"Smothering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... barrister, without winking, "you have discovered that the police had plotted in advance the smothering ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the brief career of Gerald Griffin, the author of The Collegians and Gisippus, who, had he lived in our day, would have been in danger of having his head turned by premature success, instead of being heart-sickened by long neglect and coarse rebuffs, and smothering his aspirations in a convent. In striking contrast with this pale figure is the portly and imposing one of Robert William Elliston, type of theatrical charlatans, embodiment of bombast and puffery, monarch over the realm of pasteboard, immortalized by Lamb, and surely not undeserving of the honor. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Airline was in the war for the House gavel. Under the supervision of Senator Hanway, it brought its whole smothering weight to bear upon the Hawke twenty of those twenty-three whose districts it dominated. The Hawke twenty wriggled and writhed, but in the end gave way—all save a rock-ribbed quartette. They must stay by the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... pouring in wheat in a steady stream. He meant to smother and choke me with it. Ah, if I only had a thousand, aye, ten thousand mouths to eat it, he could never do it. I could keep even with him. But it gradually rose past my mouth, past my nose; it covered my head and was smothering me. What an awful thing was too much food, after all! And then I wakened to find my head covered with pillows until I ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... to repletion, they slept, or wasted their substance with the improvidence of jungle-beasts. And these were the men Chloe Elliston had pictured labouring joyously in the upbuilding of homes! Once more the feeling of hopelessness came over her—seemed smothering, stifling her. And a great wave of longing carried her back to the land of her own people—the land of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... of Bateese as he held him when the critical moments came. And Nepapinas, like a machine that had looked upon death a thousand times, gave no rest to his claw-like fingers until the work was done—and it was then that something came to drive the arrow-shooting devils out of the darkness that was smothering Carrigan. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... became conscious of a vague discomfort, and realized dimly that for hours now he had been smothering with words and caresses a something that had striven with him to be heard, a something that instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... hate Bertie," said Tessa, with Italian intensity. "I don't see how you could bring yourself to stay there and take care of her when you knew how much she had injured you. I should have felt like putting poison into her drink or smothering her ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... (which to women sanctions many offences,) made them forget the humbled greatness of their lords: amidst them Nina and Irene, outshining all the rest; then came the Tribune and the Pontiff's Vicar, surrounded by all the great Signors of the city, smothering alike resentment, revenge, and scorn, and struggling who should approach nearest to the monarch of the day. The high-hearted old Colonna alone remained aloof, following at a little distance, and in a garb studiously plain. But ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... look which accompanied these words, with one that threatened vengeance; but smothering his anger, with his accustomed wisdom, he left the hill, assuming an air that affected more of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... and alone, the Englishman's stoicism, pride, and remorse, all came forth at one bound. He sat down and swept the dishes away from him, reached for Pauline's hand, and bent his head down over it upon the table, smothering different ejaculations, which, warm and earnest enough, were totally removed from his usual style of impassioned speech—he uttered nothing ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Madam!" said the dear creature, smothering me with her rapturous kisses, "Prudentia is YOU!—Is YOU indeed!—It can be nobody else!—O teach me, good God! to follow your example, and I shall be a Second ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, afraid to be ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... sight of the blood sacrifice that had started Nana Sahib on a line of bitter thought; had stirred the smothering hate that was in his soul until frothing bubbles of it ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... of those features the nature of the woman, all her complexities, and even her emotional fragilities. There came to him the well-known conviction, "It's she that I've always been seeking." At dawn, smothering under his mosquito net, with the din of Arab and Hindu, Masai and Swahili voices drifting in through his shutters, his first waking thought ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... meantime where is the wheat? Out near the fields where it was grown, in country elevators perhaps, ready for transportation to market as the law of supply and demand dictates instead of the whole crop being dumped at once and smothering prices below the cost of production. Or perhaps it is in store at the terminal where Mr. Exporter can handle it. It will be seen that the mutual arrangement to buy and sell for future delivery simplifies matters for everybody in ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with a rough hand by the watery element, and drawn by the demon of the flood to the depths of his cavernous home; while the hissing of the water, which seemed to him at the time to rush into his very soul, still sounded in his ears. To the fearful sensation of oppression and smothering that first weighed in his heart, succeeded a calm and tranquil sleep; from which he was aroused, by a repetition of the noises of rushing waters in his ears; and the sensation of the horrors of a mundane dissolution filled his mind. At that moment, his head came in violent contact with some ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... kissed him, was the one consuming thought in Howland's brain for many minutes after she had left him bound and gagged on the snow. That she had made no effort to free him did not at first strike him as significant. He still felt the sweet, warm touch of her lips, the pressure of her arms, the smothering softness of her hair. It was not until he again heard approaching sounds that he returned once more to a full consciousness of the mysterious thing that had happened. He heard first of all the creaking of a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... death-watch taking part In this sad vigil. Slowly she undrest, Put out the light and crept into her bed. The linen sheets were fragrant, but so cold. And brimming tears she shed, Sobbing and quivering in her barren nest, Her weeping lips into the pillow prest, Her eyes sealed fast within its smothering fold. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... admired their gentle deftness, I think that at that point of the discussion some forcible male element in me sided very strongly with old Banks. I was aware of the pressure that was so insensibly surrounding him as of a subtly entangling web that seemed to offer no resistance, and yet was slowly smothering him in a million intricate intangible folds. And, after all, why should he be torn away from his root-holds, exiled to some forlorn unknown country where his very methods of farming would be inapplicable? Brenda and Arthur were young and capable. Let them wait, at least until she came of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... but I don't see why I shouldn't be credited with a little common sense even then. I know they haven't much as a rule; what with their sewing-classes, and praying-classes, and mothers' meetings smothering up their minds till they can't see beyond their noses. I never had much to do with that part of it. They didn't like me well enough in the village to want to pray with me nor sew with me; which was just as well, for if I'd prayed, I should have implored the Almighthy to open ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed, In the smothering reek of mill and mine; And death stalks in on the struggling crowd— But he shuns the shadow ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... him that he was smothering, and he felt along the side of his face as he had done in youth when they had put a cap on him that was too large. Twining green things, moist with earth-blood, crept over his fingers, the hot, impatient ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and neither sobbed nor cried. But it was days before she recovered from the shock. Once, long after, when she was reading about the smothering of the princes in the Tower, the whole of the physical sensations of those terrible moments returned upon her, and she sprang from her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... streaming off behind like a comet's tail, which hummed instead of glowed. I was the only male among them. It was a cloud of females, the nymphs of the salt-marsh; and all through that day the singing, stinging, smothering swarm danced about me, rested upon me, covered me whenever I paused, so that my black leggings turned instantly to a mosquito brown, and all my dress ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... is in the clothing of another, wrap him in the nearest thing available, lay him on the floor and roll him over, smothering the flames ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... parasites of royalty saw themselves eclipsed in the bright renown which Tycho had acquired, and every new visit to Uraniburg by a foreign prince supplied fresh fuel to the rancour which had long been smothering in their breasts. The accession of a youthful king held out to his enemies an opportunity of destroying the influence of Tycho; and though no adverse step was taken, yet he had the sagacity to foresee, in "trifles light as ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... and if there were he could not swim. Or the house might catch fire. That would do better. It would be in the night, and Ambrose would be the only one awake, and would have to rouse his father, who slept at the other end of the house. He would wrap himself in a blanket, force his way through smothering smoke and scorching flames, cross over burning planks with bare feet, climb up a blazing flight of stairs just tottering before they fell with a crash, and finally stand undismayed at his father's side. ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... for their lives. The street swarmed again, and people trampled over one another in their wild terror. There was a crash, and the building fell in. The flames licked up the other fiery flood, and had a brave battle in the cellar. The engines played until the air was filled with smothering smoke, and there was nothing left but a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... activity in the eliminative function of the skin. Primitive man, living in a state of Nature, was not burdened with clothing. There was nothing to interfere with the healthy activity of his epidermis. There can be no question that the smothering of the skin by our clothing has much to do with defective elimination of wastes, and the more nearly we can avoid clothing, or the less clothing we can wear, the better. When possible, therefore, and especially in warm weather, it is advisable ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... these away or the soil to reabsorb and reconvert them into the materials of reproduction. Thus year by year the land tends farther toward sterility by the very accumulation of what was once its life. But send a forest fire across those smothering strata of vegetable decay; give once more a chance for every root below to meet the sun above; for every seed above to reach the ground below; soon again the barren will be the fertile, the desert blossom as the rose. It is so with the human mind. It is ever putting forth ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... I stood staring at him, then followed his example. As I relaxed I realized I was tremendously weary. The cumulative exhaustion of the past thirty-six hours seemed to crowd upon me with a smothering sense of physical oppression. I looked at my watch and wound it. Five o'clock. Through the narrow slits near the roof of our swinging cell I could see the changing light of dawn, melting in with the rosy glow from the magnetic rays. My ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... in the internal arrangements of a brooder is a provision to keep the chicks from piling up and smothering each other as they crowd toward the source of heat. This can be accomplished by having the warmest part of the brooder in the center rather than at the side or corner. If the heat comes from above and a considerable portion of the brooder be heated ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... later Northrup found himself on the street. The snow was falling thicker, faster. It had the smothering quality that is so mysterious. People thudded along as if on padded feet; the lights were splashed with clinging flakes and gleamed yellow-red in the whiteness. Sounds were muffled; Northrup felt ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... mingled exultation and dismay. For the three gentle ladies who could not bear to contemplate the possibility of Gavin's leaving them, were each secretly cherishing a longing to hear him express a desire to be away to the war, the desire which he was so painfully smothering for their sakes. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... was simple. We needed only to build a little fire of gorse, and walk through the smoke once or twice. So we built the fire and walked through the smoke, the Lizard coughing and cursing until I feared he might overdo it by smothering us both. Then stamping out the last spark—for he was a woodsman always—we tramped on in better ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... ostentatiously smothering a yawn, "what M. le prefet's visit to Brestalou had to do with the Duchesse's journey to the north. You have got intrigues on the brain, my ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Street and Lake Street, facing the latter, and the dense evergreen hedge which surrounds the house seems to hold it aloof from the later growth of the village. It is said that the house is haunted, for not long after it was built a tenant of the place murdered his wife by smothering her with a pillow in her bedroom, and for many years it was rumored that occupants of the house occasionally were terrified by muffled sounds of moaning as ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... inured to this kind of jar—so frequent in the early years of his daringly unconventional marriage. It seemed he was mistaken. He had been vaguely on edge all the afternoon. What young Joe had rudely blurted out, Mrs Bradley's manner had tacitly expressed. He had succeeded in smothering his own sensations, only to be confronted with the effect of it all on Roy—who must somehow be made ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... cartridge was brought up in "budge barrels," covered with leather, from the magazine, and stowed well away from the guns, either in amidships, or on that side of the ship not directly engaged. Tubs of water were placed between the guns with blankets soaking in them for the smothering of any fire that might be caused. Other tubs were filled with "vinegar water or what we have" for the sponging of the guns. The hatches leading to the hold were taken up, so that no man should desert his post during the engagement. The light sails were furled, and in ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Miss North was so disgusted she didn't do a thing. She made us feel as if we were infants; said she thought smothering in a trunk for an hour was punishment enough for anybody. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... avail them now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted still, the ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns, arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries, smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good digestions, and the gastric juice, what could they do but give in? Swift and sure was the destruction that now overwhelmed them—everybody who wanted a dinner had a strong personal interest ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... when taken to pieces again to go into the smallest possible compass—were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty the subprefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the subprefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance. "My men," said he, "are working down the bedtop ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... of the two Slav apostles, SS. Cyril and Methodus. St. Methodus was the wise administrator of these two—but even if he takes the rulers of the eastern Adriatic under his particular protection one must be prepared for them to fail in smothering, by their enlightened rule, the discontent which in the last three years has grown among the Yugoslavs to such acute proportions. It began, as we have noted, under the aegis of Baron Sonnino; the old neighbour, Austria-Hungary, had been Italy's hereditary foe, and the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... of affection, she was the victim of such a demonstration as would have done the heart of Hogarth good to witness. In the midst of it a slight, delicate woman rushed from the house, and, crowding into the thick group around Selma, threw her arms about her neck, and, nearly smothering her with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at the rock door, glancing around with a vague premonition of evil; but now it was Dolores's hand that took his; Dolores's rich voice that lured him on; and he stepped after her, smothering a sob of resurging terror as the great stone fell into its ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the cistus kept its late flowers, white, yellow, or crimson: while from shrub to shrub away to the rock pinnacles high over my left shoulder honeysuckles and clematis looped themselves in festoons as thick as a man's waist, or flung themselves over the chasm on my right, smothering the ilex saplings which clung to its sides, and hiding the water which roared three hundred feet below. I think that my month in prison must have sharpened my appetite for wild and natural beauty, for I skipped as I went, and whistled in sheer lightness ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understand, Marie? You do not know that it is because of you, and you alone, that I stay on in this place, smothering all my ambitions, my hopes of advancement. No, Marie, you say you do not understand. If you spoke more truly you would say you did ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... Cecilia, smothering her concern for this last piece of intelligence by pretending to feel it merely for the former, expostulated with Lady Honoria upon so mischievous a frolic, and earnestly entreated her to go back and ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... feeling set her heart beating painfully into her throat, a smothering sense of fear, quite new to her, who had ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... in a crouching position. He seemed to be smothering in a mass of black cinders that rose up in a feathery cloud all about ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... Thing overhead. The Norwegian strained at his oars while the sweat ran down into his open shirt. The boat lunged and wallowed desperately, rising on end, falling with prodigious slaps, drenching the occupants with spray. It was splendid, terrifying! Eliza clung to her seat and felt her heartbeats smothering her. Occasionally the oarsman turned, staring past her with round, frightened eyes, and affording her a glimpse of a face working with mingled fear ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... man," sobbed Lev Smith, drawing out his bandanna, and smothering his sharp nose in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... shift on his own responsibility. There she was, with a new foretop-sail never stretched before, and almost all her canvas less than two years old, playing the mischief with it all, let alone putting the ship in danger. At last, when she was fairly smothering herself and her topmasts bending like whips, up he pops, Bible in hand, and says he, with a look aloft and around, like a man more hurt than angry, 'Heavenly Father, this won't do! This here's a pretty state of things, Heavenly Father!' ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shouted by the whole party; for, once the widow and Oonah found their voices, they made good use of them. The noise awoke Andy, who had, be it remembered, a tolerably long sleep by this time: and he having quite forgotten where he had lain down, and finding himself confined by the bed above him, and smothering for want of air, with the fierce shouts of murder ringing in his ear, woke in as great a fright as the women in the bed, and became a party in the terror he himself had produced; every plunge he gave under the bed inflicted a poke or a kick on his mother and cousin, which ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... to the car, and Rene made a fine exhibition of himself, smothering his head under the ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... slender fingers gripped in his for a moment, smothering an insane desire to press them to his lips, which he knew would be fatal to the newly accorded friendship, and then let them go. Miss Mayo continued sitting quietly beside him. She was in no way disturbed by ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... jars of Gubbio ware upon the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay—the pavement paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets—that pavement where Monsignor Bembo courted "dear dead women" with Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia, lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, he fingering his ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... failure. The story of Mr. Fitzgerald's expedition to Aconcagua came to his mind, and he recalled that, although every other member of the party reached the summit, that gentleman himself was unable to do so. In the last stage the difficulty of breathing had increased with fits of smothering, and the medicine chest held no remedy for ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... Rome burns!" Grim laughed as soon as the Zionist had left the room. "Has it ever occurred to you that Nero was possibly smothering his feelings? I wonder how long there'd be one Zionist left out here, if we simply stood aside and looked on. Go and change your clothes, Suliman. It's time I broke ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... am another," said George. "I say, old fellow, I suppose I'm all right for that French pikeman now, hey? After this smothering business ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... time. Hanging pictures. Stealing bases. Shooting the chutes. Choking off a speaker. Running over a new song. Smothering a laugh. Setting fire to a heart. Knifing a performance. Murdering the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "Smothering!" echoed the commander of the ship. "Great Scott! I believe I know now where he is. This way," and he started down the passageway toward a narrow stairs leading to a still lower chamber ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... illuminated doorway, and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the first cheery word I have heard for the last six weeks—too awful I should think it is. They are smothering me between them, Nora. I shall never get up and breathe the free air again; but when you came in you brought a breath ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... will cover the face of the slothful man's garden. In country places we sometimes come across a ruined house with what was a garden round it, and here and there still springs up a flower seeking for air and light in the midst of a smothering mass of weeds. They needed no kindly gardener's hand to make them grow luxuriantly; can barely put out a pale petal unless cared ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... trained as grenade throwers. Their principal weapon is a bucket or bag of grenades or bombs. They operate not only from trenches but accompany the firing line in an attack and dispose of sheltered or isolated group of the enemy by smothering their position with a shower of ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... day? Then, true Pisanio, (Who long'st like me, to see thy lord—who long'st— O let me bate, but not like me—yet long'st, But in a fainter kind—O not like me, For mine's beyond beyond,) say, and speak thick— (Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing To the smothering of the sense)—how far is it To this same blessed Milford? And by the way, Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as To inherit such a haven. But, first of all, How we may steal from hence; and for the gap That we shall make in time, from our hence going And our return, to excuse. But first, how ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... was thus smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had come to her. From the first days of her widowhood she was constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage. Her choice ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... to you and Minna when you were with her before the doctor arrived?" questioned Miss Kiametia, smothering her eagerness ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... it is also useful for poultry and hogs. I have eaten bread and cakes made of the flower, which are also very palatable. Two bushels are usually sown per acre. The season is May; and it is often sown on foul land in the summer, as it grows very thick on the land, and helps to clean it by smothering all the weeds. The crop does not stand on the ground more than ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... such high exaltation, that she looked like an inspired angel in her beauty and courage, and Gherardi, smothering a fierce oath, made one stride towards her ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... ship, and went out in her again. This time our luck was not so good. The passage out was well enough, but homeward-bound we had a hard time of it. While in Havre, too, we had a narrow escape. Christmas night, a fire broke out in the cabin, and came near smothering us all, forward, before we knew anything about it. Our chief mate, whose name was Everdy,[16] saved the vessel by his caution and exertions; the captain not getting on board until the fire had come to a head. We kept everything closed until an engine was ready, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... curtains, blown by the breeze, took fire from the lights, which had been placed too near the windows, and was instantly in flames. Some persons made ineffectual efforts to extinguish the fire by tearing down the drapery and smothering the flames with their hands; but in the twinkling of an eye the curtains, papers, and garlands caught, and the wood-work began ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of weapons, their eyes of eagerness, their souls of dreams; brimming with pent energy; theorizing, arguing, disputing; ready at an instant's notice for any sort of a joke or excitement that would relieve the tension; boisterous, noisy, laughing loudly, smothering by sheer weight of ridicule individual resentments—altogether a wonderful picture of the youth and hope and energy and ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... my dear child," said his mother, as soon as the first tumult of emotion had subsided,—"well, Stephen," she said, smiling at him through her tears, and almost smothering him with kisses, "you are not so much altered as I expected; and I do not think, if I had had the care of you, I could have nursed you better myself. You owe your father a second life, and we all owe him the deepest gratitude for the care he has ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... breathed deeply. At any rate, her brow cleared and her smile was positively enchanting. Never, in all his life, had he gazed upon a lovelier face. His heart began to beat with a rapidity that startled him, and a queer little sensation, as of smothering, made it difficult for him to speak naturally ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... my dress," said she, shakily, wiping her eyes on the soft sleeve of Mrs. Costello's shirt-waist; when a great deal of patting, and much smothering from the arms of Teresa and Alanna had almost restored her equilibrium, "and Joe worried too! I couldn't write and bother my father. And only this morning I was thinking that I might have to write and tell Sister Rose that I couldn't be in the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... of a nervous or timid nature she might have fainted at once. But she was brave and nervy and she struggled hard for her freedom, seeking to cast off the blanket which was smothering her and giving ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... say. She sat up straight, and I could see that she was feeling different from me. The awfulest thing was the silence; there wasn't a sound but the screaking of the saddles, the measured tramplings, and the sneezing of the horses, afflicted by the smothering dust-clouds which they kicked up. I wanted to sneeze myself, but it seemed to me that I would rather go unsneezed, or suffer even a bitterer torture, if there is one, than attract ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Once or twice before Joyce had been conscious of this. Something seemed to go out from her and follow Gaston. She, or that strange something, escaped the fear and smothering closeness of the little house. It was free and happy out there with Gaston in the night. He was strong—stronger than anybody in St. Ange. Nothing could really happen while he was near. She saw his smile; felt his compelling touch—no, not even Jude would dare ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in the open, but there were a few youngsters in the shacks and women too worn out with drudgery to care much whether they slept in smothering darkness or under the clear cold light of ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... The colder the winters, the less the normal snowfall and the more the deficiency of moisture, the greater is the hazard. But in some instances so great is the growth of the clover plants that not to graze them down in part at least would incur the danger of smothering many of the plants, especially in regions where the snowfall is at ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... to-night? If that horrible creature only hadn't been——" The setting would have been so perfect for the denouement. She sprawled back, resignedly, in her chair, smothering a yawn. A flutter of applause marked the coming in of the orchestra. There was the usual scraping of chairs and whining of strings. Then suddenly Miss Gray leaned out over the box-rail, exclaiming incoherently, her hands ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... populace, the bereaved parents, and the magistrate joined in effort to invent a sure method of putting him to death. Water, fire and sword all having failed, they finally fixed upon smothering him in a vast cream-cake. The whole country round made contributions of flour for the tough pastry, sugar for the viscid filling, and bricks for a huge oven; and it was made and baked on a plain outside the city walls. Meanwhile the prisoner was allowed to go and bid his mother farewell, and ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... contrast between the thoughts of the two, as they looked at each other! Saul begins by consulting Samuel as a magician; he ends by seeking counsel from the witch at Endor. Samuel's words are beautiful in their smothering of all personal feeling, and dignified in their authority. He at once takes command of Saul, and prepares him by half-hints for something great to come. The direction to 'go up before me' is a sign of honour. The invitation to the sacrificial feast is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have been a lot of human kindness under the smothering, stifling cloud of the "System" and behind the iron clank and swishing "cat" strokes of brutality—a lot of soul light in the darkness of our dark past—a page that has long since been closed down—when innocent ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... mud went the blue coat and flannel pants, and there echoed a cry much like that of a frightened girl. Smothering that cry with a handful of mud, Evan proceeded to plaster every part of his victim, except the ears, into one of which ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... pronounced this response, we sat in a comical sort of restraint, smothering a laugh, which we were afraid might ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... baking and sweltering, cracking their rough, unpainted sides into yawning fissures, and filling the smothering air with resinous odors distilled from the fat knots in the refuse planking of which they were built. Beyond these was the line of camp-guards—bright gun-barrels and bayonets glistening painfully, and those who bore them walking with as weary slowness as was consistent with any motion whatever, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... hours, as I before observed, in passing from the eastern to the western gate of Pekin. The clouds of dust raised by the populace were here much denser than on the road, and the smothering heat of the day, the thermometer in our little carts standing at 96, was almost insupportable. Except the great crowd on every side, we saw little to engage the attention after the first five minutes. Indeed, a single walk through one of the broad streets is quite sufficient ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... sir," said Blakeney, politely smothering a slight yawn, "and it is vastly unbecoming in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the bronzed mowers lie in the shade for their short rest, and willingly pay our footing for the feat. Again, we come back with book in pocket, and our own children tumbling about as we did before them; now romping with them, and smothering them with the sweet-smelling load—now musing and reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings. And so shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grandfathers the lovemaking and the rompings of younger ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... who calmly proceeded to translate the speech to the colonel. Carg reported that it was translated verbatim. Then the general sat back and squinted at his companion, who seemed fairly bewildered by the threat. Patsy caught the young officer smothering a smile, but neither of them ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... we should appeal to those young men who suffer from the repression of their first desires at the moment when all their forces are developing; to artists sick of their own genius smothering under the pressure of poverty; to men of talent, persecuted and without influence, often without friends at the start, who have ended by triumphing over that double anguish, equally agonizing, of soul and body. Such men will well understand the lancinating pains of the cancer which ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... remained, and they were just going. She saw the shine on the paint of the door-posts, and the smoke of the torches, as they let themselves out. Then they had all gone, and left her alone in a cave full of smoke. Vainly she struggled to follow them, the doors were fast, the smoke was smothering her, and in the agony of a last effort to escape ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... they kept good fires. And, suddenly, all his being revolted. Stay here and face that father—and that image of a servant! Stay here for a night of this! Gyp was not his Gyp, lying there with that baby beside her, in this hostile house. Smothering his footsteps, he made for the outer hall. There were his coat and hat. He put them on. His bag? He could not see it. No matter! They could send it after him. He would write to her—say that her fainting had upset him—that he could not risk making her faint again—could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... having permitted Trenholme to make known his presence to Miss Manning. The man, however, protested that he had done nothing of the sort. Miss Sylvia had been called to the lodge telephone, and the footman's acquaintance with the facts went no farther. Smothering his annoyance as best he could, Fenley rang up Mrs. Bates and asked for particulars. When the woman explained what had happened, he rejoined Winter in the hall, paying no heed to Furneaux, who was entering at ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... smothering her anger by a strong effort; "I don't believe that was what Ursula meant you to do with it, and I don't believe she will rest quietly in the grave while you squander the money she ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... him of various means of stopping the telegraph and smothering the tale, if matters should have touched the worst here. He calculated abstrusely the practicable shortness of the two routes from Bevisham to Romfrey, by post-horses on the straightest line of road, or by express train on the triangle of railway, in case of an extreme need ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save All that they love from famine: when he hears 40 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek. Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 45 His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety,—if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... stories,) wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and every thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored American way. Look up the street or down ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ach, lieber Gott, my little Helene; my little baby! How long, how long!" he murmured, smothering his emotion, but looking now at her, now at the little German doll clutched ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... silence. The sea has its undertone on the stillest nights; the woods are quiet with an hundred lesser noises; but here was absolute, terrifying, smothering silence,—the suspension of all sound, even the least,—looming like a threatening cloud larger and more dreadful above the cowering imagination. The human soul demanded to shriek aloud in order to preserve its sanity, and yet a whisper uttered ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... a larger and heavier girl than Nan. Strong as the latter was, and well developed from her athletic training, the older girl would have been a heavy charge for Nan at best. Now, with the smoke half smothering her, and Pearl a dead weight in her arms, Nan could scarcely drag her burden to the opening ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... seven, and still no sound was to be heard. I could wait no longer; I wrapped the child in a shawl, and carried her into the Millars' house, and left her under the care of Mrs. Millar's little servant. And then I ran down, through the thick, smothering fog, to ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... felt he hated the smothering haze that rolled in front and hid the dangers, but they must go on and trust to luck. He knew Adam's plans and no arguments would shake his resolve. Half an hour later a twinkle broke out some distance ahead ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... imperative duties. But our ministrations of charity and benevolence should by no means be confined exclusively within the pale of the order. This crowded world, with its eager millions, maddened with ambition's unquenchable fires, trampling under foot and well-nigh smothering each other in the great rush of competitive strife, is full of poor unfortunates, daily appealing ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... obviously nearing its eyrie—dropping lower and lower, losing speed and altitude; and also threatening each moment to tumble down out of control into the smothering welter of olive-green below, with a dead, unseen body in ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... method of instruction. I attended his classes as an elementary grant-earner from the age of ten until his death, and it is so I remember him, sitting on the edge of a table, smothering a yawn occasionally and giving out the infallible formulae to the industriously scribbling class sitting in rows of desks before him. Occasionally he would slide to his feet and go to a blackboard on an easel and draw on that very slowly and deliberately ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece' beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was, according to his estate, royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... receptivity of their souls, as to the capacity of their souls for returning love. At one awful moment she had even doubted whether they had souls at all, but had hastily blown out the candle at this point, extinguishing the doubt at the same time, smothering it beneath the bedclothes, and falling asleep at once, after the fashion of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... prologue and afterpiece as something old-fashioned and inartistic, but never turn one solitary eyelash when Hamlet follows up his death by rushing before the curtain and grinning his thanks. Desdemonas who come forward, after the smothering scene, to receive flowers, and Romeos and Juliets who rise from the tomb that they may bow and smirk before an audience—while we have such as these among us, let us not cast stones ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his unchangeably dingy room he realized slowly, after smothering his head in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching eyeballs, that Dr. Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to wander. He protested, but not for long, for he hated to venture out there among the dreadfully learned ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... afforded me a most welcome support, especially as the seas were still breaking over me so furiously that it was only with the utmost difficulty I contrived to snatch a breath between whiles. But the breaking seas that came near to smothering me were also sweeping me away fast to leeward, and after a time I found myself in smoother water, the seas no longer broke over me, and, the water being quite warm, I experienced no discomfort, apart ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... garland on his head, as having won the prize, accompanied with a crew of boon companions. Grieved at this, he stepped in and shut the gate. Rosader seeing this, and not looking for such unkind entertainment, blushed at the disgrace, and yet smothering his grief with a smile, he turned to the gentlemen, and desired them to hold his brother excused, for he did not this upon any malicious intent or niggardize, but being brought up in the country, he absented himself as not finding his ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... often occasion to remark that the spirit of enterprise or improvement seldom glowed with sufficient ardour to resist the smothering effect of a demand for dollars. The Americans love talking. All great works, however, that promise a profitable result, are sure to meet support from men who have enterprise and capital sufficient to await the ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... those awful deities—facing those other people, those strangers—facing human beings for the first time in his life, with a speech to utter. No doubt it was well packed away in his memory, no doubt it was fresh and usable, until I had been heard from. I suppose that after that, and under the smothering pall of that dreary silence, it began to waste away and disappear out of his head like the rags breaking from the edge of a fog, and presently there wasn't any fog left. He didn't go on—he didn't last long. It was not many sentence's after his first before he began to hesitate, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... impossible, for one reason or another, to make a single movement toward withdrawing it. Again and again he tried to write to her, but the haunting suspicion that she would lay his epistle before her new friends, always made him throw down his pen in a smothering indignation. He found himself compelled to wait what opportunity chance or ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Northeastern Railroads, who has stepped in from Number Seven to give a little private tug of a persuasive nature to the Honourable Adam's coat-tails. A red Leviathan comes screaming down Main Street with a white trail of dust behind it, smothering the occupants of vehicles which have barely succeeded in getting out of the way, and makes a spectacular finish before the Pelican by sliding the last fifty feet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... great a degree that they are able, by smelling at the pocket-handkerchiefs, to tell to which persons they belong ("Reisesk.," p. 39); and lovers at parting exchange pieces of the linen they may be wearing, and during their separation inhale the odor of the beloved being, besides smothering the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... finally, and between gusts of wind regained his own house. He stopped on entering, and barred the door behind him; then he groped his way to the kitchen, and taking a lamp from its place, raked together the embers smothering in a brazier habitually kept for retention of fire, and lighted the lamp. He next broke up some stools and small tables, and with the pieces made a pile under the grand stairway to the second floor, muttering as he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... late in the night, spinning amongst her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece's beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... I was smothering beneath the weight that was crushing me and preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers. Then, with all my strength, I launched out a blow at ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of stuff which seems likely to suppress fire without smothering it. Moss of a certain kind will do, but not the soft, feathery moss that grows so deep among the spruce-trees. Half-decayed wood is good; spongy, moist, unpleasant stuff, a vegetable wet blanket. The bark of dead evergreen trees, hemlock, spruce, or balsam, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... And now and ever be it well with thee, Sweet man, for shielding us! An honest soul And kindly. Oh! they're smothering Eunoae: Push, coward! That's right! 'All in,' the bridegroom said And locked the door ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... minutes she was smothering the hysterical enthusiasm of her old friend, Dinah. It was as she had expected: Oliphant had grown more suspicious and difficult for the last two years, and had refused to see a doctor, or, in fact, anyone but the Rev. Dr. Shapless and a country lawyer whom he used when absolutely necessary. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Montrose Graham was quite a celebrity in the —th Cavalry before ever he reported for duty with his troop. Several weeks the Silver Shield Mining Company spent in a squabble among themselves that ended in the smothering of "the Breifogle interest," and came near to sending "the Boss of Argenta" to jail. Several days elapsed before Captain Lee and Lieutenants McCrea and Graham felt it entirely prudent to leave, but when they did it was with the assurance that stockholders ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... days of Solomon, accidents have occurred where mother and babe have occupied the same bed. Not only is there the ever-present danger of smothering the babe, but there are also many other reasons why a baby should have its own bed. The constant tendency to nurse it too often and the possibility of the bed clothing shutting off the fresh air supply, are in and of themselves sufficient reasons ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... difficulty in keeping Mrs. Brown from smothering him in blankets, and ruining his digestion with the delicacies of her larder; but I at last got him completely rolled up in the corner of my room, and asleep. I lay awake some time later with plans for his future. ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to be feared was the positive influence of Humanitarianism: it was coming, like the kingdom of God, with power; it was crushing the imaginative and the romantic, it was assuming rather than asserting its own truth; it was smothering with bolsters instead of wounding and stimulating with steel or controversy. It seemed to be forcing its way, almost objectively, into the inner world. Persons who had scarcely heard its name were professing its tenets; priests absorbed it, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... frenzy of fright, he was up again on his knees seeking with quivering hands for the switch; pawing about then for matches with which to relight the gas. For the blackness—that blackness to which he had been stranger for more than half his life—had come upon him as an enemy smothering him, muffling his head in its terrible black folds, stopping his nostrils with its black fingers, gripping his windpipe with black cords, so that his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I say! But stop"—and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... to-day thousands of wives doing the work of ordinary housemaids, who, putting it on a low standard, are smothering ability to earn perhaps more money than the men who enslave them, if they only had an opportunity to unfold the powers which God has given them; but they have been brought up from infancy to believe ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... that the sleighing was difficult, and at present the storm is so smothering that few are out. A. has been out to school every day, and I have not failed to go out into the air once a day ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Well, that's the grass shriveling. Think of it—grass with so much sap inside it hisses. It's drying right up in a one-two-three! Now the top part is falling down—toppling forward—coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay.... It put out one of the torches by smothering it. Drowned it in grass. Nothing serious—the boy's got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks—youve got to realize this stuff's about ten feet high. Further in it's anyway sixteen feet. Fighting it's like battling an octopus with a million arms. The stuff writhes around ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of folks' clothes that I don't stand up to 'em and keep 'em from smothering Claire. Lord, it would be awful if she settled down to being a Mrs. Jeff Saxton. Got to save her—not for ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... cleared away, enabling us to see the land distinctly to leeward, some six miles distant, the wind had increased to such an extent that sail had been reduced to close-reefed topsails and reefed courses, while the sea had risen in proportion and was now so heavy that the frigate was literally smothering herself forward at every plunge. The fact was that she was being terribly over-driven; yet the skipper had no alternative. He dared not relieve the ship of another inch of canvas, for we were on a lee-shore, and ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Smothering a curse, he sat down beside her. "Listen, Sarah. What is the use of fighting like a couple ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... scenes in which I was involved every day, taught me more in a short time than I would have learned in a number of happier years. I realised that the starvation and disaster of the siege had made egoists of all those who a few months before had been smothering my ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... desire are still influenced by desire; who whilst possessed of body, act as though they had none; who put away from themselves all sources of true merit—briefly will I recount their sorrowful lot. Like smothering a raging fire, though carefully put out, yet a spark left, so in their abstraction, still the germ of 'I,' the source of great sorrow still surviving, perpetuates the suffering caused by lust, and ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... by the arm-pits. The two princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the Chateau-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin, or the Quarreller, he disposed of his unworthy spouse by smothering her between two mattresses, or, according to the local legend, strangling her with her ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... up towards him as one draws the cork out of the neck of a bottle, to extricate him in spite of his kicks and struggles; while that other hand, set free from the torch, was clapped over his mouth, smothering any sounds of which the under-officer was capable. Not that it was an easy matter to give vent to a shout of alarm in such a position, for Stuart's huge fingers and thumb gripped the German so fiercely and firmly about the neck, just below his jaws, that movement of the latter was impossible, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... and profitable to us all, were over, how delightful to sit down on our robes and spend some hours in pleasant chat ere my bed was made and I was cosily and thoroughly tucked in by my faithful comrades. It was hard at first to sleep with the head completely covered; there was such a sense of smothering, that I often ran the risk of the freezing rather than the smothering. One night, perhaps because of this suffocating sensation, I unconsciously uncovered my head. After a time I awoke suddenly to consciousness, to find that I was trying to pull off ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... minutes would be to court death by freezing. Thus one would go up the little ladder, stick his head through the door a moment for a breath of fresh air, then drop back and allow another the pleasure of a fresh breathing spell. So we alternated between freezing and smothering all the way, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles or more. I had read of the tortures of the "middle passage" and the packing of the slave ships, but I do not think it could have ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... sometimes called smothering, is that of cooking meat in a tightly covered jar in a moderate oven for an hour (the moderate heat serves to draw out the juice of the meat), after which the heat is increased, and the meat cooked in its own juices one ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... sickened. Now I tripped him; we toppled together, came to the ground with a thump. Here we churned, while he flung me and still I stuck. The acrid dust of the alkali enveloped us. Again he spat, fetid—I sprawled upon him, smothering his flailing arms; gave him all my weight and strength; smelled the sweat of him, snarled into his snarling face, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... see Christine bowed over her typewriter. She was so still that she frightened him. All the terrors of night which lay in wait for him ever since his fathers dead hand had touched his door and opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, smothering wings. He called out "Christine! Christine!" in a choked voice, and she moved at once, and he saw her ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... from Mrs. Babbit a very close inspection of the veiled figure, who, smothering her wrath, felt greatly relieved when the train started and prevented her from hearing anything more. At the next station, however, Mrs. Douglas showed her companion a crochet collar, which she had purchased for two shillings, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes |
