"Mephitical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible, in a determinate quantity of atmospheric air, there still remains a portion of respirable air united to the mephitis, which the mercury cannot separate. I shall afterwards show, that, at least in our climate, the atmospheric air is composed of respirable and mephitic airs, in the proportion of 27 and 73; and I shall then discuss the causes of the uncertainty which still exists with respect to the ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... island in the lagoons devoted to funeral pyres is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with its ruinous walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses festering in slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow chambers, and the mephitic wash of poisoned waters that surround it, inspires the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was this conviction that cleared my brain at once of those mephitic fogs that usually clung around it after a spell of lethargy, long after my consciousness returned, I never knew, but certain it is, I sat up in my bed like one refreshed by sleep, instead of feeling exhausted, and, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost makes the candles burn blue, and bewails the deadness of the church,—the church the while, drugged by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and sleepier, though they feel dreadfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... year a canopy of cinder-laden cloud hung over the island. Sand and ashes irretrievably overwhelmed thousands of acres of fertile pasturage. The Faroe islands, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys were deluged with volcanic dust, which perceptibly contaminated even the pure skies of England and Holland. Mephitic vapours tainted the atmosphere of the entire island;—even the grass, which no cinder rain had stifled, completely withered up; the fish perished in the poisoned sea. A murrain broke out among the cattle, and a ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... which would assume, if practically treated, that the minds and characters of mortals are little short of angelic. And coevally with these dreamers of grand socialistic improvement, we are met by such evidence as that of Wall Street, its air foul with the mephitic exhalations that rise from dead and rotting principle. When the state is corrupt, and large bodies of its citizens are not only corrupt but wholly scornful of every fraternal and philanthropic purpose as well,—when communities like this of Wall Street, cold-blooded, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... tubes the stoppage of the trains had automatically discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of bodies ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell. These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley persists in not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... might be quoted; as for instance the web of the Spider, the pit of the Ant Lion, the mephitic odour of the Skunk. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. That of itself was not so extraordinary a fact: the wonder lay in the number, viz., seventeen. Such were the actual amount of sacred edifices which, through all their dust, and garbage, and mephitic morasses, these miserable vassals had to thread all but every night of the week. Dr. Mapleton, when he had made this discovery, ceased to wonder at the medical symptoms; and, as faggery was an abuse too venerable and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... being not in the least like a Hero of Romance, wept miserably, staring through tears upon a countryside bathed in the glory of sunset; but to my jaundiced vision this radiance but made my circumambient shadow the blacker by contrast, a mephitic gloom wherein a chaise with red wheels bore Diana to her "slave and master"—a master whose power was such that he could force her, willing or unwilling, to obey his summons—his every behest ... horror on horror ... shame on shame, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... number to the whole of the mammalia of Peru is 1:4, 3. Distributed by single orders, they are in the following proportions:—Bats, four species, of which only one (Vespertilio innoxius, Gerv.) belongs to this region alone. Beasts of prey, ten kinds; among them one of the mephitic class, known to the natives by the name of zorillo, or anash; an otter (Lutra chilensis, Ben.); a fox (Canis azarae, Pr. Max.), which abounds in the cotton plantations in the neighborhood of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... de Mirabeau. These two saw one another; twice, for half an hour each time. The last of the old Gods and the first of the modern Titans;—before Pelion leapt on Ossa; and the foul Earth taking fire at last, its vile mephitic elements went up in volcanic thunder. This also is one of the peculiarities of Friedrich, that he is hitherto the last of the Kings; that he ushers in the French Revolution, and closes an Epoch of World-History. Finishing off forever the trade of King, think many; who have ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... it remained so, and there was no further trouble in that respect. Yet, even then, it was found to be impossible to penetrate to the subterranean chambers at once, for when an attempt was made to do so, the torches which the would-be explorers carried refused to burn in the mephitic atmosphere; and time therefore had to be allowed for the exterior air to penetrate and displace the poisonous vapours which had accumulated in the chambers during the many years that they had ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... they oozed through the rock. They were simply the last traces left by the torrent which had so long thundered through this cavity, and the air there was pure though slightly damp, but producing no mephitic exhalation. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... exists—exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... to have been the following: first, a river flowing into a lake; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves and sometimes the boughs of trees were torn off and floated by the stream into the lake; thirdly, mephitic gases rising from the lake, by which insects flying over its surface were occasionally killed: and fourthly, a constant supply of carbonate of lime in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous matter when precipitated to the bottom mingling with fine mud and thus ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... "some gun," as the Yankees would say. It was a curious sensation to walk about the fields with shells from both sides flying over one's head. Some gas shells had been discharged that day, and the air in places was quite heavy with the odour of them—not unpleasant to smell, but most mephitic, and apt to make ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... curious on the subject of the demon of Socrates, went to the cave of Trophonius, to learn of the oracle about it. There, having for a short time inhaled the mephitic vapour, he felt as if he had received a sudden blow on the head, and sank down insensible. Then his head appeared to him to open and to give issue to his soul into the other world; and an imaginary being seemed to inform him that, "the part of the soul ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Milan—how one morning the walls and doors of many houses in the city had been found smeared with some foul substance, in broad streaks of white and yellow, which was believed to be a poisonous compost carrying contagion to every creature who touched or went within the influence of its mephitic odour; how this thing had happened not once, but many times; until the Milanese believed that Satan himself was the prime mover in this horror, and that there were a company of wretches who had sold themselves to the devil, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... scabrous plague is being burnt up and swept back and overwhelmed by the resistless flood, eager yet cautious, persistent yet fiery, of the blue and the brown. Hideous, pitiable, soul-searing are the scars that it leaves in its mephitic wake, but the cleansing tide of the brown and the blue sweeps on, and the healing wand of time waves over them, and soon the shell-holes and the waste places and the abominations of desolation are covered with little flowers—or would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... gypsum often contain mephitic emanations and deleterious gases. It is not the sulphate of lime that acts on the atmospheric air, but the clay slightly mixed with carbon, and the fetid limestone, so often mingled with the gypsum. We cannot yet decide, whether the swinestone acts as a hydrosulphuret, or by means ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... semblance of a snail grown paralytic, Concerning whom your victims daily speak In florid language, fearsome and mephitic, Enough to redden any trooper's cheek: Let them, I say, hold forth till all is blue; I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... had faced wicked facts before, faced a few of them then. The stench of the main fact had been passing from him, deodorised by the fumigating belief that his son had been killed by a lunatic. Now here it was again, more mephitic than ever, and for the whiffs of it with which Jeroloman was spraying ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... though not deficient in courage among my own people, or amid dangers with which I am familiar, I cannot, without a shudder of horror, think of constructing a bridal home in the heart of some dismal chaos, with all the elements of nature, fire and water, and mephitic gases, at war with each other, and with the probability that at some moment, while you were busied in cleaving rocks or conveying vril into lamps, I should be devoured by a krek which your operations disturbed from its hiding-place. I, a mere Tish, do not deserve the love of a Gy, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the same way. It leaves districts undrained, and streets uncleaned. Masses of the population are allowed to live crowded together in unwholesome dens, half poisoned by the mephitic air of the neighbourhood. Then a fever breaks out,—or a cholera, or a plague. Disease spreads from the miserable abodes of the poor into the comfortable homes of the rich, carrying death and devastation before it. The misery and suffering incurred in such cases, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... are mislaid, and never sent at all.—There is no court or garden in which the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is less mephitic. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that night. The warm, sluggish air lay about him, mephitic in its touch. The great vampire bats that soughed through it symbolized the "pestilence that walketh in darkness." Lonely calls drifted across the warm lake waters from the dripping jungle like the hollow echoes of lost souls. Rosendo tossed fitfully, and now and then uttered deep groans. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to perish, should we hunger any more, or thirst any more, or have any similar sensations? Yet perhaps the question what will or will not be is a foolish one, for who can tell?' As in the Theaetetus, evil is supposed to continue,—here, as the consequence of a former state of the world, a sort of mephitic vapour exhaling from some ancient chaos,—there, as involved in the possibility of good, and incident to ...
— Statesman • Plato
... every style Of smoke I was a kindly critic, Though I had found Manillas vile, And Trichinopolis mephitic. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... damp it was, with a mephitic smell and ugly pools of water settled in the ancient road-bed. The rails were wholly gone in places. In others only rotten ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... hand, Valensolle knew he was making an effort. Presently a stone was raised, and through the opening a trembling gleam of twilight met the eyes of the young men, and a fragrant aromatic odor came to comfort their sense of smell after the mephitic ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... reverberation, that they no longer heard the commands of their chiefs. Those who penetrated into the interior of the temple, had felt the pavement tremble under their steps; they had been seized by a thick and mephitic vapour, which overpowered them, and threw them into a violent delirium. The historians relate, that amidst this tumult they beheld three warriors of a sinister aspect, of more than human stature, covered with old armour, and who slaughtered the Gauls with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... got rid of the committee of exasperating buffoons, he was now prolonging breakfast far beyond the usual hour. The meal was over at last; and still he felt disinclined to move. Those people had disquieted his composure with their mephitic rant about philanthropy; they had almost succeeded in spoiling his morning. And now this funeral! Would he go into the house and do some reading or write a few letters? No. He could not write letters just them. He ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a sharp, acrid smell, the reek of bilge and thick, mephitic air as I stumbled on betwixt my captors through this foul-breathing dimness until a door creaked, yawning suddenly upon a denser blackness, into which I was thrust so suddenly that I fell, clashing my fetters, and lying thus, heard ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... writes, "you may perhaps repent of having murdered, in mephitic air, so many honest, harmless mice, and wish that, to prevent mischief, you had used boys and girls instead ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and leave a balance sufficient to buy the remainder of the French expositions. But still, if more substantial and massive, we are at the same time also heavy. We want more space, more air, more room to breathe, in London; we are too closely packed; we want gardens with trees to absorb the mephitic air, for what our lungs reject is suitable to vegetation. But we cannot have all we want in this world, so ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the arts, was also the Power of prophetic inspiration, of ecstasy or passing out of oneself. The priestess who delivered his oracle at Delphi was possessed and mastered by the god. Maddened by mephitic vapours streaming from a cleft in the rock, convulsed in every feature and every limb, she delivered in semi- articulate cries the burden of the divine message. Her own personality, for the time being, was annihilated; ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... was the better part of valour," and seeing the bold bearing of the young stranger, allowed him and Bikoo to mount the steps; when, traversing the hall, they quickly made their way into the open air, glad to escape from the mephitic atmosphere of the vault and the fury of the priests—who, as soon as they had recovered from their astonishment, broke forth in loud cries and threats of vengeance. They grew cooler, however, on discovering the rajah's troops at the entrance of ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... his brother; his thoughts were elsewhere. That merry scamp's face whose beaming had so often restored serenity to the priest's sombre physiognomy, was now powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense every day over that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soul. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... although the latter person scoured Water Street some time since, and very effectually, in pursuit of a "sensation." The word "Scourer," nevertheless, might be an allowable corruption of "Esquire," when applied to any of the proprietors of that mephitic daily, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... you may be wearing nankeen, and before noon, duffle. Were the heat to continue for a sufficient length of time to thaw the ground thoroughly, the establishment could not be kept up save at a great sacrifice of life, through the mephitic exhalations from the surrounding swamps. The ground, however, seldom thaws more than eighteen inches, and the climate therefore is never affected by them to such a degree ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... race-horse speed to such remote conclusions, that in the region of ideas our logical minds have become accustomed to draw results as remote as the very eternities from any premises given. My difficulty on the other hand, has been that in practical matters, owing to the existence of this great mephitic swamp of slavery, men have been utterly unwilling to draw conclusions at all; and that the most familiar principles of political economy or politics have been enunciated, and then always docked off short. Men would not allow them to go to their natural results, in the class of questions ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... promise. The air of Benchers' Inn is not particularly good; but it's better than this mephitic odour of stuffiness and gas. Why, Mal, old lad, I can smell the methylated spirits in which you preserve ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... removed from his chamber. Why, it's enough to put any man into an abnormal condition, to have such an assemblage of horrors round him, and to breathe the atmosphere which they exhale. You have evidence already of how such mephitic odour may act. That nurse—Kennedy, I think you said, Doctor—isn't yet out of her state of catalepsy; and you, Mr. Ross, have, I am told, experienced something of the same effects. I know this"—here his eyebrows came down more than ever, and his mouth ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches—infandum! infandum! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of these ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle |
