"Benumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the brown hills on the way to her mother with the news, saying over and over to her benumbed senses that Gavin was not dead, that he was alive. It seemed as if her heart had been so stupefied with grief that it could not yet accept joy. She ran in a kind of dream saying that she would soon wake up and find that this was ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the second time, when, after having crossed these mountains, he passed the Tanais to subdue the Scythians, and the soldiers were oppressed with thirst, hunger, fatigue, and despair, so that a great number died on the road, or lost their feet from congelation; the cold seizing them, it benumbed their hands, and they fell at full length on the snow to rise no more. The best means they knew, says Q. Curtius, to escape that mortal numbness, was not to stop, but to force themselves to keep marching, or else to light great ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... where, besides this, the shoe pinched in the United States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury, not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited the case of the crowds whom I had seen some years before huddled together ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... side, deep in the waves. He goes down suddenly, cold, frightened, benumbed. He feels that some one is trying to pull the rope out of his hands. It must be Lockwin. The drowning man clutches with a hundred forces. The tug increases. The struggling man will lose the rope. Lockwin is striking Corkey with a bludgeon. That is unfair! There is a last pull, ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... sorcerers, within these last few years, are marvellously increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away even to the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft. I pray God they never practise further than upon the subject.' For himself, the bishop declares, 'these eyes have seen most evident and manifest marks of their wickedness.' The annalist adds that this, no doubt, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... symptoms of discontent. It is really deplorable that we should be the only nation in Europe who are up to the danger of the moment, and that the minds of all the other Cabinets are either so tainted with false principles, or are so benumbed, that it is impossible to work upon them. It is manifest, from the most undoubted information, that the interior of France is in a state of the greatest disorder and confusion; that the successes of the armies are the only cause of this confusion not breaking ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter grievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul benumbed and asleep, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... superior intelligence, failed in his estimate of her. The explanation lies no doubt in the fact that in these man-and-woman affairs instinct is a surer guide than education and intelligence, unless, indeed, the intelligence is preternaturally keen. Lockwood's student life had benumbed the elemental instinct, which in the miners, the "men," yet remained vigorous and unblunted, and by means of which they assessed Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true worth. For all Lockwood's culture, his own chuck-tenders, unlettered ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... 'It is yours, it belongs not to me.' At dusk they pour it into the sacks again, chanting, 'May it increase.' But these are not removed to the granary until late at night, at an hour when the hands of the demons are too much benumbed by the nightly frost to diminish the store. At the beginning of every one of these operations the presence of lamas is essential, to announce the auspicious moment, and conduct religious ceremonies. They receive fees, and are ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... sufferings, and now this blow at her very heart, benumbed her brain with a quiet madness. She grew frightfully pale and sat as though dead, gazing at the face of the dying woman. Those same fragments of thoughts and visions now swarmed through her brain that had done ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Jukes was benumbed much more than he supposed. He held on—very wet, very cold, stiff in every limb; and in a momentary hallucination of swift visions (it is said that a drowning man thus reviews all his life) he beheld all sorts of memories altogether unconnected with his present situation. He ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... there had been no marked deficit in the productiveness of industry, when there had been no extraordinary dissipation of its results by waste and extravagance,—when no pestilence or famine or dark rumor of civil revolution had benumbed its energies,—when the needs for its enterprise were seemingly as active and stimulating as ever,—all its habitual functions are arrested, and shocks of disaster run along the ground from Chicago to Constantinople, toppling down innumerable well-built structures, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... engines that tyranny sits down in cold and serious meditation to invent. This is the empire that man exercises over man. Thus is a being, formed to expatiate, to act, to smile, and enjoy, restricted and benumbed. How great must be his depravity or heedlessness, who vindicates this scheme for changing health and gaiety and serenity, into the wanness of a dungeon, and the deep furrows ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... pillage; and I restrained myself with difficulty from casting the whole there and then into the waters which had witnessed his battles for it. But the belt was firmly lashed about me, and we were on the deck of the steamer before my benumbed hands could ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... what lay at my feet drove me from the Hollow and drove me the wrong way. As my steps fell mechanically into the trail down which I had come in innocence and kindly purpose only a few minutes before, a startling thought shot through my benumbed mind. The woman had shown no haste in her turning! There had been a naturalness in her movement, a dignity and a grace which spoke of ease, not shock. What if she had not seen! What if my deed was as yet unknown! Might ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... for they had only six quarts of rum, and six bottles of wine, for nineteen people, who were driven by storms about the south-sea, exposed to wet and cold all the time, for nearly a month; each man was allowed only a tea-spoon full of rum a-day, but this tea-spoon full refreshed the poor men, benumbed as they were with cold, and faint with hunger, more than twenty times the quantity would have done those who were warm, and well fed; and had it not been for the spirit having such power to act upon men, in their condition, they never could have outlived ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... deserve the least attention. There may happen to be in the body of a man, or a woman, some benumbed part, either from illness, or the effect of remedies, or drugs, or even naturally; but that is no proof that the devil has anything to do with it. There are even persons accused of magic and sorcery, on whom no part thus characterized has been ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... castles which imprisoned the purest of noble young ladies. He lay down to sleep without supper, in the middle of a field between two furrows. The snow fell in large flakes. Next day Candide, all benumbed, dragged himself towards the neighbouring town which was called Waldberghofftrarbk-dikdorff, having no money, dying of hunger and fatigue, he stopped sorrowfully at the door of an inn. Two men dressed in ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... drank the hemlock as if it had been a cup of wine: he then walked up and down the room for a little while, bade his pupils remember that this was the real deliverance from all disease and impurity, and then, as the fatal sleep benumbed him, he lay down, bidding Krito not forget a vow he had made to one of the gods; and so he slept into death. "Thus," said Plato, "died the man who, of all with whom we were acquainted, was in death the noblest, in life the wisest ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there went a twisting thread of wonder, of striving for understanding. What was this thing which had come clutching sweetly at her heart, which had stilled the very life in her with holy mystery, and whose swift passing had left her benumbed within as some old woman mumbling in the sun on a door-sill? Where was the glory of the spring? What had come upon the face of the waters, that the light had gone from them? What was this thing that the good God wished her to learn, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... day one might select for a ride, for the storm is a regular north-easter, and your hands and feet are benumbed with the piercing cold wind, while you are ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... sort of desolate lethargy of mind and body from which nothing could rouse her. Her mother was in despair. Richard Gardner was too ill to come to see the girl he loved, and he did not write. The blow that had fallen upon his promising and prosperous life seemed to have shattered his nerves and benumbed his initiative. He had no words of hope for Rosalie; so he said nothing. Thus, in silence and apart, the two were suffering their young agony of wrecked hopes and love laid ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... of the highly rarefied air, the traveller at first experiences great difficulty in breathing, accompanied by a sharp, piercing pain at each inspiration. This increases until he becomes what the natives call "emparamento,"—when his extremities are benumbed, and he can no longer continue in motion. Soon after this he is seized with violent raving and delirium; froth issues from his mouth; he tears the flesh from his hands and arms with his teeth, pulls his hair, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... life, but at one o'clock the car again struck the waters and dragged at a frightful speed through the lake, compelling the passengers to stand on the edge of the basket and cling to the ropes, the cold so intense they were well-nigh benumbed. At length they were rescued by a passing boat, but this was not until after ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Benumbed with cold, and half dead with terror, Paslew needed all his companion's support, for he could do little to help himself, added to which, they occasionally encountered some large stone, or stepped into a deep hole, so that it required Hal's utmost exertion ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... penetrated even the spy's benumbed brain. "Why is Mrs. Whitney wearing these finger tips?" and he held up the limp right hand. Each finger was fitted with a wax tip, and on the index finger, distinct and plain, was the scar shaped ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... he strode towards the door of the east hall. She could not possibly outrun him thither. Her heart sank. The killing sense of failure benumbed her body. He was already at the door,—was about to open it. At that instant he stepped back into the parlor. In through the doorway, that he was ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... themselves surrounded by all the horrors of famine. Many of them were reduced to devour the leaves of trees; the majority were altogether destitute of sustenance. In this state of severe privations, and with very light clothing, they passed the nights lying on the shore, benumbed with cold, incapable of enjoying, even in the smallest degree, the solace of sleep, and expecting with anxiety the return of day. Their courage was supported only with the hope of meeting some bodies of Spaniards, or some groups of fugitive inhabitants, and consequently ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... were in a pitiable condition when rescued. They were benumbed by the cold and suffering ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... clothes to the wind, the shore being but a few rods distant, Sill, after divesting himself of a part of his clothes, plunged into the water, and with vigorous strokes swam towards the land. He had proceeded but a short way when, either in consequence of becoming benumbed by the coldness of the water after being chilled by exposure to the wind, or from being seized by cramp, or from what other cause, the unfortunate man suddenly turning his face towards Armstrong, and uttering a cry of alarm, sank and disappeared from sight. Once more only ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... fellows rallied and came back to their works. In the midst of the struggle the wind changed, bringing a thaw with it, and as the troops struggled on, blinded with the sleet and snow that now fell heavily, and benumbed with the cold, the men of the marshes opened the sluices in the dike. Through the openings poured the waters of the rising tide, quickly flooding the marshes and sweeping ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Lord's high service, And banish falsehood from thy soul. Use all thy strength, use all thy fervor, Defy thine own desires, awaken! Be not afraid when seas are foaming, And earth to her foundations shaken. Benumbed the hand then of the sailor, The captain's skill and power are lamed. Gayly they sailed with colors flying, And now turn home again ashamed. The ocean is our only refuge, The sandbank is our only goal, The masts are swaying as with ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... however, they were dismayed to find that its plank flooring overlapped the abutment by several feet, and that it was impossible to ascend it. Nothing remained for them but to let go their slippery hold and swim back to the shore. Poe reached the bank in an exhausted and benumbed condition, whilst Mayo was rescued by a boat just as he was succumbing. On getting ashore Poe was seized with a violent attack of vomiting, and both lads ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... now marshalling, arming, and drilling our raw recruits; let us concede that the giant of the North has not yet put forth his energies,—that, although roused from his torpor, one of his arms is still benumbed, and that his lithe and active opponent is for the moment pommelling him on every side, and has a momentary advantage; let us admit that our go-ahead nation is indignant at the idea of one step backward in this great contest: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... across the fields in the direction of home, but when she reached the road leading to the sea, she went along it to Per Nielsen's farm. There they picked her up, benumbed with misery. "Granny's dead!" she broke out over and over again, looking from one to the other with terror in her eyes. That was all they could get out of her. When they proposed taking her home to the Crow's Nest, she began to ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... twenty below, and, when they cooked, rose to zero. A pleasant time of it they must have had there on the ice, for those three days, in their bags smoking and sleeping! No wonder that on the fourth day they found they moved slowly, so cramped and benumbed were they. This morning a new sledge came to them from the ship; they got out of their bags, packed, and got under way again. They were still running along shore, but soon sent back the relief party which had brought the new sled, and in a few days more set out to ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... over his head. Instantly the sky became covered with clouds, the fire went down, snow fell in large flakes, an icy wind howled round the mountain. Amid the fury of the storm Helen added curses against her stepsister. The cloak failed to warm her benumbed limbs. The mother kept on waiting for her; she looked from the window, she watched from the doorstep, but her daughter came not. The hours passed slowly, but Helen did ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... out the figures. The guesses were various; but no one thought of the possible arrival of a stranger at such an hour on such a night, until Serena suggested that it would be a good plan to open the door. Then the unbidden guest was discovered lying benumbed along the threshold. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatrice and Eleanor talked as fast as their tongues could wag. Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue, to turn down a side street and presently stop at Carley's home. It was a modest three-story brown-stone house. Carley had been so benumbed by sensations that she did not imagine she could experience a new one. But peering out of the taxi, she gazed dubiously at the brownish-red stone steps and front of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... then no word afterwards. February went by gray and with showers of sleet: no word came. In the first week of March there came a great storm, with snow pelting on the furious wind. All the fishing boats were drawn high on the land, and the fishers sat in their cottages benumbed, despite the fires on the hearth, for the wind roared through doors and windows and often seemed minded to take up the little houses and smash them on the rocks as an angry child smashes a flimsy toy. No one went out of doors, and the Cassidys sat with their ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... not carried very far, however. In a moment or two he had recovered himself, and crept out gasping and laughing, just below Mercy. Ian did not move. He was so benumbed that to change his position an inch would, he ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... sallow, tall man encased in a dirty canvas shroud of an apron, was apparently expecting the party. More beans, more biscuits, more steaming tea—and then a bunk was spread for Parker. His previous night of vigil and his day spent in the wind had benumbed his faculties, and he speedily forgot his fears and his bitter ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Still benumbed by these crushing blows, the Russians were bewildered by the electrical swiftness with which the campaign developed, moving on lines almost identical with those in the war with China, ten years before. A miracle of discipline and minute perfection in ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... her way to the bed, for she was becoming benumbed with the cold, and threw herself upon it, utterly wretched, utterly hopeless. For hours she lay there in a sort of stupor, conscious only of one terrible ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... I lay. How long I know not—it must have been for several hours. I was brought to consciousness by a sense of cold. I was benumbed—a steady rain was falling, and from the condition of my clothes, which were completely saturated, must have been falling for some time previous. I rose with pain and difficulty to my feet. I was still as one stunned and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... experiences unique in kind and all speaking dramatically of war. Each such sight is a surprise more vivid than the preceding one. Every day is a succession of startling novelties, each of which gives one a tingling shock. We are living so rapidly that some are benumbed, others intoxicated ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... re-establishing its languid repose. The frequent use of half notes induces a predominance of the minor key, and this, with the constant recurrence of the rhythmical fall, imparts to Semitic and Hindoo music that melancholy, lethargic uniformity which expresses in a striking manner the benumbed energies and undeveloped spirit of the people among whom it is found. When a race has substituted habit and custom for national feeling, its music is necessarily monotonous and characterless, for the stronger the national ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Walker's society highly agreeable and stimulating. She wore a snowy white apron over a blue gingham dress, and rose from time to time to replenish the platters. The Governor chaffed her familiarly, and Archie edged into the talk with an ease that surprised him. His speculative faculties, all but benumbed by the violent exercise to which they had been subjected since he joined the army of the hunted, found new employment in an attempt to determine just how much this cheery, handsome girl knew of the history of the company that met at her father's table. She was the daughter of a retired crook, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... overwhelmed in a pouring rain, and had to climb up the slippery red path which is parallel and near to Mbette's. One of the men picked up a little girl who had been deserted by her mother. As she was benumbed by cold and wet he carried her; but when I came up he threw her into the grass. I ordered a man to carry her, and we gave her to one of the childless women; she is about four years old, and not at all negro-looking. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... hearing the outcries... Came, precisely, and not ran. Seeing what the matter was, he did not become amazed or excited; during his practice as an official city doctor, he had had his fill of seeing such things, so that he had already grown benumbed and hardened to human sufferings, wounds and death. He ordered Simeon to lift the corpse of Jennka a bit upward, and himself getting up on the seat, cut through the tape. Proforma, he ordered Jennka's body to be borne away into the room that had been ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... him, dark its wings and cold and dread; Never unto trail or tepee were his straying footsteps led; Till benumbed, he sank, and pillowed On ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the church came wafted across the waters, faint and sweet in its distant music, and the laborers in the fields paused a moment in their tasks to do homage to the Holy Maiden in murmured prayers. But Marie Gourdon heard none of these sounds, felt not the cold of the evening air. Her senses were benumbed, and she was only conscious of a dull, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... dogs. They came huddling from the ladders where I had left them, the sleigh still trailing at their heels. One poor animal was so benumbed I cut him from the traces and left him to die. Gathering up the robes, I shook them free of snow, replaced them in the sleigh and led the string of dogs down to the river. It would be bitterly cold facing that sweep of unbroken ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... shattered masts were tied in four-sided racks. To these {187} Iberville had the wounded bound, and the crew plunged for the shore. Eighteen men perished going ashore in the darkness. On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bullets whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had sent out his sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now joined him, and, mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader marched against the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... comfortable than in the morning. Night came on us long before we reached our journey's end, the wayside khan of Krevata. There was a little parleying at the door, and Dhemetri seemed dissatisfied with what he saw, and disposed to carry us on to another resting-place. But thoroughly benumbed as we were, the blaze of light that fell upon us from the half-open door quite won our hearts, and we felt willing to risk whatever discomforts the place might have rather than go further. As we entered the door, the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... suppose that this danger was known in the interior of the ship, and a terrible anguish oppressed his heart. How resist these redoubtable enemies? Would Andre Vasling and his confederates unite with the rest on board in the common peril? Could Penellan and the others, half starved, benumbed with cold, resist these formidable animals, made wild by unassuaged hunger? Would they not be ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... pulling up here and there, the parcels accumulating round me and the engine in my head gathering more way every minute. The composure of the people on the pavements was provoking to a degree, and as to the people in shops, they were benumbed, more than half frozen—imbecile. Funny how it affects you to be in a peculiar state of mind: everybody that does not act up to your excitement seems so confoundedly unfriendly. And my state of mind what with the hurry, the worry and a growing exultation was peculiar enough. That ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... at length I obtained the object of my visit, and returned to my room, when, on opening the door, I saw poor Mangrove lying on his back in the middle of the floor, with his legs and arms extended as if he had been on the rack, his eyes set, his mouth open, and every faculty benumbed by fear. At his feet sat the negro child, almost as much terrified as he was, and crying most lamentably; while, at a little distance, sat the spectre of the old woman, scratching its head with the greatest composure, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or feeling, or interest ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... the Mayflower came into view. He speaks of "the interesting group upon the deck" of the little vessel. The very word suggests that we are to have a very commonplace account of the landing, and the circumstances which followed it. In an instant, however, we are made to "feel the cold which benumbed, and listen to the winds which pierced" this "interesting" group; and immediately after, the picture is flashed upon the imagination of "chilled and shivering childhood, houseless, but for a mother's arms, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... begin to see, what they could not see before, that a fuller liberty ought to be accorded to woman? But this vision came not without help. Sometimes in our history we have known of a race being deprived of their freedom, and so benumbed by their condition that they desired nothing better, and so perforce waited for a movement for their enfranchisement to come from without. It was not so in this case. Women themselves cried out against ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... boy, apparently about Gerald's age, swimming and striving to keep up, and catching at the ice, which broke as he clung to it. He swam feebly, as if benumbed and wearied. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... yet calmed with its grateful, stern menace. A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall, and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated traffic. The clangor of the overhead trains—almost incessant at this hour—benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man, laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, tired, eager, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... our hands, after they have been for a time immersed in snow; which is owing to the accumulation of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the cutaneous vessels during their previous quiescence, when they were benumbed with cold. And we feel ourselves cold in the usual temperature of the atmosphere on coming out of a warm room; which is owing to the exhaustion of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the vessels of the skin by their previous ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... universal reaction brought together metals, plants and animals under a common law, he next proceeded to a study of modifications in response, which occur under various conditions. He found that they are all benumbed by cold, intoxicated by alcohol, wearied by excessive work, stupified by anaesthetics, excited by electric currents, stung by physical blows and killed by poison—they all exhibit essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, together with possibilities of recovery and of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... hurried forward in the alley to meet the procession. But he did not use that revolver. Benson took quick aim and fired, and coincident with the report the nickel-plated weapon left his hand, whirling high in air before falling overboard. Billings whinnied in pain, and, rubbing his benumbed hand, backed aft before the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... never suffered before; perhaps of at last emerging from this load of wretchedness triumphant over my enemies. So long and ardently did my fancy dwell on this picture, that my mind at length acquired a heroism which Socrates himself certainly never possessed. Age had benumbed his sense of pleasure, and he drank the poisonous draught with cool indifference; but I was young, inured to high hopes, yet now beholding deliverance impossible, or at an immense, a dreadful distance. Such, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... out the little inventor, his benumbed faculties beginning slowly to assemble themselves. "Why, there ain't a finer, better-spoken young man to be found ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... despair, and dashed himself against the rocky portal in anguish of disappointment. But grief wore itself out, and he thought that he presently lay on the ground, bruised and exhausted. The charmed fragrance still enwrapt him, and the seductive melody filled the air. Sad and benumbed he yielded himself to their influence, and his ear then detected in the ethereal harmony an articulate utterance. An ineffable intonation ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... have watched this mysterious slumber, tell us that when it begins the insect is as if benumbed, and will move when touched; but that as the cold increases, the torpor deepens, until the little dormant creature seems no longer to breathe, but lies to all appearance dead, until the warmth of the sun shall break the spell, and call it up ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... require a second order; at the same time, my limbs were so stiff and benumbed that I could scarcely have obeyed, had not two of the men in the bow of the boat caught me by the collar, and hauled ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... nine hundred kino shows, a hundred and twenty theatres are needed to satisfy the amusement seeking crowd of New York, in addition to the half dozen which offer art. This mad race to outdo one another and this hunting after pleasures which tickle the senses have benumbed the social mind and have inhibited in it the feeling for deeper values. But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were created and the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that moment all the other differences from individual to individual ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... But which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth; And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... of the white wolf had pierced his hiding-place and in a moment he was hurled from his feet by the force of the attack. The lynx fought but feebly, seemingly benumbed by the strange apparition, and in a few minutes his limp form was stretched upon the ground. As for his mate, she too cowered before the sight of the white wolf and fled afar, never to return. So was Gray Wolf avenged and his avenger, once more mounting the rock, sent his cry of ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... overruled by the last, and neither Head nor anybody else can do more than conjecture what has really been the secret history of our Colonial policy. Glenelg, however, was evidently feeble, and his faculties seem to have been entirely benumbed ever since the flagellations he got from Brougham in the beginning of last session. His terror of Brougham is so intense that he would submit to any humiliation rather than again expose his back ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed. The rapidity with which this work was composed, is a wonderful circumstance. Johnson has been heard to say, 'I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... once or twice, he did not know how to direct his steps. While hesitating as to what he should do, another gust swept by, carried away his hat and poncho, tore his over-coat right up the back and compelled him to lie down again, in which position he remained until he felt benumbed with cold. Knowing that to remain much longer in that position would insure his death, our hero rose and staggered forward a few paces—he scarce knew whither. There was a lull in the gale at this time, and he continued to advance, when a voice ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a glance and the same affectionate, quiet smile that he had shown when leaving his mother's room in former times. Then she summoned them all. They sat down again round the table while she made the tea and poured it out. But the gathering grew sad, benumbed, as it were, with lassitude. Sandoz vainly tried a diversion by admitting Bertrand, the big dog, who grovelled at sight of the sugar-basin, and ended by going to sleep near the stove, where he snored like a man. Since the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... shock. In fact, the shock observed in them was more severe than in any other small-calibre bullet injuries that I witnessed. The patients lay still with the eyes closed, great pallor of surface, sometimes moaning with pain, the sensorium much benumbed, or occasionally early delirium was noted. The pulse was small, often slow and irregular, and the respiration shallow. The originally quiet state was often changed to one of great restlessness of the unparalysed part of the body, with the appearance ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... their beds, and read. The warden would not allow the shop to be warmed at all. Those cold mornings and those cold days it was excessively severe. The overseers had to bundle up with extra clothing to prevent suffering. One day the men had become too much benumbed to work and the foreman stopped the machinery, let the steam into the shop, thawed them out, and ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... was drying on the sieve. Then she went back into the bedroom, and pulled down the green slat curtains with a shaking hand. Twice her father called her to bring his sermons, but she only answered, "Yes, father!" in dull acquiescence, and did not move. She was benumbed, sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another woman held his ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... upon such a treasure as had never come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the exquisiteness of his antagonist. Now, instead of terror and self-abasement, he met scorn—the cold contempt of a being rarefied, and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living. When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a pale, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... such men, is willing to bury himself in the arrondissements, where the good to be done is without glory? If, by chance, some ambitious stranger settles there, he soon falls into the inertia of the region, and tunes himself to the dreadful key of provincial life. Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... cowherd's hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned doorway set in battlemented walls. He was carried into a hall lit with smoky oil-lamps and hung with ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... connection with the cold, from the fatigue of the days he had recently passed through, filled as they had been with violent emotions, and from sleepless and harassing nights. He fell asleep, slept a long time, and awoke benumbed; he felt ill. Then a vague terror of falling ill, of dying on the journey, seized upon him; a fear of being thrown out there, in the middle of that desolate prairie, where his body would be torn in pieces by dogs and birds of prey, like the corpses of horses and cows which he ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... there was no future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the interested traveller ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... sagacious animal laid his charge down upon the warm hearth, and immediately set off. He soon came again with another, which he deposited in the same place, and so continued till the whole of the poor birds were rescued. Wandering about the stack-yard, the fowls had become quite benumbed by the extreme cold, and had crowded together, when the dog observing them, effected their deliverance, for they all revived by ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly warm and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... native wrath revived with this new thought, With age and years that weakened was of yore, Such madness in his cruel bosom wrought, That now than ever blood he thirsteth more? So stings a snake that to the fire is brought, Which harmless lay benumbed with cold before, A lion so his rage renewed hath, Though fame before, if he ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... summit of his power; France lay bleeding, trembling at his feet; fear had silenced even his enemies; no one dared touch the dreaded man whose mere contact was death; whose look, when coldly, calmly fixed on the face of any man, benumbed his heart as if he had read his sentence of death in the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... The hard, benumbed look in Ralph's face thawed in the warmth of her presence, and her words, though stern, touched a secret spring in his heart. He made two or three vain attempts to speak, then suddenly broke down, ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... is before her, and yet she seems hardly conscious of his presence. He gazes on her with surprise, and then gently whispers her dear name. The well known voice recalls her scattered ideas, and its magic sound awakens her benumbed sensations to fresh warmth and life. She raised her head, threw aside the rich clusters of her hair, and a stream of moonlight falling on her countenance revealed to Gomez Arias a picture of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... didn't have anything to do with it," exclaimed the benumbed Paul, "but I'm glad I ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... liberty.... I will not let you know what happens to me; I will not shed tears for you to see; only—I will not see you again.... Ah! I cannot go on, my heart is breaking.................. I have been sitting benumbed and stupid for some moments. Dear love, I do not find that any feeling of pride rises against you; you are so kind-hearted, so open; you would find it impossible to hurt me or to deceive me; and you will tell me the truth, however cruel it may be. Do you wish me ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... know," was the answer. "Didn't know I was hurt at all until I saw the claret spouting; reckoned my paw was benumbed a bit, ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... safe here,' was her last benumbed thought. 'When I am found dead at the foot of the Cross, it will be by some of my own sort; some of the working people who work among the lights yonder. I cannot see the lighted windows now, but they are there. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something that drew the mind open to their ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... day we began to try to move about, and gradually straighten ourselves, which was something of an effort, stiffened and benumbed as we were with remaining in our wet clothing so many hours. We had now an opportunity of examining our habitation. It was a building of about four hundred feet long, by seventy-five or eighty wide, three stories high, and built of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... chime to chime, Work—work—work As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, As well as the ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... in the morning, and the road, which was uphill all the way, ran between woods where the wolves, descending from the vaster forests of Black Perigord, often howled in winter. She told me it frequently happened when she reached the market that her arms and hands were so benumbed with the cold that she could not take the basket of fish from her head. As a widow, she had lived for a while with a married son, but the young woman soon turned the old one out. Poor Suzette told the story without bitterness; ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... benumbed arm, Pierre noiselessly arises from the cot. He examines the dagger and mutters: "It is new and of English make! There is no other clew. Has some additional danger ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... whole chance of escape from being plunged into the gulf below depended, I, for some time, and by many useless efforts, attempted to get my knees upon the ledge of rock; my position was becoming every minute more painful, and I less able to retain it; my arms were benumbed, and my hands powerless, from being so long above my head. I dared not pull myself up, for the falling of stones and earth, when I first made the attempt, gave fearful note of the feeble tenure by which I was sustained. My left hand began ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... spades. He led them to the spot where his master was, and, after scraping away the snow which had fallen from the time he had quitted the spot, he quickly disappeared in the hole by which he had effected his escape. They began to dig, and by nightfall they found Mr. Cobb quite benumbed, standing in an upright posture; but as life was not quite extinguished he was rolled in warm blankets, and soon recovered. As may well be conceived, he felt the greatest regard for his preserver, and treated him ever afterwards with much ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... ice rimmed with foam from the billows lashed in fury, and of seams that had opened as the ship spewed off its creeping oakum. I am sure we could all see the men at the pumps, working until their stiffened arms and frozen hands refused the bidding of brains benumbed by ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... I felt much at ease—not chill, as I ought to have been after sitting so still for at least two hours; my cheek and arms were not benumbed by pressure against the hard desk. No wonder. Instead of the bare wood on which I had laid them, I found a thick shawl, carefully folded, substituted for support, and another shawl (both taken from the corridor where such things hung) ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... without seeing him, and evidently did not take in the words. He merely gasped once or twice, and looked as if he had fainted away on his feet. His blank, stunned expression showed that his faculties were momentarily benumbed by the shock. Miss Rood felt as if she should die for the pity of it as she looked at his face, and her heart was breaking for grief as she sought to mollify the young man with some inarticulate words of apology, meanwhile ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and certainly was very far from thinking that an unpremeditated hint of something resembling emotion in the tone of his last words had caused that uncontrollable burst of sincerity. It completed his bewilderment, but he was not at all angry now. He was as if benumbed by the fascination of the incomprehensible. She stood before him, tall and indistinct, like a black phantom in the red twilight. At last poignantly uncertain as to what would happen if he opened his ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... feeling of this gentle girl touched a chord in my benumbed heart. My eyes, before so dry, were flooded with the tears that had till now refused to come. When I had regained my composure, I saw that she ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... or benumbed, annoyed with Mrs. Ginnell's garrulity, and longing for the whole thing to end. He had a letter to write ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the middle of the river, grasping a stout rail. The sisters clung to each other for an instant in dumb fear, as they saw in the narrow strip of moonlight, the minister's head, just above the black hole. He was clinging desperately to the edge of the ice, which broke off now and then in his benumbed grasp. Donald shouted a word of encouragement, and laying the rail upon the ice he threw himself across it and worked cautiously forward. As he went down upon the rail there was a cry ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Ganguernet always chooses a cold damp night for this trick, draw up the covering, wrap yourself carefully up, and very innocently resume your slumbers; then Ganguernet, gently pulling his cord, again strips you naked; again you are benumbed with cold; and when you begin to utter imprecations in the dark, his detestable voice is heard bawling through the hole: 'What a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... a cloak," said Lenore to the servants; "he is benumbed with cold. Wrap yourself up well, or you may long have cause to remember ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... forces of destruction sallied forth. Leaving Montreal, the first party passed down the frozen St. Lawrence, and into the wintry ravines of the Richelieu, and after a march of terrible hardship, now plunging through snow-drifts, now benumbed by frost, wading knee-deep through the melting swamps, they came at last to the unguarded palisades of the Dutch settlement of Corlaer, or Schenectady. It was midnight as they stole through the streets of the sleeping village, now suddenly wakened by a hideous war-whoop, the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... five Bank of England notes of ten pounds apiece. I took them mechanically, without knowing what I did. The generosity of the act benumbed my senses, and for the instant I was inclined to accept the offer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for thy death, that thou wast killed by one so great." The last part of his address was suppressed in the midst of the utterance; and you would think his half-open mouth was attempting to speak, but it gave no passage for his words. Eryx rebuked them,[21] and said, "Ye are benumbed by the cowardice of your minds, not by the locks of the Gorgon; rush on with me, and strike to the ground {this} youth that wields his magic arms." He was about to rush on, {when} the earth arrested his steps, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... us describe the nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened—even through the spear by which it is itself wounded—that while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... classes, in the days when there were classes, where are now equal citizens in various callings. I never starved in the People's famine; I never groaned, personally, in the People's miseries; I never sweat with its sweat; I was never benumbed with its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I hunger in its hunger, thirst with its thirst, warm under its sun, freeze under its cold, grieve under its sorrows? Why should I not care for it as little as for that which ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... result. He was a human snake. I had long before reading the wonderfully original work of Doctor Holmes reflected deeply on the moral and immoral influences which serpent worship of old, in Syria and other lands, must have had upon its followers. But Elsie Venner sets forth the serpent nature as benumbed or suspended by cold New England winters and New England religions, moral and social influences; the Ophites of old and the Cairene gypsy showed the boy as warmed to life in lands whose winters are as burning summers. Elsie ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine the course of the dog and choose my position,—stimulated by the ambition of all young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back, when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... meantime, Margaret sent for her eldest brother, begging him to tell her the whole, and it was heard as calmly and firmly as it was told. Her bodily state lulled her mind; and besides it was not new; she had observed much while her faculties were still too much benumbed for her to understand all, or to express her feelings. Her thoughts seemed chiefly occupied with her father. She made Richard explain to her the injury he had suffered, and begged to know whether his constant attendance on her could do him harm. She was much rejoiced ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... him, his race a moment lifted up Forests of hands to Beauty as in prayer; Touched through his lips the sacramental Cup, And then sank back—benumbed ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... forced to walk slowly in the country about the mines, and have often to stop to take breath. If these vapours are so strong without and in the open air, what must they be within the bowels of the earth in the mines, into which, if a fresh man go, he is suddenly benumbed with pain. This is the case with many, but seldom lasts above a day, and they are not liable to be affected a second time: Yet vapours often burst forth suddenly, by which the workmen are killed on the spot; and one way or another, great multitudes of Indians die in working the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... dream to Patsy's benumbed senses: the search in drawers and closets for things to put on, and the finding of them; the insistent aching of fingers and arms in trying to adjust them, and the persistent refusal of brain to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer |
