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More "Encumbrance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comets must be thrust down below the moon, so no sooner had the late observations of astronomers restored the comets to their ancient places in the higher heavens than these celestial spaces were at once cleared of the encumbrance of solid orbs, which by these observations were broken to pieces and discarded ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... their participation in my escape. The project was fully discussed by the fellows; but the risk of swimming, even in a fog, under the muzzles of muskets, was a danger they feared encountering. I perceived at once that it would be best to free myself entirely from the encumbrance of such chicken-hearted lubbers, so I bade them take their own course, but divided three thousand francs in government bills among the gang, and presented my gold pocket chronometer ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... shrunken limbs and bodies drawn out until, in some cases, the backbone had 150 vertebrae. They seem to have taken to the thickets, in the growing competition, as the serpents did later, and lost the use of their limbs, which would be merely an encumbrance in winding among the roots and branches. Some (the Microsaurs) were agile little salamander-like organisms, with strong, bony frames and relatively long and useful legs; they look as if they may even have climbed the trees in pursuit of snails ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... convalescent marsh; that is, canals and deep ditch drains have been opened all through it, and into these the waters of the marsh flow, as a token of gratitude for the delicate little attention; at the same time, the adjacent soil, freed from its liquid encumbrance, courts the attractive charms of the sun, and has already risen from two and a half to three and a half feet above its ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... never brought me any happiness, and I am uncertain whether it is a kindness to bequeath to you what to me has been but an irksome encumbrance. After giving long and earnest thought to the matter, I have decided to leave it in the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... encumbrance, we set forth, followed by the dogs. I had taken off my crinoline, because Eleanor said we might have to climb some walls, and I had borrowed a pair of her boots, because my own were so uncomfortable from being high-heeled and narrow-soled. They were too ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... informed by his agent in the matter, that a sale under the mortgage had taken place, and that, by means of the little management proposed, he had succeeded in keeping away all competition in bidding. The land, stock, farming implements, and all, had been knocked down at a price that just covered the encumbrance on the estate, and were the property of Mr. Bolton, at half ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... cluster of dwelling places beyond, and entering the first of these himself, signed to Roger to go into the second. He had some slight difficulty in pushing open the door, not because it was fastened, but owing to some encumbrance behind. When, however, he succeeded in forcing his way in, he found that the encumbrance was nothing more or less than the body of a woman lying dead along the floor of the tiny room. Upon a bed in the corner two children were lying, smiling as if in sleep, but both stiff and cold, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hand and foot, and placed him on an unbridled and unbroken horse, and turned the animal loose, driving it off at its utmost speed, with shouts, delighted at witnessing its mode of managing with its living burden. The horse unable to shake off this new and strange encumbrance, made for the thickest covert of the woods and brambles, with the speed of the winds. It is easy to conjecture the position and suffering of the victim. The terrified animal exhausted itself in fruitless ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... effort, first the mind must be cleared of the conceit that, because we live to-day, we are wiser than the ages gone. The mind must acknowledge its ignorance; all the learning and lore of so many eras must be erased from it as an encumbrance. It is not from past or present knowledge, science or faith, that it is to be drawn. Erase these altogether as they are erased under the fierce heat of the focus before me. Begin wholly afresh. Go straight to the sun, the immense forces of the universe, to the Entity ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... worked, then the forty thousand might turn out to be only a fraction of what it was worth; if it were allowed to lie there as it was, the money was simply thrown away. But in any case, they wanted to have a clear title, without encumbrance, and therefore they offered Isak five hundred Kroner for ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the encumbrance on the estate; that's legal, I believe, and expresses it nicely. If we should freeze out the encumbrance, we might freeze him to his village, and he might insist on your going with him, which wouldn't do at all, my ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... would be a long one. The Indians had twelve hours' start; they were much lighter men than the whites, and carried less additional weight. Their horses, therefore, could travel as fast and as far as those of their pursuers. The sheep would, it is true, be an encumbrance; the cattle could scarcely be termed so; and it was probable that the first day they would make a journey of fifty or sixty miles, travelling at a moderate pace only, as they would know that no instant pursuit could ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... scattering from a shotgun at a range of a hundred yards or less would do him more damage and be far more certain to stop him. In an actual charge our present rifle is more than useless—it is an encumbrance, and when at grips with the enemy in his own trenches it is often a fatal handicap. With a bayonet at the end it is far too long, and in a trench two to four feet wide it cannot be used with much effect. I have known our men repeatedly to unship the bayonet and take it in ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... deemed the child a useless encumbrance or a valueless article, or was visited by one of those touches of compunction which are well-known to assail at times the breasts of even the worst of pirates, we cannot tell; but no such clemency was extended to Jim's father. The Dey positively refused either to give him up ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... "That's an encumbrance; you should not tie yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course, but circumstances are not, and as it happens, women are more subject to them than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have been perfectly reasonable, but for one thing. It had come out that his pockets were empty, and he was evidently quite without any definite plan as to what he should do next, or where he should go. He was only anxious to relieve his new friends of an encumbrance. He was evidently the sort of person on whom the character sat ill; one who would always be most at ease when shifting for himself; such a one as would reply to any doubt thrown on his power of doing so, that he had been in many a worse ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Tennessee is somewhat equivocal. All the states south of Tennessee belong to the slave-buying district. The first, with but few exceptions, have from the earliest times, felt slavery a reproach to their good name—an encumbrance on their advancement—at some period, to be cast off. This sentiment, had it been at all encouraged by the action of the General Government, in accordance with the views of the convention that formed the Constitution, would, in all probability, by this time, have brought ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... will accept the encumbrance to which you have fallen heir," resumed Culver. "Even if there had been no will in your favor, the State of Louisiana follows the French law, and the testator can under no circumstances alienate more than half his property, if he leave issue or descendants. Had the old will remained, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... given them to save their lives," answered Guert, straining his eyes after Moses, the horse that was behind, so long as his dark form could be distinguished, and leaning forward to listen to the blows of their hoofs, while the noises around us permitted them to be heard. "To us, they would only be an encumbrance, since they never could be forced over the cracks and caked ice in harness; nor would it be at all safe to follow them, if they could. The sleigh is light, and we are strong enough to shove it to land, when there is an opportunity; or, it may ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... men had a scurvy trick played them by the Banyai. The Makololo had shot a hippopotamus, when a number of the natives came across, pretending to assist them in rolling it ashore, and advised them to cast off the rope, saying that it was an encumbrance. All were shouting and talking, when suddenly the carcass disappeared in a deep hole. The Makololo jumped in after it, one catching the tail, another a foot, but down it went, and they got but a lean fowl instead. It floated during the night, and was found about a mile ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... exception of a few slight ornaments, entirely naked; and even the blanket, that served them as a couch by night and a covering by day, had, with one single exception, been dispensed with, apparently with a view to avoid any thing like encumbrance in their approaching sport. Each individual was provided with a stout sapling of about three feet in length, curved, and flattened at the root extremity, like that used at the Irish hurdle; which game, in fact, the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... It is scarcely possible, however, that such analysis will be brought forward, for it is the apparent policy of the reinforced concrete analyst to jump into the middle of his proposition without the encumbrance of a premise. ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... admitted, this was a very great blunder, as fully 100,000 regulars and mobiles might have been spared to advantage for service in the provinces. Of course the National Guards themselves could not be sent away from the city, though they were often an encumbrance rather than a help, and could not possibly have carried on the work of defence had they been left to ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... still to sustain the attack of the infuriated mules; but, now that it was relieved from the encumbrance of its heavy rider, it gained fresh confidence in its long legs; and making a dash through the midst of the mulada, it struck off up the mountain-path, and galloped clear out of sight. The mules, encumbered with their packs, did not show any inclination to follow, and the drama was thus ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... the fact that a blossom has a lip in the centre of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube; in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... her there. It was amusing that one who was learning to "help" should be such an encumbrance. And there were many amusing things about Mr. Beason. He was afraid of her because she was a woman, for like reason disapproving of her presence in the laboratory, and yet there was an unconscious deference, the same ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... richly furred, which she let fall and showed herself to be girded with a noble sword. The king being surprised at this, said, "Damsel, wherefore art thou girt with that sword, for it beseemeth thee not?" "Sir," said she, "I will tell thee. This sword wherewith I am thus girt gives me great sorrow and encumbrance, for I may not be delivered from it till I find a knight faithful and pure and true, strong of body and of valiant deeds, without guile or treachery, who shall be able to draw it from its scabbard, which no man else can do. ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... Had his sword met no other impediment than the buff jerkin, Cromwell's course had ended on the spot. But, fearful of such attempts, the General wore under his military dress a shirt of the finest mail, made of rings of the best steel, and so light and flexible that it was little or no encumbrance to the motions of the wearer. It proved his safety on this occasion, for the rapier sprung in shivers; while the owner, now held back by Everard and Holdenough, flung the hilt with passion on the ground, exclaiming, "Be damned the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost, they grasp that tight and hold it fast till morning. But to birds that do not perch this mechanism is only an encumbrance, so many of them, like the plovers, abolish the hind toe entirely, and the prince of all two-legged runners, the ostrich, has got rid of one of the front ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... way, and for the same purpose, the work bench has temporary holding cleats at the end and a shelf in front, which are particularly desirable, because either a saw or a square is an encumbrance on a work bench while the work is being assembled, and tools of this kind should not be laid flat on a working surface, nor should they be stood in a leaning position against ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... but possibly more subtle form, that blinds the eyes of many professing Christians to any good in those who differ from them in doctrine, forms of worship or methods of government. They murder love to protect what they often blindly call truth. What is truth without love? A dead thing, an encumbrance, the letter ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... Care of this encumbrance was usually expected of Laura and Mrs. Madison, but to their surprise Cora offered a sprightly rejoinder and presently dropped behind them with Mr. Trumble. Mr. Trumble was also ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Border States, of their own accord, have already entered upon with such decision. Even if loyal duty don't prompt it, interest will. For slavery, after having been crippled as it has been by the war, even if it could live, would only be an encumbrance. But it can't live. It is already half dead. Let the loyal men of the South finish it and bury it in their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... we now do in an hour. To make a country tour, required then the same precautions, as to supplies, as it now does to make the grand tour of Europe. To have carried coin would have been a great encumbrance, as well as risk from robbers. How accurately Bunyan knew the mode used in such cases to secure supplies, and with what beautiful simplicity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... then?" and Lord Fordyce felt his heart sink. "I thought, probably, she had got rid of any encumbrance, as it is fairly easy over ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... dragging himself on after Quentin, who, aware of the importance of securing the countenance of a person of such influence, slackened his pace to assist him, although cursing in his heart the encumbrance that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... you must admit that now and then I have been at no small pains to—er—assist you. But there, I don't intend to speak of the past; and to tell the truth, I suspect that we are of one mind. You regard me as more or less of an encumbrance; you think your movements are hampered; you consider yourself to be treated as a ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... serious for his purpose, and for the character of the narrative. In changing his plan, however, which wets done in the course of printing, the early sheets retained the vestiges of the original tenor of the story, although they now hang upon it as an unnecessary and unnatural encumbrance. The cause of such vestiges is ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... appear strange to the inexpert. These must bear in mind the great density of the water of the sea, and the surprising results of transplantation to that medium. To understand a little what these are, and how a man's weight, so far from being an encumbrance, is the very ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my submarine experience. The knowledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones {174} was visible, pillared with the weedy uprights of the staging: overhead, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... blood-stained face—was visible; and then a gust of wind lifted his mantle and flung it about his head so that all was concealed; and an exquisite pity for him was aroused—while he struggled painfully to rid himself of the encumbrance—by the imposition of that petty annoyance upon his mortal agony of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... raised his eyebrows quizzically. "I guess you came out of the Middle Ages!" he observed—"What's 'love'? Did you ever know a woman with millions of money who got 'loved'? Not a bit of it! Her MONEY is loved—but not herself. She's the encumbrance ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... we the more devout a great deal. And yet we were cast down, and beaten down many times to the hard earth by winds and thunders and tempests. But evermore God of his grace holp us. And so we passed that perilous vale without peril and without encumbrance, ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... Time was getting very short. I wanted to dodge the shelling, but had missed a quiet interval that occurred at 2.30 a.m. At 3 a.m. I moved, leading the party in a long column over the open ground north of Fayet to reach its eastern side. The inevitable 'wire mats,' an encumbrance without which few raiding parties ever started, hampered the progress. It was a pitch dark night, nor was I certain of the way. To cover the mile and then pass 150 men, ignorant of their whereabouts, silently and in single file through a gap ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... possibly be extracted for the latter from the idea of his success with that lady, whose quick apprehension of what might amuse her had given Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not to ask whether she couldn't help him with his splendid encumbrance, and mightn't the sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus creating for his comrade's mind even in a world of irrelevance the possibility of a relation? What was it but a relation to be regarded as so decorative and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... encircled by the lost trap. The bear lifted the iron glove towards his face, examined it, turned his paw round and round, bent his head from side to side, looked at the trap askance with the most puzzled air, felt the encumbrance, tapped it on the rock, and evidently knew not what to do. Then he began to feel pain and licked it; but Ruhe soon put an end to all his conjectures, by shooting ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... out of it, with the assistance of ill nutrition and bad ventilation. Dick's own mother and father were dead, and his stepmother, a rough-looking creature, when she remembered him at all, looked upon him as a useless encumbrance, and by her neglect ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... win; but parry those invitations ludicrously, 'et en badinant'. Say that, if you were sure to lose, you might possibly play, but that as you may as well win, you dread 'l'embarras des richesses', ever since you have seen what an encumbrance they were to poor Harlequin, and that, therefore, you are determined never to venture the winning above two louis a-day; this sort of light trifling way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming your age, and at the same time ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... their offices, their washing-ground, and the mews at the back. She had never seen him look so grave; she had never seen that soft, sad look on his face before. She wondered now that she could ever have regarded that face as a mere encumbrance and accessory to be taken with a coronet ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... fear of their appeal to the Long Parliament, then busy in its task of abating church nuisances, had agreed to give him sixty pounds per year, in the place of a poor tippling curate, notorious as a common railer and pothouse encumbrance. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her health became undermined to a serious extent. She became subject to fits of an epileptic nature, and having injured herself in some of these, she allowed the injuries to be attributed to her husband, whom she had now grown to regard as an encumbrance. Though she was aware that he was not insane, she allowed him to be removed to an asylum, where confinement soon completed the work begun by her own conduct. The Abbe Faujas having resolutely resisted her advances, her health became still worse, and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... poor woman had reached a point where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she studied ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Gwynne is taking upon herself a risk and encumbrance that should be wholly my mother's. She has nothing to do with the girl, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... rode the animals were gayly trapped out and made a great noise when the race started. Their shouting and wildly waving hats, added no little to the frenzy of the steers. One animal tripped and threw his rider, and another balked outright and began to stampede. Finding he could not dislodge the encumbrance that clung to his back, he suddenly threw himself ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... crossed its threshold, there was no human form visible without its walls. The bell ceased its monotonous and mournful note, and the tall, gaunt form of the divine moved through the narrow aisle to its usual post, with the air of one who had already more than half rejected the burthen of bodily encumbrance. A searching and stern glance was thrown around, as if he possessed an instinctive power to detect all delinquents; and then seating himself, the deep stillness, that always preceded the exercises, reigned in ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed with as a possible encumbrance. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... full. Next to Alvina sat a trim Frenchwoman reading L'Aiglon. There was a terrible encumbrance of packages and luggage everywhere. Opposite her sat Ciccio, his black overcoat open over his pale-grey suit, his black hat a little over his left eye. He glanced at her from time to time, smiling constrainedly. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... days of old," said Fakrash, "all men pursued wealth; nor could any amass enough to satisfy his desires. Have riches, then, become so contemptible in mortal eyes that thou findest them but an encumbrance? ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage. I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrim militia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men, were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could not cross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from the encumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of action by a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrous position: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey, and possessed themselves of that place; the general ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... now no safety for you in Salem, and that a speedy flight can alone ensure your liberty. You have made a great sacrifice for my sake; and I will also make one for yours. I will not even ask to fly with you, for I could only be an encumbrance to you at this inclement season of the year, and my presence here may be of use to you. My heart rebels while I say it, Roger; but you must go alone, and use every exertion to reach Plymouth as speedily as possible. When you ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... beside the colonel, I could observe, by the knitting of his brow, that the movement did not satisfy his military sagacity. "What a quantity of baggage!" he murmured: "how will it be possible to carry such a train through the country, or how to fight, with such an encumbrance embarrassing every step? Unless the Spanish generals are the greatest fools on earth, or unless Dupont has a miracle worked for him, he must either abandon three-fourths of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and one-quarter of her steam trawlers and other fishing boats. These ships are to be delivered within two months to the Separation Committee, together with documents of title evidencing the transfer of the ships free from encumbrance. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... of a husband; who joyed in boys' games, and sentimentalized over such things as adventure; who was healthy and normal and wholesome, and who was so immature that a husband stood for nothing more than an encumbrance in her ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... same charioteer took the crested, plated, four-bordered battle-cap with variety of every colour and every figure, reaching [5]down[5] over the middle of his shoulders behind. It was an adornment for him and not an encumbrance. With his hand he placed the red-yellow frontlet—like one red-golden strip of glowing gold smelted over the edge of an anvil—on his forehead as a token of charioteering, to distinguish him from his master. He opened the hobbles that fastened ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... ensued. The mule ran off with his rider, and ascended a high bank, on the side of which stood a coal-house, filled with coal through an aperture in the top. At length, Independence, in the hope of clearing himself of his encumbrance, entered the coal-house at full speed, the colonel firmly keeping his seat, and both came down an inclined plane of coal, not less than thirty feet in height. On reaching the ground without injury, Burr hired a man to lead the animal a ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... his independent life with his unpaid farm of 160 acres. Now he owns 3,000 acres of land paid for and without encumbrance, with the virtual ownership of a fine stream, at some points 500 feet wide, which for five miles runs through his extensive plantations. On this stream he has a brick yard, a saw mill, a grist mill and a cotton gin and compressing mill combined in one and operated ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... course, with all adjuncts of accruing interest, and Mr. Neefit should go on making breeches for him to the end of the chapter. And for raising this money he had still a remnant of the old property which he could sell, so that he need not begin by laying an ounce of encumbrance on his paternal estates. He was very clear in his mind at this period of his life that there should never be any such encumbrance in his days. That remnant of property should be sold, and Neefit, Horsball, and others, should be ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Amenothes Pharaohs the expression of their wishes or their loyalty; we now behold them, after an interval of four hundred years and more*—during which we have no examples of their monuments—possessed of a short and commodious script, without the encumbrance of ideograms, determinatives, polyphony and syllabic sounds, such as had fettered the Egyptian and Chaldaean scribes, in spite of their cleverness in dealing with them. Phonetic articulations were ultimately resolved ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... set, we found later, a little way back on an old wood road. Evidently a bear had been caught there, perhaps two or three days before we came. He had dragged the trap and the chained clog down into the thicket. There he had stayed, tearing up things generally in his efforts to escape from his encumbrance, and resting quietly in the intervals of his fury. My approach had startled him and he had made the first crash that I heard. Then he lay low and listened. My second inconsiderate shout of "Hallo, Teddy!" had put such an enormous fear into him that ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... girl; she would grace any station in life. He had always been rather in awe of her. It was a fine thing to be suddenly loved by her, to be in a position to over-rule her every whim. Plighting his troth, he had feared she would be an encumbrance, only to find she was a lever. But—was he deeply in love with her? How was it that he could not at this moment recall her features, or the tone of her voice, while of deplorable Miss Dobson, every lineament, every accent, so vividly ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... invited, or commanded, to attend on the bridal accordingly, at which there were but few persons present; for James, on such occasions, preferred a snug privacy, which gave him liberty to lay aside the encumbrance, as he felt it to be, of his regal dignity. The company was very small, and indeed there were at least two persons absent whose presence might have been expected. The first of these was the Lady Dalgarno, the state of whose health, as well as the recent death of her husband, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... praise its tint, which I abominate, and its shape, which is wholly detestable. What would you? I could not wound my good Guiseppe; the vase has remained, the chief ornament—in his eyes—of my drawing-room. Now, thanks to you, my charming child, I am delivered of this encumbrance, and my poor white and gold can appear without this ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... fingers through his crisp hair with an expressive gesture of almost comical perplexity; all would be plain sailing enough, with hope at the prow again, but for this—he stamped his foot to choke down the oath of qualification—this encumbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister, as such entitled to all honour, all care, and devotion; and yet, as such again, hideously, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... labor is of an army on its march: then consider that they carry more than a fortnight's provision, and whatever else they may want; that they carry the burden of the stakes,[34] for as to shield, sword, or helmet, they look on them as no more encumbrance than their own limbs, for they say that arms are the limbs of a soldier, and those, indeed, they carry so commodiously that, when there is occasion, they throw down their burdens, and use their arms as readily as their limbs. Why need I mention the exercises of the legions? And how great ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... know you would experience small trouble eluding the Spaniards, or even cutting your way through them, were I not with you. Yet this is not beyond remedy. I had sincerely hoped to prove of service when I usurped the slave's place in the boat; instead, I am an encumbrance, a weakling whom you must protect at the risk of your own lives. Fortunately it is not yet too late to leave you free; it cannot be many miles back to New Orleans, and the current would bear me swiftly downward. I have loyal friends in the town to hide the daughter of Lafreniere, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... he stood gazing down at his ebony encumbrance, "I do not deserve to be an American citizen; I ought not to have the advantages I possess over you; and I certainly am not worthy of Charity Lomax, if I am not smart enough to get rid of you. I have an idea! You shall yet be free, and I will be the instrument of your deliverance. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and sluggish souls, who always see difficulties and never the way to get over them? And who that has had to lead a company of Christian men has not often been ready to wish that he could sound out Gideon's proclamation, and bid the 'fearful and afraid' take away the chilling encumbrance of their presence, and leave him with thinned ranks of trusty men? Cowardice, dressed up as cautious prudence, weakens the efficiency of every regiment in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... if we should abide here he would come against us with all his power, and with all the power of the Moors, and we could not stand against him. If therefore it seem good unto you, let us leave the rest of our prisoners here, for it does not beseem us to take any with us, but to be as free from all encumbrance as may be, like men who are to live by war, and to help ourselves with our arms. And it pleased them well that it should be so. And he said to them, Ye have all had your shares, neither is there anything owing to any one among ye. Now then let us be ready to take horse ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... ornament, there must never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled upon some points, and left the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... thoughts which had lain dumb in men's brains for more than half their lifetime suddenly woke up into speech and activity by the influence of a woman great enough to call them forth. The adoring seraph would be an encumbrance, and nothing better than a child upon his hands; and the soul which had to be awakened and directed by him would run great chance of remaining torpid and inactive all its days. He has his own life to lead and round off, and so far from wishing ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Prince and the estates could succeed in ridding themselves of this encumbrance. He created several riots in different parts of the province, and boasted, that he had many fine ships of war and three thousand men devoted to him, by whose assistance he could make the estates "dance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cardboard boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept everything, could not bear that anything which had once been useful should be abandoned or destroyed; whereas Hilda's propensity was to throw away with an impatient gesture whatever threatened to be an encumbrance. Sighing, she began to arrange the contents of the trays in some kind of method. Incompetent and careless mother! Hilda wondered how the old thing managed to conduct her life from day to day with even ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in the same manner, the two forming a striking, but by no means attractive, picture. The meat was obviously tough, but their teeth were equal to the work, and plates, knives and forks would have been only an encumbrance. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... surgeon," quoth Lord Claud, with a smile on his face; "perchance they are wise. For myself, I never trouble to do so. I count a leech a needless encumbrance." ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... women and children joined the camp, and the march eastward was very slow. But no circumstance extols more loudly the bravery and tenderness of these American soldiers than the patience with which this encumbrance was endured. Men worn out with watching and foraging were never too weary to help some mother still more weary, or to carry some little child whose swollen feet would no longer ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... errand is a futile one. Why do they worry me when I unhesitatingly pay the extravagant interest they are pleased to demand? They know that they are all knaves. They are aware that I am rich, for I have inherited a great fortune, which is certainly without encumbrance; for though I could raise a million to-morrow upon my estates in Poitiers, I have up to this time not chosen to ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... and to perform their accustomed duties; and the one holding his sandals in his hand, that he may run with greater ease, illustrates a custom, still common in Egypt, among the Arabs and peasants of the country, who find the power of the foot greater when freed from the encumbrance ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... airships as were available in the early part of the war had not the necessary power and range. To build a vessel which should be able to carry seaplanes or aeroplanes for work with the fleet was not a simple matter. Such a vessel would be an encumbrance unless it could keep station with the Grand Fleet or with the Battle Cruiser Squadron, that is, unless it could steam up to thirty knots for a period of many hours together. Further, a stationary ship at sea is exposed ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... suite, and would have cared little for his suffering for it personally, except so far as it concerned her own dignity, which she understood much better than she had done in Scotland, where she was only one of 'the lassies,' an encumbrance ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there is such a plentiful crop of the superior quality, your native teachers are mere propagators of degeneracy. Ecco! your curls are now of the right proportion to neck and shoulders; rise, Messer, and I will free you from the encumbrance of this cloth. Gnaffe! I almost advise you to retain the faded jerkin and hose a little longer; they give you the air of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... calculating the distance from the palace to the fortress, and she came to the conclusion that a body of persons moving with some encumbrance might easily reach the stronghold in half a day. Her plan was a simple one, and easy of execution; though there was no limit to the evil results its success ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... white feet of that original preferred fairness and wildness. This is rank embroidery, but the old surface itself insists on spreading—it waits at least with an air of its own. The rest is silence; I can—extraordinary encumbrance even for the most doating of parents on a morning call—but have returned with my father to "our hotel"; since I feel that I must not only to this but to a still further extent face the historic truth that we were for considerable periods, during our earliest time, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... further use to the divisions, but rather an encumbrance upon them, was massed, under Grierson, behind the centre, and assigned to the duty of guarding the rear, the depots, and the communications against the incursions of the Confederate cavalry, under Logan, known to be hovering between Port Hudson and Clinton, and supposed ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... first discharge both himself and his mind of the burden with which he finds himself oppressed, motion will but make it press the harder and sit the heavier, as the lading of a ship is of less encumbrance when fast and bestowed in a settled posture. You do a sick man more harm than good in removing him from place to place; you fix and establish the disease by motion, as stakes sink deeper and more firmly into the earth by being moved ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... business conversations as against the giggling, gurgling ups and downs of conversations purely social, "I have made up my mind to come in every morning and help Uncle Pat. I'm tired of being a useless encumbrance." ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... more rapidly, making a detour occasionally to avoid a swamp or piece of broken ground; sometimes descending a deep gorge formed by a small tributary of the stream they were ascending, and which to an unpractised eye would have appeared almost impassable, even without the encumbrance of a canoe. But the said canoe never bore Jacques more gallantly or safely over the surges of lake or stream than did he bear it through the intricate mazes of the forest; now diving down and disappearing altogether in the umbrageous ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... been prodigious and dense, especially in the reigns of the more prosperous kings. Whatever limits to the increase of man artificial wants may interpose in a civilised state and in ordinary climates are unknown in a tropical region, where clothing is an encumbrance, the smallest shelter a home, and sustenance supplied by the bounty of the soil in almost spontaneous abundance. Under such propitious circumstances, in the midst of a profusion of fruit-bearing-trees, and in a country replenished ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... hated my idleness. Borrowings of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery, followed as a matter of course. I Had a full conviction that my life was taking me down to the lowest pits—a feeling that I had been looked upon as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing, a creature of whom those connected with me had to be ashamed. Even my few friends were half-ashamed of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved—a strong wish ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... arrived, and it was time for Mr. Pickwick to issue forth on his delicate errand. Resisting Sam's tender of his greatcoat, in order that he might have no encumbrance in scaling the wall, he set forth, followed by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... in the least desired to saddle himself with a domestic encumbrance, in fact nothing would have induced him to consider the step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances. His fortunes had reached a stage where money must be forthcoming somehow—from somewhere. He and his mother had been living from hand to mouth, so to speak, for years, and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... take offence at it; but that any further interposition on their parts would have ill become them to make, or her to bear: that even while she was a private person, and exposed to much danger from the malice of her enemies, she had always declined that engagement, as an encumbrance; much more at present must she persevere in that sentiment, when the charge of a great kingdom was committed to her, and her life ought to be devoted to its interests: that as England was her husband, wedded to her by this pledge (and here she exhibited her finger ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... he said as he entered. "Rinaldo, do you see that the men come out one by one. As each comes out a weapon will be placed in his hands, and he will be then led to the starboard side of the hold, which is free from encumbrance, and will there stand until he receives orders to move further. Remember that not the slightest noise must be made, for if any stumbled and fell, and the noise were heard above, it might be thought that some of ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... called home, and there Rosanna Moore fell dangerously ill. Whyte, who had missed her, found out where she was, and that she was too ill to be removed. I presume he was rather glad to get rid of such an encumbrance, so he went back to his lodgings at St. Kilda, which, judging from the landlady's story, he must have occupied for some time, while Rosanna Moore was drinking herself to death in a quiet hotel Still he does not break off ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... three or four great rivers, still almost unknown, that flow into the head-waters of Chesterfield Inlet. In the beginning of June, as the snow began to melt, progress grew more and more difficult. Snowshoes became a useless encumbrance, and on the 10th of the month even the sledges were abandoned. Every man must now shoulder a heavy load. Hearne himself staggered under a pack which included a bag of clothes, a box of papers, a hatchet ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... violent sick headache, brought on by the heat of the sun in the launch. She declares that she cannot move; but our experienced escort, who much fears bilious fever for her, is resolved that she shall as soon as any means of transit can be procured. Heretofore, I have always traveled "without encumbrance." Is it treasonable to feel at this moment that these fair ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... mortal sight and reach. But, glad as was the schemer, his delight and sense of freedom were much inferior to those of his misguided and unlucky partner. Michael breathed as a man relieved from nightmare. The encumbrance which had for years prevented him from rising, that had so lately threatened his existence, was gone, could no longer hang upon him, haunt and oppress him. What a deliverance!—Yet, what a price had he paid for it! True, but was not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... his teeth, and the spirit wishing to enter into all the hopes and fears of jelly-fish will simplify his personal appearance to a really alarming extent. It would appear, therefore, that this great body of ours and all its natural instincts, of which we are proud, and justly proud, is rather an encumbrance at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated. We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... overtook her just above Grand Gulf, and attacked her after dark on the 24th of February. The Indianola was superior to all the others in armament, and probably would have destroyed them or driven them away, but for her encumbrance. As it was she fought them for an hour and a half, but, in the dark, was struck seven or eight times by the ram and other vessels, and was finally disabled and reduced to a sinking condition. The ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... France," said Ethel, gravely; "he has a humpback, but he is very spiritual. Monsieur de Cadillan paid me some compliments the other night, and even asked George Barnes what my dot was, He is a widower, and has a wig and two daughters. Which do you think would be the greatest encumbrance, grandmamma,—a humpback, or a wig and two daughters? I like Madame de Florac; for the sake of the borough, I must try and like poor Madame de Moncontour, and I will go and see them whenever ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mediocrity is safe; this was always my Study, not to make any Advantage to myself from the Disadvantages of other People. I embraced as much as I could, that which the Greeks call Freedom from the Encumbrance of Business. I intermeddled with no one's Affairs; but especially I kept myself clear from those that could not be meddled with without gaining the ill Will of a great many. If a Friend wants my Assistance, I so serve him, as thereby not to procure any Enemies ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... a musing tone, which seemed more like a soliloquy than any thing else. "There was the estate, saddled with debt handed down from my grandfather to my father. It would have required years of economy and good management to free it from encumbrance. But my father's motto was always Dum vivimus vivamus and his only idea was to get what money he could for himself, and let his heirs look out for themselves. In consequence, heavier mortgages were added. He lived in Paris, enjoying himself, and left Chetwynde in charge of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... prove an encumbrance to Fred, out there; and I told him so. If Fred thought he was taking out a wife who would make shift, and put up pleasantly with annoyances, he was mistaken. Sibylla in Canvas Town! Poor girl! I wonder she ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is the lobster; and, when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous encumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded from ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... is of no account," said Mr. St. Laurent; "she would sell better without it. If I buy her, I shall give away the little encumbrance." ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... the land to be sold to the peasant cultivator at L. 40 an acre. They were paying this back at the rate of 4% on the purchase money, a rate that included both interest and sinking fund, so that at the end of forty years they would own the small estates free from encumbrance. The huge population of Birmingham is close to the properties. The men turned their attention mostly to strawberries, to which many acres were devoted. Costermongers would come out from Birmingham and buy fruit on the spot, selling part of it to the villas on the way back, and part in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a heavy burden on an impoverished country, and the treasury has not enough means to meet the demands constantly made upon it. The people are discontented and clamorous, and they ought to be freed from this encumbrance. A postscript dated July 19 refers to the king a dispute between the Audiencia and archbishop regarding ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... signally unjust to lay upon you alone the reproaches that every being brought under the yoke (conjugium) has the right to heap upon that necessary, sacred, useful, eminently conservative institution,—one, however, that is often somewhat of an encumbrance, and tight about the joints, though sometimes it ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... their circumstances, and to propose that all hands should unstrip their upper clothing when the higher parts of the rock were laid under water; that the seamen should remove every unnecessary weight and encumbrance from the boats; that a specified number of men should go into each boat, and that the remainder should hang by the gunwales, while the boats were to be rowed gently towards the Smeaton, as the course to the Pharos, or floating ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... miller came out and mounted his steed; the general contrived to rid himself of the encumbrance of the sack, and sat up, riding behind the man, who, suddenly turning round, saw a ghost, as he believed, for the flour that still remained in the sack had completely whitened his fellow-traveller and given him a most unearthly appearance. The frightened ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... she turned from Fred's door. It was not hard to work for the children—to support and domineer over Susan; but it was hard for such an alert uncompromising little soul to tolerate that useless hulk—that heavy encumbrance of a man, for whom hope and life were dead. She bit her lip as she discharged her sharp stinging arrow at him through the half-opened door, and then went down singing, to take her place at the table which her own hands had spread—which her own ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one time, but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under their influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an extravagance. He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more and more negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering about the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being seen flitting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Stryker, tout court. He prided himself upon being considered a gentleman at large, a man of the world, whose opinion on all subjects was worth hearing. Since his last return from Europe, he had announced that he was looking about for that necessary encumbrance, a wife; but he took good care not to mention what he called his future intentions, until he had actually committed himself more than once. He had several times kindly offered to rich and beautiful girls, to take charge of themselves and their fortunes, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... has the sense also that he becomes more entirely than ever the chevalier of his mortal mother, of her sad cause. The devout, diligent hands clear away carefully the dust, the faded relics of her former worship; a worship renewed once more as the sacred spring, set free from encumbrance, in answer to his willing ministries murmurs again under the dim vault in its marble basin, work of primitive Titanic fingers—flows out through its rocky channel, filling the whole township ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... married, the man who used to beat me so cruelly. Whether she spent all the money left for me, or whether they both spent it, appears to be of little consequence; anyway, once it was gone I was regarded with black looks as an encumbrance, and turned out into the streets to make some money, or do something for my board and lodging, as they expressed it. I have already told you what the lodging was like. Well, the board part of it corresponded to the rest of the picture in every way. Crusts of old dry bread, which they ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... there. It is this which has stood between us and made all my efforts vain. I see it now and despise you for the falsehood you have shown me, vowing you loved no one but me until I married you, then letting me so soon discover that I was only an encumbrance to your enjoyment of the fortune I possessed. You treat me like a child, but I suffer like a woman, and you shall share my suffering, because you might have spared me, and you did not. Gilbert, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... from the skins of wolverines, and was drawn in loosely about the waist by a tied band, but was really sustained by a strip of the skin which encircled the left shoulder and back and breast. This left the right arm free from all encumbrance, a matter of some importance, for to be right-handed was a quality of the cave man as of the man today. We should have a grudge against them for this carelessness, and should, may be, form an ambidextrous league, improving upon the past and teaching and forcing young children ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... he mounted, dazzled by them all, and soon eluded mortal sight and reach. But, glad as was the schemer, his delight and sense of freedom were much inferior to those of his misguided and unlucky partner. Michael breathed as a man relieved from nightmare. The encumbrance which had for years prevented him from rising, that had so lately threatened his existence, was gone, could no longer hang upon him, haunt and oppress him. What a deliverance!—Yet, what a price had he paid for it! True, but was not the money already sacrificed? Would it have been restored, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... moral faculties of his nature, and the modern artisan doomed to the incessant repetition of one petty set of muscular expansions and contractions, and whose soul, if he has one, is therefore rather an encumbrance than otherwise. This is the evil which is constantly before Wordsworth's eyes, as it has certainly not become less prominent since his time. The danger of crushing the individual is a serious one according to his view; not because it implies the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... way back on an old wood road. Evidently a bear had been caught there, perhaps two or three days before we came. He had dragged the trap and the chained clog down into the thicket. There he had stayed, tearing up things generally in his efforts to escape from his encumbrance, and resting quietly in the intervals of his fury. My approach had startled him and he had made the first crash that I heard. Then he lay low and listened. My second inconsiderate shout of "Hallo, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... most earnest remonstrances, to make preparations for flight by providing themselves with every conceivable comfort for their exile. In vain did their friends assure them that they could purchase any thing they desired in any part of Europe; that such quantities of luggage would be only an encumbrance; that it was dangerous, under the eyes of their vigilant enemies, to be making such extensive preparations. Neither the king nor queen would heed such monitions. The queen persisted in her resolution to send to Brussels, piece by piece, all the articles of a complete and extensive ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... had put about two hundred and sixty pounds on the debit side of Joanna's accounts. She was able to meet her losses—her father had died with a comfortable balance in Lewes Old Bank, and she had always paid ready money, so was without any encumbrance of debt—but Ansdore was bound to feel the blow, which had shorn it of its fleece of pleasant profits. Joanna was for the first time confronted by the need for economy, and she hated economy with all the lavish, colour-loving powers of her nature. Even now she would not bend herself ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Association and says they want me to run for State Senator. Then along comes a committee of hay-tossers from up around St. Johns and says, polite, that they are waitin' my pleasure in the matter of framin' up their ticket for senatorial candidate from this mesa country. They say that the present encumbrance in the senatorial chair is such a dog-gone thief that he steals from hisself just to keep in practice. I don't say so. 'Course, if I can get to a chair that looks big and easy, without stompin' on anybody—why, I'm like to set down. But if I can't, I figure ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... on the subject. It is scarcely possible, however, that such analysis will be brought forward, for it is the apparent policy of the reinforced concrete analyst to jump into the middle of his proposition without the encumbrance of ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... wisdom of what he says, he seems usually to be the centre talker of the group. It is very pleasant to see such an image of earthly comfort as this. A fat man who feels his flesh as a disease and encumbrance, and on whom it presses so as to make him melancholy with dread of apoplexy, and who moves heavily under the burden of himself,—such a man is a doleful and disagreeable object. But if he have vivacity enough ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... (Hear, hear.) I have for years felt that the law of England in that respect, which we brought with us, required amendment. In looking also to the laws of other countries with respect to the transfer, mortgage, or encumbrance of real property, I have come to the conclusion that the law of England is inferior to most of them with regard to cost and security of title. The old Conservative feeling of England adheres with a sort of veneration to laws and ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... firmly in position, I nailed a top streak along from stem to stern, so as to form a gunwale, and another at the lower edges of the cases, tarring everything as I proceeded, including myself; but as the weather was hot a pair of old pants cut off at the knee, and a ragged shirt, were my only encumbrance in the way of clothing. Now I proceeded to cut down the partitions between the various sections for a depth of six inches. I then carefully caulked the tiny crack between each of these bulkheads, and turning the surplus tin over, nailed it to the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... over the rail, often tumbling upon my head with such weight as nearly to beat the breath out of my body and sink me to the deck; it was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous obligation of despatch and my retardment by the washing seas, the violent motions of the brig, the encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift and sweeping here and there, and the sense that the vessel might be grinding her bows against the iceberg before I should be able to reach the bowsprit. All this it was that filled me with a kind ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... what a neglected aspect the font usually bore during the whole of the Georgian period; how it was often thrust into some corner of the church, as if it were a kind of encumbrance that could not be absolutely done away with, and very frequently supplanted by some basin or pewter vessel placed inside it. In 1799 Carter recorded with indignation that in Westminster Abbey the font had been altogether removed, to make space for some new monument, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... very grateful to you, Mr. Grainger," said Sheila. "I fear I am going to prove a great encumbrance ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... usual price. The bidders were, perhaps, influenced somewhat by a patriotic spirit, and by a desire to taunt Hannibal with an expression of their opinion that his occupation of the land would be a very temporary encumbrance. Hannibal, to revenge himself for this taunt, put up for sale at auction, in his own camp, the shops of one of the principal streets of Rome, and they were bought by his officers with great spirit. It showed that a great change had ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... was never without some ignominiously bred cur at my heels; but Roger never cared for them, and little by little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he objected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with them in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the encumbrance of one while travelling. Not that he was ever cruel or careless: when thrown into necessary relations with animals he was far more just and thoughtful of them than many a sentimental animal lover of my ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... both their Majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found a prodigious vessel on the shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had given orders to fit up with my own assistance and direction; and he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires would be freed from so insupportable an encumbrance. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... go, Joe? do ee now," Moll resumed, in her most persuasive tones. "An' when you return the van, send Tonio off on his own hook too; the lad eats more'n he earns. An' sell Bruno; he's a vicious brute—nothin' but an encumbrance. You couldn't do much wi' him anyhow, once Bambo's out o' the road. The beast has a grudge agin you, for the way you whip him, I expect. He'll do you an injury one o' these days if you don't have a care! Then when we've only ourselves to think o', you an' me'll make ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... every day more inevitable; and it was the more difficult for him to make his exertions for defence or escape, that Elspat, amid his evil days, had increased his family with an infant child, which was a considerable encumbrance upon the necessary ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... stern of the ship. He halted and ran his fingers through his crisp hair with an expressive gesture of almost comical perplexity; all would be plain sailing enough, with hope at the prow again, but for this—he stamped his foot to choke down the oath of qualification—this encumbrance. Adrian's wife and Madeleine's sister, as such entitled to all honour, all care, and devotion; and yet, as such again, hideously, doubly unwelcome ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... in Salem, and that a speedy flight can alone ensure your liberty. You have made a great sacrifice for my sake; and I will also make one for yours. I will not even ask to fly with you, for I could only be an encumbrance to you at this inclement season of the year, and my presence here may be of use to you. My heart rebels while I say it, Roger; but you must go alone, and use every exertion to reach Plymouth as speedily as possible. When you are safe beneath my father's ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... with them, if they be torn away too quickly, some cumbrous fragments of their recent association. That he may avoid this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, and extorts, if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his encumbrance. By a slight stress laid on the difference of usage the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace found where none was sought. Addison and Landor accuse Milton, with reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, yet surely there is something to please the mind, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... useless to try to go that way, and we retraced our steps. I wanted to return to the "Notch," knowing that my incompetence would detain the party, and one of the young men said almost plainly that a woman was a dangerous encumbrance, but the trapper replied shortly that if it were not to take a lady up he would not go up at all. He went on to explore, and reported that further progress on the correct line of ascent was blocked by ice; and then for two hours we descended, lowering ourselves by our hands from rock ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... direction of Andujar. As I stood beside the colonel, I could observe, by the knitting of his brow, that the movement did not satisfy his military sagacity. "What a quantity of baggage!" he murmured: "how will it be possible to carry such a train through the country, or how to fight, with such an encumbrance embarrassing every step? Unless the Spanish generals are the greatest fools on earth, or unless Dupont has a miracle worked for him, he must either abandon three-fourths of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... me one of their life-jackets—an invaluable companion if a long immersion in the water is to be undergone. But for convenience in working the ropes and sails I was content to use the less bulky life-belt. It is conveniently arranged, and you soon forget it as an encumbrance. Indeed on one occasion I walked up to a house without recollecting that my life-belt ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... fellow-creature to perish. It was certainly considered incumbent on his son to support him, and he was fortunate in that son's being a very good man; but a few more such journeys to a man of seventy would not impose this encumbrance upon him much longer. Illumea, the mother of several grown-up children, lived also in the same hut with her other relations. She did not, however, interfere, as in Greenland, with the management of her son's domestic concerns, though his wife was half an idiot. She was always badly clothed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... his clothes, let himself down into the yard of the prison. There he found a long piece of timber, which he dragged to the wall, clambered up thereon, and sprang over into the street. His shoes and hat he had left in the prison, as a useless encumbrance without his clothes, all which he had converted into the means of escape, so that he was now literally stark naked. He stood a moment to reflect:—"Here am I, said he, freed from my local prison indeed, but in the midst of an enemy's ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... power of the Moors, and we could not stand against him. If therefore it seem good unto you, let us leave the rest of our prisoners here, for it does not beseem us to take any with us, but to be as free from all encumbrance as may be, like men who are to live by war, and to help ourselves with our arms. And it pleased them well that it should be so. And he said to them, Ye have all had your shares, neither is there anything owing to any one among ye. Now then let us be ready to take horse ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... reverse is the truth. Fison and Howit, who discuss the question, say of the Australian women, "In time of peace they are the hardest workers and the most useful members of the community." In time of war, "they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves at all times, and so far from being an encumbrance on the warriors, they will fight, if need be, as bravely as the men, and with even greater ferocity" (Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 133-147, 358). This is no exceptional case, and is confirmed by the reports of investigators of widely different peoples. I may mention the ancient Iberian women ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... BAIRNSFATHER and Captain ARTHUR ELIOT have written round the adventures of "Old Bill." In form it resembles a revue, but I prefer to call it a play, because it possesses a plot, distinct if slight—an encumbrance banned by most revue producers; and because it contains an abundance of honest spontaneous fun. The authors start with the advantage, if it be an advantage, that the principal characters are already ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... an effort, first the mind must be cleared of the conceit that, because we live to-day, we are wiser than the ages gone. The mind must acknowledge its ignorance; all the learning and lore of so many eras must be erased from it as an encumbrance. It is not from past or present knowledge, science or faith, that it is to be drawn. Erase these altogether as they are erased under the fierce heat of the focus before me. Begin wholly afresh. Go straight ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... without that old man," the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself. The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boxes! Her mother kept everything, could not bear that anything which had once been useful should be abandoned or destroyed; whereas Hilda's propensity was to throw away with an impatient gesture whatever threatened to be an encumbrance. Sighing, she began to arrange the contents of the trays in some kind of method. Incompetent and careless mother! Hilda wondered how the old thing managed to conduct her life from day to day with even a ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of that toil as the cost of their houses—but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... seems no end. Some are good, some bad, and many just an encumbrance upon the book-shelves, neither of much use nor particularly harmful. Some books are to be read for cheer and amusement; some for reproof and correction; others to be studied for useful information ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... birds is easy and graceful, sweeping with facility over the loftiest trees of their native forests, their strangely developed bills being no encumbrance to them, replete as they are with a tissue of air-filled cells rendering them very ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... certifies the license that is granted for travelling, and limits the time of their return. They are furnished with a waggon and a slave, who drives the oxen, and looks after them: but unless there are women in the company, the waggon is sent back at the end of the journey as a needless encumbrance: while they are on the road, they carry no provisions with them; yet they want nothing, but are everywhere treated as if they were at home. If they stay in any place longer than a night, every one follows his proper occupation, and is very well used by those ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the garrison to dislodge him, or perhaps even to break out. Not only do the surrounding hills keep the garrison in, but they also form a formidable barrier to the advance of a relieving force. Thus it is that the ten thousand troops in Ladysmith are at this moment actually an encumbrance. To extricate them—I write advisedly, to endeavour to extricate them—brigades and divisions must be diverted from all the other easy lines of advance, and Sir Redvers Buller, who had always deprecated any attempt to hold Natal north of the Tugela, is compelled to attack ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every day dying, and rotting, by cold, and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the younger labourers they are now in almost as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... woman at all; who was genuinely appalled by the thought of a husband; who joyed in boys' games, and sentimentalized over such things as adventure; who was healthy and normal and wholesome, and who was so immature that a husband stood for nothing more than an encumbrance in her ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... and of a size that corresponded with its prodigious rider. The Margrave's long beard and flowing hair were red; scarlet, one may say, but perhaps that was the fiery reflection from the torches. Servants, scullions, stablemen carried the lights; the men-at-arms had no encumbrance but their weapons, and the business-like way in which they lined up along the shore was a study in discipline, and a terror to any one unused to war. Above all the din and clash of arms rang the hearty, stentorian ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... marvelled at the fluency of her tongue and thanked her, praising her grace and passing seductiveness; and the damsel, delighted at his praise, arose without stay or delay and doffing that was upon her of outer dress and trinkets till she was free of all encumbrance sat down on his knees and kissed him between the eyes and on his cheek-mole. Then she gave him all she had put off.