slave prison, he was as familiar with the business as a Pennsylvania farmer with his barn-yard stock. His account of things was too harrowing for detail here, except in the briefest manner, and that only with reference to a few particulars. In order to prepare slaves for the market, it was usual to have them greased and rubbed to make them look bright and shining. And he ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... with a grave face. "Isn't that precisely what Bessy is? Isn't she one of the most harrowing victims of the plan of bringing up our girls in the double bondage of expediency and unreality, corrupting their bodies with luxury and their brains with sentiment, and leaving them to reconcile the two as best they can, or lose their souls ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton |
