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The dry crumbs choked her, and she hastily swallowed a little brandy from her husband's flask. The burning sensation in her throat acted as a counter-irritant, momentarily relieving the dull ache of her nerves.

He was too healthy to seek a counter-irritant to his uneasiness in the lazy skepticism of the preceding epoch: he detested the dilettantism of men like Renan and Anatole France, with their degradation of the free intellect, their joyless mirth, their irony without greatness: a shameful method, fit for slaves, playing with the chains which they are impotent to break.

"Biff," said he, "I spoke once about securing some thugs to act as a counter-irritant against Stone, but I have neglected it. How long will it take to get hold of some?" "Ten minutes, if I wait till dark," replied Biff. "I can go down to the Blue Star, and for ten iron men apiece can get you as fine a bunch of yeggs as ever beat out a cripple's brains with his own wooden leg." Bobby smiled.

The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws.

In the vibrations of my strong emotion it used to surprise me that my will was such a cripple against the sensibilities of that delicate creature. I was a man of as much will as was naturally good for me; and my training had made it abnormal like a prize-fighter's bicepital muscle. People of my profession need some counter-irritant, which they seldom get, to the habit of command.

And yet when he dropped out of the party he was sorely missed. He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion. It was such a luxury to hate him. He was such a counter-irritant, such a stimulant; such a flavor he gave to life. We are always on the lookout for the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend that we like the orderly, the beautiful, the pleasant.

They are prickly and, therefore, perfect as a counter-irritant under very cold conditions, but far too irritating for ordinary wear. I was much amused in a London shop last winter when I heard a Ski-ing expert advising a lady not to buy "those repulsive goat's-hair socks." When she had bought what he advised I said I had come especially to buy "a repulsive pair of socks."

To be sure, I had Father Holland's boisterous good cheer as a counter-irritant; for the priest had remained at Fort Douglas, and was ministering to the tribes of the Red and Assiniboine. But it was on her, who had been my guiding star and hope and inspiration from the first, that I mainly depended.

But in the following days she suffered other pangs that were a healthy counter-irritant she learned to pick and number her FRIENDS, and to know, among so large a list of acquaintances, how very few they were.

And yet when he dropped out of the party he was sorely missed. He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion. It was such a luxury to hate him. He was such a counter-irritant, such a stimulant; such a flavor he gave to life. We are always on the lookout for the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend that we like the orderly, the beautiful, the pleasant.