"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admirable how he emerged victor in the end; men of riper powers and experience might have come through the ordeal with less success. He had himself tolerably well in hand, all things considered, and his plan of action proves it. Sleep being absolutely out of the question and traveling an unknown trail in the darkness equally impracticable, he sat up the whole of that night, ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... instead of the blood of mortality. Now we can know the two sides of things. We understand the good, because we have been in contact with the evil. Our joy is perfect, because we have experienced pain and sorrow. We know what life is, eternal life, because we have passed through the ordeal ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... hanging her head as if the ordeal was too much for her, was the plainest-looking maiden he had ever seen in his life. She was thin and ill-thriven-looking, very different from the buxom lassies he was accustomed to see: her eyes were colourless; her nose ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... that was necessary in the east, he had then taken the final and most hazardous step of going to Farnham's home. It was hardly remarkable, therefore, that he had seized the opportunity of escaping so trying an ordeal at once. It seemed to me impossible that he should intend returning to Denver, where, in the light of day, and among old business and domestic associates, he could not long hope to escape detection, perfect as the likeness seemed to be. What, then, would ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... trunk and head of the little boy fall with a profusion of blood upon the ground at the foot of the rope. By means of an incantation these resume their natural positions, and the little boy gets up and walks off, apparently none the worse for his most trying ordeal. ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... looked on Goodwin with an unblinking and remorseless aloofness. It was not hard to imagine him, when the Etna, with her crew seduced or drugged to man her, should be clear of soundings and the business of the voyage put in shape, when every watch on deck would be a quaking ordeal of fear and pain, and every watch below an ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... day along the Trumpington Road, when a form appeared, coming to meet us. My tutor's speech grew more and more halting as the form came nearer. At last he stopped talking altogether, and wobbled in his saddle. The man bowed to him, and, as if he had won through some fiery ordeal, he shot ahead like a gay professional rider. When I drew level with him, he said, "That, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... heard it sung a thousand times or more on royal festivals and tours, but listening to it then from that dark old barn in Flanders, where a number of "K.'s men" lay on the straw a night or two away from the ordeal of advanced trenches, in which they had to take their turn, I heard it with more emotion than ever before. In that anthem, chanted by these boys in the darkness, was the spirit of England. If I had been king, like that Harry who wandered round the camp of Agincourt, where his men lay sleeping, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... state where he seemed numb. He was past caring what happened. After a hot drink, however, he braced up a little and prepared to face his ordeal. He did not know what it was to be. For all he knew, he would be taken to Leavenworth. It was agony to think that soon someone would go to his father and mother and tell them that their son on whom they had built such hopes ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... match the sickness of actual war. Certain zones were set apart as unwholesome, especially those near great rivers and lakes, and troops unfortunate enough to find themselves in these miasmic plains had to undergo the ordeal of the dice-box. Swiss or Guards, musicians, Arabs, chubby cavalrymen or thin, all had to pay Death's toll in a new and frightful form. But we rather overdid the miasma, so it was abolished by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... individual; it also destroys the weaker and the meaner race and leaves the strong and the virtuous. Struggle, they say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged that war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just arbiter of fate. The saving of the world through bloodshed, the uniting of the world through war, war as the great teacher of mankind, war as the creator of great personalities—all these are persistent ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Musa looked upon Britain as a romantic isle where people died for love. And as for America, in his mind it was as sinister, as wondrous, and as fatal as the Indies might seem to a bank clerk in Bradford. He had need of every moral assistance in this or any other social ordeal. For, though he was still the greatest violinist in Paris, and perhaps in the world, he could not yet prove this profound truth by the only demonstration which ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... something of an ordeal to Edith when she knew that Aylmer and Bruce were alone together. It was a curious feeling, combined of loyalty to Bruce (she hated him to make himself ridiculous), loyalty to Aylmer, and an indescribable ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... notoriously is, with the arts of music and painting, much more difficult will it be, to avoid the infection of multiplied and daily examples in the practice of an art, which uses words, and words only, as its instruments. In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning. Be ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and Richard Feveril. Usually spelled "Feverel." Stevenson strangely enough, was always a bad speller. The reference here is to one of Stevenson's favorite novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) by George Meredith. Stevenson's idolatrous praise of this particular scene in the novel is curious, for no greater contrast in English literary style can be found than that between Meredith's and his own. For another ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he gained during that nightmare ordeal was that those holes were regularly spaced. But somehow his confidence did not feed on that fact. There always remained the nagging fear that when he searched for the next it would not be there and he would cling to his perch lacking ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... an insult, and Henry insisting that Ave ought to have no scruples in doing anything Mrs. Pugh thought proper to be done. And finally, when Ave rushed with her despair to Mary May, it was to be relieved at finding that Mrs. Rivers had never dreamt of exposing her to such an ordeal. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the heart of a girl. Jean handled them all mechanically, and without interest. It was only when she heard the murmur of girls' voices outside her door that a deep flush mounted even to her smooth forehead. She drew a deep breath and braced herself as for an ordeal, then answered the peremptory ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... their full share of trouble—what real hero has not?—but they come out of the ordeal purified and strengthened, with nobler aspirations after duty, and tenderer thoughts of helpfulness towards those needing, if far from seeking, their ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... she had used any unsuitable phrase, it was either unheard or forgotten in the tension of the time. She stood aside and formed one of the brilliant group at the head of the stairs, thankful that this first ordeal was well done with. Her rapidly beating heart had now opportunity to lessen its pulsations, and as she soon realized that she was practically unnoticed, her natural calmness began to return to her. She remembered ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... friendly people around might be, the knowledge that they were by long habit cannibals, whose huts were adorned with human skulls, would be sufficient to strike terror to the heart of the bravest. One woman is known to have experienced this trying ordeal, and ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... prepared himself for the ordeal which must be passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... purpose for Belle to hear. I felt like killing her. I might have done it, but one thought restrained me—I should be hung for murder, and I was too bashful to submit to so public an ordeal. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... were,—we are getting lamentably weak and gelatinous in our beliefs,—but there is an unusually nice one this year; the heretic is very young and handsome, and quite wicked, as ministers go. Don't fail to be presented at the Marchioness's court at Holyrood, for it is a capital preparation for the ordeal of Her Majesty and Buckingham Palace. 'Nothing fit to wear'? You have never seen the people who go, or you wouldn't say that! I even advise you to attend one of the breakfasts; it can't do you any serious or permanent injury so long as you eat something ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... hearts of some of us grow very sick,—for she always says that his spirit must be broken, that only the severest punishment will break it, and that she cannot endure to send him to receive that punishment. What that mysterious ordeal may be, we dare not question,—we who cannot help him from it; we can only wish that he might draw that knife across his own throat before he undergoes it. He is trying to buy his own freedom, and has something saved towards it. He looks as if he would do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... had passed, the rain came down straight and hard and windless like rapier thrusts. The room seemed, if possible, closer, more suffocating. He beckoned to Lisbeth and she went and stood near him. He was to put her through a still harder ordeal. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be of any further assistance to you, Inspector," said my friend, "command me. Otherwise, I feel sure you will appreciate the fact that both Mr. Knox and myself are extremely tired, and have passed through a very trying ordeal." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... as soon as their pictures arrived in my country, or some other evil would result, anyhow. The women disappeared like frightened quails, when I was about to perform the dreadful operation on the men. However, most of them returned to see how their spouses stood the painful ordeal. When I then asked for some women to pose, they ran away, in spite of the demonstrations of the men; only three sturdy ones with "great souls" remained and were "taken" after having been duly "shaken" ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... to the faithful performance of her duties, which no amount of fever in her blood could make her neglect. The hot-water ordeal was gone through, the children were turned out speckless from their bedrooms, the bedclothes were put to air, and not even her own ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... their arguments were of no avail. He remained firm, and protested to the last that Sommers knew nothing about his case. The iron will upheld him during this ordeal, and the influence which the detective had gained over him had been of such a character as to outweigh the solicitations of those to whom he ought to look for relief on the trial ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... went off towards the village, Dick in the highest of glee, and chattering and questioning about everything he saw, Will getting more and more quiet and lower of spirit as he thought of the ordeal that he ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... aisle leading to the offices, Mr. Bingle stopped to wipe his brow and to pull himself together for the coming ordeal. A high-and-mighty young man who had been elevated from a clerkship to the post of third assistant foreign teller, and who no longer deemed it proper to associate with his erstwhile companions in the "galleys," emerged from his cage and, coming abruptly upon the shivering ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... started for Rome, and soon the boy was rioting in the inexpressible glories of his first impressions of the great city. Even the ordeal of going to a strange school had its compensations in the two slaves who went behind him to carry his books. The centurions' sons at home had carried their own, and Horace felt a harmless, boyish pleasure (without in the least understanding the years of economy on his father's part that ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... task, it had to be done, so, mustering my courage for the ordeal as I never had to do in time of battle, I advanced toward her, hat in hand. She never so much as glanced about at the sound of my footsteps, nor deigned by the slightest motion to acknowledge my presence. So intense, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Jezebel" who had always been one of the most pointed examples of her religious education. In her first experience of public life her radiant health and colouring shamed all meaner aids and had been amply sufficient for the brightest lights and the longest hours. But that fierce ordeal of acclimating under conditions of constant travel and hard work had drained even the magnificent vitality that had been her heritage from generations of seamen, and typhoid and unhappy maternity had robbed her of much ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... imaginary. Nobody has fancied it necessary to fight with a noose round his neck. If ever capital punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine. The rope in judicial hands is certainly as lawful as the pistol in rash ones; so the duellist has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... spared the ordeal of the birthday celebration. It was understood that she would give audience in her study to her friends, to Arnott Nicholson, to the Protheros and Tanqueray. Instead of all going in at once, they were to take it ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... came about that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbors did not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... head, a large amount of brains, and unaltering nerve, to thread one's way through the intricacies of the business of finance as carried on there. It would be interesting to know how many come out of the ordeal untouched by the taint of corruption. Members of the Exchanges are held by a rigid code of laws, but in questions of morality Wall street has a code of its own. Expediency is a prominent consideration in the dealings of the street, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... prepare. Sick of his treacheries, and feeling only contempt for him personally, his new complaints and promises served only to cement and unify them and make them the more ready to march on. As to the miracles, they ceased when, in the ordeal by fire, Barthelemi, the author of the Holy Lance, came through the flames mortally injured. The Caliph of Cairo, with whom it was believed Alexius was in league, had already possessed himself of Jerusalem, and, fearing ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... found myself surrounded by two hundred and fifty or three hundred wild Indians, men, women, and children, whose faces seemed in blissful ignorance of soap and water, but all waiting to kiss me. I felt unable to stand the ordeal, and so I managed to put them off with a shake of the hand, and a ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... rival, Jarl Skuli, thought Earl John so promising a traitor as to send him letters forged with the Norse king's seal.[6] In 1218 John was present at Bergen to witness the ordeal successfully undergone by King Hakon's mother in order to prove that king, then a boy, to be her son by the late King Hakon Sverri's son, and so rightly ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... service. In a little more than seven years, he had risen from an ensign to be a lieut.-colonel. Owing to gross mismanagement and peculation on the part of his predecessor, who was in consequence recommended privately to sell out, if he did not wish to stand the ordeal of a court martial, the regiment was sadly disorganized; but the commander in chief, the late Duke of York, was heard to declare that Lieut.-Colonel Brock, from one of the worst, had made the 49th one of the best ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... slow, sardonic grin. "Don't apologize, gentlemen. Only make the ordeal as short as ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... could to assimilate every good and noble idea that she came across—I say that she's a saint and a heroine," said Maurice, with sudden passion and enthusiasm, "and we've forgotten that not a girl in a thousand could have come through a trying ordeal ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... me, very pleasantly, but the little dimple held naught but mystery. I really think her eyes implied a sort of regret, as if she wished she could make the ordeal less hard ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... dogged pluck and perseverance had to give way to his bodily weakness, but they had reached a station quite near Chellaston before he allowed himself to be taken out of the train and housed for the night in a railway inn. In his nervous state the ordeal of meeting fresh friends seemed as great, indeed, as that involved in the remaining journey. So it came to pass that at dusk on that same evening, Alec Trenholme, having put his friend to bed, joined the loungers on the railway platform in front of the inn, and watched lightning vibrate ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... where a pecuniary commutation was received for every crime, where stated prices were fixed for men's lives and members, where private revenges were authorized for all injuries, where the use of the ordeal, corsnet, and afterwards of the duel, was the received method of proof, and where the judges were rustic freeholders, assembled of a sudden, and deciding a cause from one debate or altercation of the parties. Such a state of society was very little advanced beyond ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Constitution I have thus submitted to the representatives of the States and of the people such information of our domestic and foreign affairs as the public interests seem to require. Our Government is now undergoing its most trying ordeal, and my earnest prayer is that the peril may be successfully and finally passed without impairing its original strength and symmetry. The interests of the nation are best to be promoted by the revival ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... because I did not consult you, I did not think of you. You were in my mind as much as any other person at that trying ordeal, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... over the consequences of this challenge, his face paled. "Good God, what an ordeal! But the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... scourging on their bare backs. This the youths submitted to without a murmur, supported in their sufferings by the firm conviction, in which they had been bred from childhood, that on the constancy and fortitude with which they bore the cruel ordeal depended the valour and success of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... they are worth, which is perhaps not much; it is unlikely that Fletcher should have been acquainted with any of the plays in question, though of course not impossible. The magic taper appears to be a native superstition, a survival of the ordeal by fire. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... insists on emphasizing the comic rather than the tragic aspect of things, though he can also be powerful in tragedy; and his enthusiasms for the beauty of the world and for the romance of youthful love are delightful. He may perhaps best be approached through 'Evan Harrington' (1861) and 'The Ordeal of Richard Feverel' (1859). 'The Egoist' (1879) and 'Diana of the Crossways' (1885) are among his other strongest books. In his earlier years he wrote a considerable body of verse, which shows much the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... steady as old Time," Jim told her, smiling. True to his promise, when the music began he danced mildly and moderately, and Brownie emerged from the ordeal in far better order than might ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... that the ball had been extracted from her son's wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate; although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... time for much conversation. To his astonishment Mr. Alwynn found Dare actually nervous about the coming ordeal; and on the way to the Green Dragon, where the dinner was to be given, he reassured him as best he could, and suggested the kind of answer he should make when his health ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... herself from Bessie's embrace and rose to her feet. "Never again trouble your head about your debts. I sent the two hundred and fifty pounds to my brother's wife yesterday, and told her what I was doing to you, and what I meant to do if you passed the ordeal unscathed, and any time you choose you can write to Anthony and send him twenty pounds, or more, if you like. What is mine is yours, so long as my opinion of you remains unchanged. I did not like your mother; I am free to tell you that. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... place where there are not 'ten righteous.' As to nobility—in England none are strictly noble but peers, not even peers' sons, though titled by courtesy; nor knights of the garter, unless of the peerage, so that Castlereagh himself would hardly pass through a foreign herald's ordeal till ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... This terrible nerve-racking ordeal, with its nameless horrors of suspense and agony of fear indescribable, continued for more than three hours, and all the time we were being driven forward at fierce speed. Then suddenly, as if growing weary of its frantic exertions, the wind began to lessen its fury ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... have suffered half the torture had the letter arrived; she would have known then at once that she was not to expect him; and the ordeal of waiting would have been over at once; but she clung to the hope he would come, he must come. She recalled his promises given solemnly—she said to herself ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... all day, and when he returned to his happy home at night, told the story to his wife, and there is no doubt that the strong sympathy of these two kind hearts supported Gladys through the ordeal ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the map assured me that at length we had struck the main road from Malaga, and there seemed every reason to believe that the ordeal just over would be our last. Flying along at a good fifty miles an hour, under a tired moon that sought the west, presently a town rose grandly up before us, throned on rocks in a wide valley, and pallid in the strange light as some ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... few emergencies in business and few events in life that bring to man the trying ordeal of "proposing to a lady." We should be glad to help the bashful lover in his hours of perplexity, embarrassment and hesitation, but unfortunately we cannot pop the question for him, nor give him a formula by which he may do it. Different circumstances and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... dress in my surprise at meeting Mohunsleigh, but it fell over me again like a cloud, as soon as I was shut up in the bathing box with those wisps of green silk. I wouldn't have the maid help me, and wrestled with the ordeal alone. It took me some time; but when everything was on (there were only four things, counting the cap and smart little sandals) I couldn't say to myself that the effect wasn't attractive. It was; and I did approve of myself in the quaint ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... scarcely believed to be possible. None of that exposure to the gaze and exultation of a victorious foe, such as we had seen pictured in our school-books, or as practised by conquering nations in all times. We had felt it as not improbable that, after an ordeal of mortifying exposure for the gratification of the military, we would be paraded through Northern cities for the benefit of jeering crowds. So, when we learned that we should be paroled, and go to our homes ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... She wished the ordeal could have been postponed: she had fully made up her mind to do the deed, but she had not made up her mind to do it this very day; and now she felt ill at ease, astray, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... good to be lost, so taking Armelline on my knee I gave her an oyster and let it slip as Emilie's had slipped, much to the delight of the elder, who wanted to see how her young companion would go through the ordeal. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... underwent the harsh ordeal which awaits most literary aspirants. She had a scheme in her head for a long series of short tales to illustrate some of the propositions of political economy. She trudged about London day after day, through mud and fog, with weary limbs and anxious heart, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... was only the beginning. Animal strength carried him through that ordeal. But he emerged from the river as an animal; a wounded animal, crawling through the brush and arroyo outside ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Jones and Mr. S. C. Hall dared not face the ultimate ordeal of a court of law must be held to justify Punch's persistently caustic denunciations; while the case of Mr. Gent-Davis, then M.P. for Kennington, served chiefly to confirm the fact that "abstractions" and "imaginary personages" find their counterparts, in the opinions ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... generally much thought of, though it is of the most vital importance to the safety of London. It is very desirable that the metropolis should take warning by the experience of Liverpool, without going through the fiery ordeal which ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... true to what's deepest and truest in us both. I have been, by God! and I will be. If our married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free and honest . . . true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her own nature. If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as before . . ." he groaned, "that ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... inexorable searchlights and stabbed by the fierce flashing of artillery, the glare of bursting shells, and the radiance of star rockets. And we should be in the midst of it. It would be my first experience of actual warfare, and I wondered how I should pass through the ordeal. I had already learned that the Japanese soldier or sailor is absolutely the most fearless creature in existence. He fears death as little as he fears sleep, provided that it comes to him in the service of his Emperor and his country. To die for his Emperor, indeed, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Hotel, at which Lord Elgin presided. After the health of many others had been drunk, Audubon's was proposed by Skene, a Scottish historian. "Whilst he was engaged in a handsome panegyric, the perspiration poured from me. I thought I should faint." But he survived the ordeal and responded in a few appropriate words. He was much dined and wined, and obliged to keep late hours—often getting no more than four hours sleep, and working hard painting and writing all the next day. He often wrote in his journals ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... The dinner was an ordeal; her partner was unfortunately interested only in motor-cars, of which Nancy could find little that was intelligent to say. She felt like what she was, a humble relative out of her element. After dinner they were all packed into cars, ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... all impatience to see him, and had shown it outwardly much more plainly than Elizabeth. How quiet Elizabeth had been these last days! moving about the house so silently, with vaguely smiling eyes, like one husbanding her strength before an ordeal. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cramping their daughters' feet: his reply was, "Very bad custom." On my inquiring further, whether he had any daughters, and whether their feet were treated in the same way, he answered in the affirmative, but asserted, that they had been subjected to the cruel ordeal by their mother, against his will. He added, that, in a China-man's house, where there were young girls, no peace could be had, night or day, for their cries, which lasted till they were six years old. He gave us a reason for the mother's insisting on her ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... his lordship noticed how drawn and white her face had grown. There was reason enough for that, and for worse. Not any other woman of his acquaintance would have preserved her self-control in such an ordeal; and of fear, at least, at no time had Miss Bishop shown any sign. It is impossible that he did not find ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... had libelled the sea,' carried dismay into the hearts of collectors, and he was denounced as guilty of an art sacrilege scarcely more marvellous for its impiety than its daring. His opinions, however, have passed through a burning fiery furnace of criticism, and have survived the ordeal. Earnestness is half success; and the truth that was the substratum of that earnestness has accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... had been postponing the promised visit, and thereby postponing the taking of the final step in the campaign of intimidation. The unexplained telephone call decided him, however. He would go and see Elinor and have the ordeal ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... a perplexing ordeal. Bilkins had packed in a lot of stuff that he might have manipulated, though to me it was worse than Greek. Of course, I could cook up coffee and bacon—the kind of meal Smilax and I were used to—but Sylvia must never be subjected to that! ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... among which he recognized the high note of Miss Verepoint, reminded him of the ordeal before him. He entered with what he hoped was a careless ease of manner, but his heart was beating fast. Since the opening of rehearsals he had acquired a wholesome respect for Miss Verepoint's tongue. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... triumphantly. I am not well, and my feet and ankles swell so before I have stood five minutes on the stage, that the prolonged standing in shoes, which, though originally loose for me, become absolute instruments of torture, like those infamous "boots" of martyrizing memory, is a terrible physical ordeal for either a tragic or comic heroine—who had need indeed be something of a real one ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... turned and walked quietly out of the house, put on her snowshoes, and started on her homeward way. But the trying ordeal through which she had passed told upon her. She trembled violently, and a great weakness came over her. She felt that she would sink down upon the snow. How could she continue? She looked all around, but no sign of life could she ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... pale and his eyes were rather dull. He looked a little overwrought. He was feeling the tension; so much was obvious. I remember wondering if he had reached the limit of his strength, whether he was really big enough in spirit for the ordeal that ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... also been a close student of the daily press and from her reading had gleaned a knowledge of the terrible havoc wrought by this great war. Had Patsy not given way, perhaps Beth might have done so herself, and really it was Maud Stanton who bore the ordeal ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... truly sorry for her. Poor little girl! it really was a dreadful ordeal. Yet he had never seen her look better. What a difference dressing her had made! Her manner, too, had improved. That was the influence of his society. By degrees, he'd get rid of all her absurd ideas. But he sorely wished that Madame Savelli's verdict would prove him right—not for ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... it, all right, just like I told you; no green hand with all his senses ever escaped it. Maybe you'll have it light, though," she added, hopefully, as if to hold him up for the ordeal. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of, is conceded to "a Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to [146] a pupil of Palma. And then, whatever their charm, we are called on to give up the Ordeal, and the Finding of Moses with its jewel-like pools of water, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Valmai had, of course, been a trying ordeal. With the fervour of a first and passionate love, he recalled every word she had spoken, every passing shade of thought reflected on her face, and while these reveries occupied his mind, there was a tender look in the deep black eyes and a smile on his lips. But ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... our power should have authorized. We might even have consigned the Southern States to a species of provisional and quasi nationality, with the claim and expectation of their ultimate return within the pale of the Union, when, through the severe ordeal of military despotism or anarchy at home, or from other causes, they should have purged themselves of that institution, adverse to all our policy, which has been the sole cause of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... very quietly; seeing very few people, making very few friends, reading after his own fashion with an obstinate indifference to all systems of study, and shutting his eyes persistently to the near approach of the final ordeal. Things were in this condition when he received a sudden telegram calling him home. "Come at once, or you will be too late," was the message. The Rector, to whom he rushed at once, looked at it coldly. He was not fond of giving an undergraduate leave in the middle of the term. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... rather stern ideals, which had perhaps been intensified—made a little grimmer and fiercer than before—by the strain of the war; and the selfish frivolity of certain persons and classes in face of the national ordeal was not the least atoned for in his eyes by the heroism of others. The endless dress advertisements in the daily papers affected him as they might have affected the prophet Ezekiel, had the daughters of Judah added the purchase of fur coats, priced from twenty ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shall he decree it? say, what hope? Seest thou not thy sin? yet of that sin It irks me sore to speak, as thee to hear. Nay, no more words hereof; bethink thee now, From this ordeal how to find release. ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... unsuspected the ordeal of being haled to a morning reception of Vedius Vedianus and presented to him as Salsonius Salinator of Carthage, Nepte and Putea. I should have been lost had he had at his elbow to jog his memory if he forgot a visitor's name the slave he had had in that capacity seven years ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... delivered sentence. If the good deeds preponderated, the blessed soul was allowed to enter the "boat of the Sun," and was led by good spirits to Aahlu (Elysium), to the "pools of peace" and the dwelling-place of Osiris. If, on the contrary, the good deeds were insufficient, if the ordeal was not passed, then the unhappy soul was sentenced, according to its deserts, to begin a round of transmigrations into the bodies of more or less unclean animals, the number, nature, and duration of the transmigrations ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... rather an ordeal for both the boys when the last leave-takings of all at home came. The old nurse wept profusely, and was only comforted by the assurance that she should go to her charges on the very first intimation of illness. Mrs. Bertram gave them such warnings against choosing evil companions, ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... am passing through a very painful ordeal, which the country, in remembrance of my noble and devoted ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... a ruler. But in the end this worked good rather than harm, for Albert received so thorough a military education that by practical advice and prompt action he was able to save his country in the terrible ordeal through which it passed. And as he had expected to be no more than one of the King's subjects, he had learned the ways of the people more intimately than he could have done if he had always been hemmed in with the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... blasted and blasted. The mere matter of staying alive grew very tedious. The ordeal seemed to last for centuries. Actually it could be measured only in minutes. But it seemed millennia before the headphones said, staccato fashion: "You are on course and will reach speed in fourteen seconds. I will ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... accused the other of crime or dishonour, the latter might challenge him to fight with swords or lances; and, according to the superstition of the times, the victor was considered to be the one who spoke the truth. But this ordeal combat was far removed from ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... proposed antagonist, and a single glance into his eyes, aglow with pride and resolution, convinced me that whatever hope I might have cherished regarding Mapela's supposed desire for my escape from the ordeal to which I was about to be subjected had been utterly misplaced. His cupidity in respect of possible gifts, if indeed he had been animated by any such feeling, had evidently been swamped by his sense of duty to his king, and he had as evidently picked a warrior well calculated, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... thousand times higher than any which the torrid region of the earth ever feels. Such heat would have been twenty-four times more than enough to melt rock-crystal. The overburdened sense experiences a feeling of relief in the mere knowledge, that the comet passed this fiery ordeal as the lightning's flash might have done. In two short hours, it had shifted its place from one side to the other of the solar sphere. In sixty little minutes, it had moved from a region in which the heat was forty thousand times greater than the fiercest burning ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... for those who so proudly issued from the Boston barracks at sunrise for the suppression of pretentious rebellion. Knapsacks were thrown aside. British veterans stripped for fight. Not a single regiment of those engaged had passed such a fearful ordeal in its whole history as a single hour had witnessed. The power of discipline, the energy of experienced commanders, and the pressure of honored antecedents, combined to make the movement as trying ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... lacked self-control at that minute. But think what a day it had been! Forty thousand francs of bills as soon as I woke up. The ordeal of escorting the savages around Paris all the next day. And, quite unexpectedly, the announcement of an approaching ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... this beautiful rural custom, because as it is one of the last, so is it one of the holiest, offices of love. The grave is the ordeal of true affection. It is there that the divine passion of the soul manifests its superiority to the instinctive impulse of mere animal attachment. The latter must be continually refreshed and kept alive by the presence of its object, but the love that is seated in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... had I not read somewhere the description of a hurricane that had been similarly heralded. As it was, I was by no means happy at the prospect of what was in store for us, asking myself uneasily whether quite all had been done that it was possible to do to prepare the ship for the impending ordeal. There was but one thing I could think of, and that was to order all the scuttles to be securely closed, and this was at once done, although it rendered the cabins insupportably hot and close. Of course I should have liked to ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... look that was daily growing more hunted. Nearly six weeks had passed since Kars' bullet had crashed through his arm, and left a shattered limb behind it. His final journey had had to be delayed while Bill had exercised his skill in healing that the prisoner might face his ultimate ordeal whole. Now the healing was nearing completion, but the irony of it all lay in the fact that the prisoner's well-being was of necessity the first thought of those ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... hand acting on behalf of the subcaste, which is considered the body. The panchayat, however, was not the original judge. It was at first the god before whom the parties pleaded their cause, and the god who gave judgment by the method of trial by ordeal. This was probably the general character of primitive justice, and in some of the lower castes the ordeal is still resorted to for decisions. The tribe or subcaste attended as jurors or assessors, and carried out the proceedings, perhaps after having united themselves to the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... exhausted by her ordeal that she did sleep, but it was fitfully and without genuine rest. She had her meals sent up to her room, and ate automatically, ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... rushed to his face, and suffused it almost with a purple red: he checked his horse suddenly, and, for a moment, looked full up at the window, where he met the cold gaze of de Lescure fixed full upon him. The pause was but for a moment; he could not bear the ordeal of that look, but fixing his eyes to the ground, he struck his spurs into his horse, and hurried out of the sight of those on whom he did not dare to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... alteration in the state of knowledge on which the human mind forms its judgment, imparts to an old established religion an aspect of opposition which was before unperceived; the religion is subjected to the ordeal of an investigation. Science examines the doctrines taught by it, criticism the evidence on which they profess to rest, and the literature which is their expression. And if such an investigation fail to establish the harmony of the old and the new, the result takes two forms: either the total ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... question was answered by Mrs. Dampier's return into the room. He looked at her searchingly. Yes, she was lovely—her beauty rather heightened than diminished, as is so often the case with a very young woman, by the ordeal she was going through, but all the glow and radiance were gone ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... her husband on their behalf. At last he promised her that he would repeal the taxes if she would ride naked through the town, probably thinking his wife would not undertake such a task. But she had seen so much suffering amongst the poor people that she decided to go through the ordeal for their sakes, and the day was fixed, when she would ride through the town. Orders were given by the people that everybody should darken their windows and retire to the back part of their houses until Lady Godiva had passed. All obeyed ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... moment the door opened, and Miss Wealthy came in. Rose shrank back for a moment behind the tall Japanese screen; not to conceal herself, but to gather her strength together for the ordeal. Her long years of illness had left her sensitive beyond description; and now, though she knew that she had done nothing, and that the child would meet only the gentlest of plaintive reproofs, her ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... some ways, and popular, united popularity with a distinctly eighteenth-century tone and tradition; the death of Leigh Hunt removed the last save Landor (always and in all things an outsider) of the great Romantic generation of the first third of the century; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel started a new kind ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a false oath were not apparent at once. Ordeals, however, formed a method of appealing to God, the results of which could be immediately observed. A common form of ordeal was by fire. The accused walked barefoot over live brands, or stuck his hand into a flame, or carried a piece of red-hot iron for a certain distance. In the ordeal by hot water he plunged his arm into ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... must sit holding the silk, a mark for Lady Rythdale's eyes and tongue. She sat drooping a little with indignation and shame, when Mr. Carlisle came up. He had seen from a distance the tint of his lady's cheeks, and judged that she was going through some sort of an ordeal. But though he came to protect, he stood still to enjoy. The picture was so very pretty. The mother and son ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... whom he had called on because he could, as a gentleman, after all afford to, coarse common Newton Winch, who had had troubles and been epidemically poisoned, lamentably sick, who bore in his face and in the very tension, quite exactly the "charm," of his manner, the traces of his late ordeal, and, for that matter, of scarce completed gallant emergence—this astonishing ex-comrade was simply writing himself at a stroke (into our friend's excited imagination at all events) the most distinguished of men. Oh, he was going to be interesting, if Florence Ash had been going to be; but Mark ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James |