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... to have a strong liking for her at one time, but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under their influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an extravagance. He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more and more negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering about the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being seen flitting from window ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... discovered that she was still intact; and the tub was all there; what had given way was the paint; and gleaming up at her from the bottom of the bath tub, like a full moon through the clouds, was a bright and shining circle of the tin, free from all encumbrance in the shape of paint ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... The project was fully discussed by the fellows; but the risk of swimming, even in a fog, under the muzzles of muskets, was a danger they feared encountering. I perceived at once that it would be best to free myself entirely from the encumbrance of such chicken-hearted lubbers, so I bade them take their own course, but divided three thousand francs in government bills among the gang, and presented my gold ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... on their parts would have ill become them to make, or her to bear: that even while she was a private person, and exposed to much danger from the malice of her enemies, she had always declined that engagement, as an encumbrance; much more at present must she persevere in that sentiment, when the charge of a great kingdom was committed to her, and her life ought to be devoted to its interests: that as England was her husband, wedded to her by this ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... though he thus protracted the siege. He hoped that this humanity would prove to his foes that he did not seek revenge. The Duke of Nemours, who conducted the defense, encouraged by this unmilitary humanity, that he might relieve himself from the encumbrance of useless mouths, drove several thousands out of the city. Henry, with extraordinary clemency, allowed three thousand to pass through the ranks of his army. He nobly said, "I can not bear to think of their sufferings. I had ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... often as there was a war with France or Spain, there would have been an insurrection in Scotland. Our country would have sunk into a kingdom of the second class. One such Church as that about which we are now debating is a serious encumbrance to the greatest empire. Two such Churches no empire could bear. You continued to govern Ireland during many generations as you had governed Scotland in the days of Lauderdale and Dundee. And see the result. Ireland has remained, indeed, a part ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rock, three or four and eight or ten feet cube; and among these they had worked their way, leaping from one narrow point to another, rarely making a false step, and giving us no occasion to dismount. Having divested ourselves of every unnecessary encumbrance, we commenced the ascent. This time, like experienced travelers, we did not press ourselves, but climbed leisurely, sitting down so soon as we found breath beginning to fail. At intervals we reached places where a number of springs gushed from the rocks, and about 1800 feet above the lakes came ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... novel, but the next edition of Waverley, to Longman, Murray, or Blackwood—in the hope that the prospect of being let in to the profits of the already established favorite, would overcome effectually the hesitation of one or other of these houses about venturing on the encumbrance which Constable seemed to shrink from with such pertinacity; but upon this ingenious proposition Scott at once set his veto. He ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... precipitate, and frightened the bird away," remarked Mrs. Fraudhurst. "But," continued she, after a moment's pause, "perhaps it is as well she has taken this step. Her presence here is now no longer necessary. You have the property without the encumbrance." ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. But, then, what reams of other manuscripts—filled not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Visigoths; with the firm resolution of opposing the victorious Barbarians, whom he thought it less advisable to provoke. The ordinary speed of the Huns was checked by the weight of baggage, and the encumbrance of captives; but their military skill deceived, and almost destroyed, the army of Athanaric. While the Judge of the Visigoths defended the banks of the Niester, he was encompassed and attacked by a numerous detachment of cavalry, who, by the light of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... jelly-fish will simplify his personal appearance to a really alarming extent. It would appear, therefore, that this great body of ours and all its natural instincts, of which we are proud, and justly proud, is rather an encumbrance at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated. We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. It is good for us at certain times that ourselves ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... time, he was dragging himself on after Quentin, who, aware of the importance of securing the countenance of a person of such influence, slackened his pace to assist him, although cursing in his heart the encumbrance that retarded his pace. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... march: then consider that they carry more than a fortnight's provision, and whatever else they may want; that they carry the burden of the stakes,[34] for as to shield, sword, or helmet, they look on them as no more encumbrance than their own limbs, for they say that arms are the limbs of a soldier, and those, indeed, they carry so commodiously that, when there is occasion, they throw down their burdens, and use their arms as readily as their limbs. Why ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... am hit!" I exclaimed, as a spear came whizzing in over the parapet, passing clean through the fleshy part of my right thigh. In the excitement of the moment it did not take me a second to relieve myself of my unpleasant encumbrance by drawing the spear shaft right through the wound; and the next moment I found myself engaged with the rest in resisting the hottest and most determined assault to which we had hitherto been subjected. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... was desired, and Jack struck out with such force that he cut through the water like a boat; while I, being free from all encumbrance, succeeded in keeping up with him. As we had by this time drawn pretty near to the shore, a few minutes more sufficed to carry us into shallow water; and, finally, we landed in safety, though very much exhausted, and not a little frightened by ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... had lately encountered this foe, and the encumbrance of provision, made me neglect, on this occasion, to bring with me my usual arms. The beast that was now before me, when stimulated by hunger, was accustomed to assail whatever could provide him with a banquet of blood. He would ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... bloodless as she turned from Fred's door. It was not hard to work for the children—to support and domineer over Susan; but it was hard for such an alert uncompromising little soul to tolerate that useless hulk—that heavy encumbrance of a man, for whom hope and life were dead. She bit her lip as she discharged her sharp stinging arrow at him through the half-opened door, and then went down singing, to take her place at the table which her ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... and be for ever lost to him. Elizabeth's moods were as uncertain as were certain the hostile activities of my lord's enemies. He must strike quickly whilst she was in her present frame of mind, and bring her to wedlock, be it in public or in private. But first he must shake off the paralysing encumbrance of that house-wife ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... why he took the trouble even to go through that form. It may have been partly because he lacked the instinct—or perhaps the initiative—for active suicide, and was too proud to starve at the expense or encumbrance of other people. But there was another cause, which of itself sufficed to keep him going. I may have said—or given the impression—that he utterly despaired of ever getting anything worth having out of life. And ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was supposed by certain soldiers," says a well-informed military critic (Colonel A'Court Repington, at page 276 of his "Vestigia"), "that the war against Germany would be decided by the fighting of some seven great battles en rase campagne, where heavies would be a positive encumbrance." ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... a quiet smile; and he sighed faintly, as though he wished it were permissible to rid himself thus easily of his golden encumbrance. ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... he pursued his way with haste and diligence, but without knowing where he was going—whether he was moving toward Richmond or Washington. As the musket which he had taken from the church was not only an encumbrance, but might betray him, he threw it away, though, thinking some means of defence might be useful, he retained the bayonet, and thrust it in his belt. Thus relieved of his burden, he walked till he came to a road. As there was no appearance of an enemy in any direction, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... letter of credit isn't an encumbrance? Do you have to deposit the whole amount it calls for? If that is so, it is an encumbrance, and we must withdraw it and take the money out of soak. I have never made drafts upon it except when compelled, because I thought you deposited nothing against ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of which Julian himself was the first victim. The cardinal, who performed the duties of a priest and a soldier, was lost in the defeat of Warna. The circumstances of his death are variously related; but it is believed, that a weighty encumbrance of gold impeded his flight, and tempted the cruel ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... fact, that the same tenants might have bought land, out and out, in every direction around them, had they not preferred the easier terms of the leases. Now, that these same men, or their successors, have become rich enough to care more to be rid of the encumbrance of the rent than to keep their money, the rights of the parties ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the glorified spirit will, therefore, be a help, and not an encumbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is necessarily a clog. True, by ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... watching the peaches grow. First they peeped like pearls from the dried frills of their blossoms; then they expanded and cast off the encumbrance of dead petals and nestled against the red bricks that sucked up sunshine and held it for them when the sun had gone. She found the garden wall was a whole busy world, and, taught by her vanished master, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12.—Translator's Note.) They are hunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of the coming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavated afterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Wasp in search of a convenient site, the Spider is placed high up, on a tuft of grass or brushwood, out of the reach of marauders, especially Ants, who might damage the precious morsel in the lawful owner's absence. After fixing her booty on the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... had ceased to throw a glittering veil around this idol; but she was kind, and pure, and gentle, and devoted. It was consoling to be loved to one who was so wretched. It seemed to him that life must ever be a blank without the woman who, a few months ago, he had left an encumbrance. The recollection of past happiness was balm to one who was so forlorn. He shuddered at the thought of losing his only precious possession, and he was never more attached to his mistress than when the soul of friendship rose from the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... pretty well understood. With no less eagerness these gossips also informed me that she had lived to see the house freed from the mortgage, one vineyard bought back, and the whole property cleared of encumbrance. All this was the result of the gratitude felt towards the martyred patriot whose praises were now on every tongue, since he had become the great glory of his native town; for his life and his brother's constituted ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... field-equipment—a neatly-rolled green canvas valise with his name and regiment stamped in bold block letters; his Sam Browne belt with automatic pistol holster attached; his sword—a mere token of authority but otherwise little better than a useless encumbrance—and a pair of binoculars in a leather case that bore signs of the excessive dampness of the climate on The Coast, as the littoral of the African shore 'twixt the Niger and the Senegal Rivers is invariably referred to by the case-hardened white men who have ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the frail craft free from water by constant use of a tin cup. This oozed in through numerous ill-fitting seams, but not fast enough to swamp us in midstream, although the amount gained steadily on me in spite of every effort, and we occasionally had to make shore to free us of the encumbrance. ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... position worse than that of being found dead in your husband's house from his ill usage, and that is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house of somebody else. I've thought of it all this morning, and I've chosen my course. A runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody, a burden to herself and a byword—all of which make up a heap of misery greater than any that comes by staying at home—though this may include the trifling items of insult, beating, and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... men? Where had we that luxurious delicacy in our feasts, in which the nose is no less pleased than the palate, and the eye no less than either? wherein the piles of dishes make barricadoes against the appetite, and with a pleasing encumbrance trouble a hungry guest. Where those forms of ceremonious quaffing, in which men have learned to make gods of others and beasts of themselves, and lose their reason while they pretend to do reason? Where the lawlessness (miscalled freedom) of a wild tongue, that runs, with reins on the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... that it is my duty to be by your side, my husband." And she colored at this word, being the first time she had ever used it. Raynal was silent. She murmured on, "I would not be an encumbrance to you, sir: I should not be useless. Gentlemen, I could add more to his comfort than he gives ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... dispossess, strip, despoil. Despise, contemn, scorn, disdain. Despondency, despair, desperation. Detach, separate, sunder, sever, disconnect, disjoin, disunite. Determined, persistent, dogged. Devout, religious, pious, godly, saintly. Difficulty, hindrance, obstacle, impediment, encumbrance, handicap. Difficulty, predicament, perplexity, plight, quandary, dilemma, strait. Dirty, filthy, foul, nasty, squalid. Discernment, perception, penetration, insight, acumen. Disgraceful, dishonorable, shameful, disreputable, ignominious, opprobrious, scandalous, infamous. Disgusting, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... without its walls. The bell ceased its monotonous and mournful note, and the tall, gaunt form of the divine moved through the narrow aisle to its usual post, with the air of one who had already more than half rejected the burthen of bodily encumbrance. A searching and stern glance was thrown around, as if he possessed an instinctive power to detect all delinquents; and then seating himself, the deep stillness, that always preceded the exercises, reigned ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... He was no longer the centre of Ruth's life. He was just an encumbrance, a nuisance who could not be got rid of and must remain a permanent handicap, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... the reckoning which their violation demands, you thought science must satisfy. Science doesn't satisfy. With ignorance and superstition, with life's cruelties and injustice, with human helplessness, you could quarrel well, but beyond the sending out of checks to serve as a soothing-syrup to your encumbrance of a conscience what did you ever do to give a lift to anything? Nothing! And the pity is there ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... consolidation scheme in a report to Secretary Smith.[645] Then, yet in advance of congressional authorization, began a systematic course of Indian negotiation, all having in view the relieving of Kansas from her aboriginal encumbrance. No means were too underhand, too far-fetched, too villainous to be resorted to. Every advantage was taken of the Indian's predicament, of his pitiful weakness, political and moral. The reputed treason of the southern tribes was made ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... paused for breath in the rear of a country store, he found a basket and a quantity of paper in which he carefully packed his loot. Over the top he spread some faded lettuce leaves and discarded carnations which communicated something of a blithe holiday air to his encumbrance. Elsewhere he found a bicycle under a shed, and while cycling over a snowy road in the dark, hampered by a basket containing pottery representative of the highest genius of the Orient, was not without its difficulties and dangers, The Hopper ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... required to take under his convoy the St Albans and the Turkey fleet, and to join the Dragon and the Winchester, with the Straits and American trade, at Torbay or Plymouth, and to proceed with them to sea as far as their way and ours lay together. This encumbrance of convoy gave us some uneasiness, fearing it might lengthen our passage to Madeira: However, having now the command to himself, Mr Anson resolved to tide down channel with the first moderate weather; and, that the junction ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... their greatness to the influence of a mother or a wife; he remembers how thoughts which had lain dumb in men's brains for more than half their lifetime suddenly woke up into speech and activity by the influence of a woman great enough to call them forth. The adoring seraph would be an encumbrance, and nothing better than a child upon his hands; and the soul which had to be awakened and directed by him would run great chance of remaining torpid and inactive all its days. He has his own life to lead and round off, and ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... too strongly upon the young, in these days of intense activity, the vital importance of ballast. A conscience seems to be an encumbrance—an obstacle to prosperity. But it is a safe thing to have on board. It steadies the soul. It keeps it from careening when the winds drive it into the trough of the sea. If the "Escambia" had taken less wheat and more ballast, it might be afloat today. And this is true of many a man ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... simply a Fellow of Lazarus in those former years. Then he became vicar of St. Ewold's, in East Barsetshire, and had not yet got himself settled there when he married the Widow Bold, a widow with belongings in land and funded money, and with but one small baby as an encumbrance. Nor had he even yet married her, had only engaged himself so to do, when they made him Dean of Barchester—all which may be read in the diocesan and county chronicles. And now that he was wealthy, the new dean did contrive to pay the debts of his poor friend, some ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... he left in the rack of the first compartment. I saw the omission, and was delighted to think that we had at last got rid of the encumbrance. Had I only remembered the tale of the Eastern Slippers I might have taken warning. The train went off; he took a sketch of the priest, and then hastily ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,—if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than AEtna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... bridge, the hollow rumble of wheels; the artillery was crossing on the half-submerged structure. Horses reared and plunged in terror at sight of the swift-running stream, the wheel of a caisson ran over the guard-rail; immediately a hundred strong arms seized the encumbrance and hurled the heavy vehicle to the bottom of the river that it might not obstruct the passage. And as the young man watched the slow, toilsome retreat along the opposite bank, a movement that had commenced the day before and certainly would not be ended by the coming dawn, he could not help ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... feel, will appear involved; but in reality it is quite simple. Man, when he has reached his fruition, and civilization is at its height, stands between two fires. Could he but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance of the mere animal life would fall away from him without difficulty. But he does not do this, and so the races of men flower and then droop and die and decay off the face of the earth, however splendid the bloom may have been. And it is left to the individual to make ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... her of extravagance has been already refuted. Her private palace was furnished from the State lumber rooms, and what was purchased, paid for out of her savings. As for her favourites, she never had but two, and these were no supernumerary expense or encumbrance ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... to a man from whom something valuable is about to be taken by violence, and who, that he may defend it without encumbrance, lays it on the ground, and stands over it with his weapon in his hand. Our birthdom, or birthright, says he, lies on the ground, let us, like men who are to fight for what is dearest to them, not abandon it, but stand ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... and exhausted? Under the inspiration of Ancient Greece, has the modern West now created a literature, art, architecture, science, mathematics, philosophy, and political thought which equal or surpass the Ancient patterns and turn them from an inspiration into an encumbrance? That seems to be the fundamental question behind the controversy about the study of Ancient Greek life in England to-day. Perhaps the answer may be found—if we may go back to our metaphor—in the uniqueness of the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... life enabled him to raise his head and look around him, he felt the failure of his plans an aggravation of his calamity, though he did not perceive that his impatience to rid himself of an encumbrance, and clear the way for his marriage, had been the real origin of the misfortune. Still he was glad that matters had gone no further, and that there was no involvement beyond what could be handsomely disposed of by a letter, resigning ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have already experienced the benefit of being near the saw-mill, as it not only enables us to build at a smaller expense, but enables us to exchange logs for sawn lumber. The great pine-trees which, under other circumstances, would be an encumbrance and drawback to clearing the land, prove a most profitable crop when cleared off in the form of saw-logs, which is easily done where they are near the water; the logs are sawn to a certain length, and dragged by oxen, during the winter, when the ground is hard, to the lake's ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Tots as they were, they pulled together and stood their ground in childish battles with doubled fists and uplifted voices, which usually prevailed against the other mother-tots. The quadroon nurse was looked upon as a huge encumbrance, only good to button up waists and panties and to brush and part hair; since it seemed to be a law of society that hair ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... fact that a blossom has a lip in the centre of the lower half of its corolla, that an insect must use as its landing place, comes the necessity for the pistil to occupy a central position. Naturally, a fifth stamen would be only in its way, an encumbrance to be banished in time. In the figwort, for example, we have seen the fifth stamen reduced, from long sterility, to a mere scale on the roof of the corolla tube; in other lipped flowers, the useless organ has disappeared; but in the beard-tongue, it goes through a series ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... much disillusionised as to the supposed advantages of the marriage bond as compared with the freedom of a handsome English girl of three-and-twenty, who is liked in her set and has the run of a score of big country houses without any chaperonial encumbrance. For the chaperon is going down to the shadowy kingdom of the extinct, and is already reckoned with dodos, stagecoaches, muzzle loaders, crinolines, Southey's poems, the Thirty-nine Articles, Benjamin Franklin's reputation, the British workman, and ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... of the gain or loss thereupon ensuing, we must by no means put certainly to loss everything which the language has dismissed, any more than everything to gain which it has acquired. It is no real wealth in a language to have needless and superfluous forms. They are often an embarrassment and an encumbrance to it rather than a help. The Finnish language has fourteen cases. Without pretending to know exactly what it is able to effect, I yet feel confident that it cannot effect more, nor indeed so much, with its fourteen as the Greek is able to do with its five. It therefore seems to me that ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... between 1,600 and 1,000 tons gross, and one-quarter of her steam trawlers and other fishing boats. These ships are to be delivered within two months to the Separation Committee, together with documents of title evidencing the transfer of the ships free from encumbrance. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... thought that I was a baby still—only an encumbrance, to be sent away from you when you had other troubles to ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... building was mortgaged; the residence property was mortgaged. The teams and wagons and the blacksmith shop seemed to be all that she could save from the wreckage, and these appeared to be more of an encumbrance than otherwise. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... reflecting on these things, it has always seemed a worthier honour to be the instrument of making you bestir yourselves in this high matter, than to enjoy all that office can bestow—office, of which the patronage would be an irksome encumbrance, the emoluments superfluous to one content with the rest of his industrious fellow-citizens that his own hands minister to his wants; and as for the power supposed to follow it—I have lived near half a century, and I have learned that power and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... began his independent life with his unpaid farm of 160 acres. Now he owns 3,000 acres of land paid for and without encumbrance, with the virtual ownership of a fine stream, at some points 500 feet wide, which for five miles runs through his extensive plantations. On this stream he has a brick yard, a saw mill, a grist mill and a cotton gin and compressing mill combined in one ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... accordingly, about to address the artificers on the perilous nature of their circumstances, and to propose that all hands should unstrip their upper clothing when the higher parts of the rock were laid under water; that the seamen should remove every unnecessary weight and encumbrance from the boats; that a specified number of men should go into each boat, and that the remainder should hang by the gunwales, while the boats were to be rowed gently towards the Smeaton, as the course to the Pharos, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... immense parcel of books with which he burdened himself. That part of the journeying public which loves to see some new thing puzzled itself mightily over the gentleman of full habit, who in addition to his not inconsiderable encumbrance of flesh and luggage, chose to carry about a shawl-strap loaded to utmost capacity with a composite mass of books, magazines, and newspapers. It was enormously heavy, and the way in which its component parts ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... along these you meet herds of buffalo and cows driven leisurely by boys or men. Some cows, of errant natures, have logs dangling by a rope from their necks amongst their feet; they can't go off very fast or far with the encumbrance. They stir up the dust as they go along, and it falls and lies on the children till their dark skins have a bloom like sloe-berries. There are all sorts of birds to look at—kites, crows, vultures, hawks, eagles; with these you can't ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... held him with one arm. He had grown to be a big cub of a baby, with a constitutional grievance, and he had to be continually amused. Thea took him philosophically, and tugged and pulled him about, getting as much fun as she could under her encumbrance. Her hair was blowing about her face, and her eyes were squinting so intently at the uneven board sidewalk in front of her that she did not see the doctor until ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... able-bodied, middle-aged man, without encumbrance, who can have an undeniable character from his last situation, as headsman, hangman, and general executioner. He is accustomed to the use of thumbikins and the most approved and fashionable modes of torture; and officiated for many years as superintendent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... hint that it would be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tiptoe) over the Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had tasted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... defending it. As all authorities afterwards admitted, this was a very great blunder, as fully 100,000 regulars and mobiles might have been spared to advantage for service in the provinces. Of course the National Guards themselves could not be sent away from the city, though they were often an encumbrance rather than a help, and could not possibly have carried on the work of defence had they been left to their ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... being of no further use to the divisions, but rather an encumbrance upon them, was massed, under Grierson, behind the centre, and assigned to the duty of guarding the rear, the depots, and the communications against the incursions of the Confederate cavalry, under Logan, known to be hovering between Port Hudson and Clinton, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... very carefully and closely, and I am sorry to say that they are in a very unsatisfactory condition. As I told you the other day, the estate has been encumbered and very seriously embarrassed for some time past, and the encumbrance has been increased of late, notwithstanding the admirable way in which you have managed the estate and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... take up little space in a portmanteau. The most cumbrous object is the pillow, for air-cushions, having a disagreeable odour, are not well suited for the purpose. But Russians are accustomed to this encumbrance. In former days—as at the present time in those parts of the country where there are neither railways nor macadamised roads—people travelled in carts or carriages without springs and in these instruments ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... faith. He had opened a free passage to the Spaniards through every part of his empire; and had furnished every facility for the execution of their plans. When these were accomplished, and he remained an encumbrance on their hands, notwithstanding their engagement, expressed or implied, to release him,—and Pizarro, as we have seen, by a formal act, acquitted his captive of any further obligation on the score of the ransom,—he was arraigned before a mock tribunal, and, under pretences equally ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... scissors, may appear strange to the inexpert. These must bear in mind the great density of the water of the sea, and the surprising results of transplantation to that medium. To understand a little what these are, and how a man's weight, so far from being an encumbrance, is the very ground of his agility, was the chief lesson of my submarine experience. The knowledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a world of tumbled stones {174} was visible, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... not wished during the progress of this book, which is the history of the experiences of others rather than of myself, to lay any stress on my personal history, and here I would only say that any one who is burdened with a physical disease or encumbrance that will remain to the end of life must know that there are certain moments when this hindrance leaps up at him like the grinning face of a devil—despairing hideous moments they are! I have said that during our drive I had felt a confident happy participation in the joy of those ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... a favourite arm for ships' tops, but from the confined space and elevation rather an encumbrance ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... days travellers did well to advance as far in a day as we now do in an hour. To make a country tour, required then the same precautions, as to supplies, as it now does to make the grand tour of Europe. To have carried coin would have been a great encumbrance, as well as risk from robbers. How accurately Bunyan knew the mode used in such cases to secure supplies, and with what beautiful simplicity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... could. When he found that he could not pull her out he too began to cry aloud. Elsli came to their aid, and lifted the little girl from her uncomfortable position. The boy then slowly worked his way out, but his wooden shoes were a great encumbrance, and he moved with difficulty. When the two children stood at last on dry land with their wet shoes and clothes soaked with muddy water, they presented a pitiable sight, and Elsli asked them sympathetically whether they were far from home, and ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... a useless encumbrance: no old sportsman or traveller cares to encumber himself with one; but a butcher's knife, carried in a sheath, is excellent, both from its efficient shape, the soft quality of The steel, its lightness, and the strong way in which the blade ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... which she let fall and showed herself to be girded with a noble sword. The king being surprised at this, said, "Damsel, wherefore art thou girt with that sword, for it beseemeth thee not?" "Sir," said she, "I will tell thee. This sword wherewith I am thus girt gives me great sorrow and encumbrance, for I may not be delivered from it till I find a knight faithful and pure and true, strong of body and of valiant deeds, without guile or treachery, who shall be able to draw it from its scabbard, which no man else can do. And I have but just now come from ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... Session, (proh pudor!) destroyed this curious monument, under a wanton pretext that it encumbered the street; while, on the one hand, they left an ugly mass called the Luckenbooths, and, on the other, an awkward, long, and low guard-house, which were fifty times more encumbrance than the venerable ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... have been pleasanter for you," replied Verheyst, smiling, "but we get nothing for nothing; and if the old lady has chosen you to be her instrument of revenge, why you cannot do less than accept the encumbrance." ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... Anson was himself extremely desirous to get rid of the Spaniards, having on his first arrival sent about one hundred of them to Macao, and those who remained, which were near four hundred more, were on many accounts a great encumbrance to him. However, to enhance the favour, he at first raised some difficulties; but, permitting himself to be prevailed on, he at last told the mandarins that to show his readiness to oblige the Viceroy he would release the prisoners whenever they ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... where she dreaded the consequences of her death far more than death itself. Her tender solicitude for Balthazar showed itself in the resolution she had this day taken. By freeing his property from encumbrance she secured his independence, and prevented all future disputes by separating his interests from those of her children. She hoped to see him happy until she closed her eyes on earth, and she studied to transmit the tenderness of her own heart to Marguerite, trusting that his daughter ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... waists, before they entered the door. After a short conference, in which he promised the travellers all the assistance they solicited, sultan Yarro mounted his horse; the young spear-women resumed their spears, laying aside the encumbrance of their aprons, and away they went, the most extraordinary cavalcade, which the travellers had ever witnessed. Their light form, the vivacity of their eyes, and the ease with which they appeared to fly over the ground, made these female pages appear something ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... had come when his rifle was an encumbrance; he needed both hands to keep from slipping. He had had the forethought to turn the muzzle downward, since Betty was above him. Now he craned his neck and sought to peer down along his body. Far away, somewhere, was a glint of sunlight, small ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Dan then. She would not wish to hold him by any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had snapped—broken irrevocably—then the child born of what had once been love would only be an encumbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie, shackling him to a duty from ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... remain. The enormous daily expense of the present war must give us some idea of the cost of maintaining a standing army of two or three hundred thousand men even in times of peace. This has done a great deal to retard the progress of Europe; and that we, as a nation, have heretofore been free from this encumbrance, is doubtless one of the reasons why we have made such rapid strides in so much that makes a nation great and happy. But standing armies imply war, and the international wars of Europe have done much to exhaust her resources and paralyze her prosperity. Guizot says—and we may see it in history ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it was time for Mr. Pickwick to issue forth on his delicate errand. Resisting Sam's tender of his greatcoat, in order that he might have no encumbrance in scaling the wall, he set ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... had not in the least desired to saddle himself with a domestic encumbrance, in fact nothing would have induced him to consider the step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances. His fortunes had reached a stage where money must be forthcoming somehow—from somewhere. He and his mother ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a Concomitant of a pompous Felicity, but a Mediocrity is safe; this was always my Study, not to make any Advantage to myself from the Disadvantages of other People. I embraced as much as I could, that which the Greeks call Freedom from the Encumbrance of Business. I intermeddled with no one's Affairs; but especially I kept myself clear from those that could not be meddled with without gaining the ill Will of a great many. If a Friend wants my Assistance, I so serve him, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... his tongue are under his control as if he were the walking gentleman in the comedy, who kisses the maid while he is waiting in the parlor for the mistress. He does not love Margaret Windsor; he loves her father's stocks and bonds, and he longs for riches, even with the encumbrance of a wife." ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... came her freedom, for she had no mother, So that, her father being at sea, she was Free as a married woman, or such other Female, as where she likes may freely pass, Without even the encumbrance of a brother, The freest she that ever gazed on glass: I speak of Christian lands in this comparison, Where wives, at least, are seldom kept ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... my life as a steward? No, if the work is to be in my hands, I ought to be in possession at once, so as to take my place in the county as I ought, and cut the City business. The place is a mere misfortune and encumbrance to her as she is, and she would be ten times happier ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his taste in jewelry and dress, who desires to be petted and fondled, to be caressed and flattered, but who is incapable of doing anything to contribute to his happiness at home or to his influence abroad, and he comes to feel that she is an encumbrance. If he clings to the old love, and cherishes the old conviction, he learns to treat his wife as a plaything, and to forget her as a helpmeet. He thinks of her as of a toy, which may be used or cast aside at pleasure. She knows and feels the lack ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... time to rid the bar of its encumbrance. The public-house bear had hunted up a hand-barrow, but had to get a couple more men to help carry. And they must have a proper contrivance with a cloth over, so that the whole thing would look like a hospital stretcher—a dead man with nothing but a tablecloth over him ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... feel himself at home. In a large library, with book-cases to the ceiling, and books lying in piles on the floor; with pictures, engravings and etchings leaning against the books and the walls, and every sort of literary encumbrance scattered in the way of heedless feet; in the midst of confusion confounded, Mr. Hazard was stretched on a sofa trying to read, but worn out by fatigue and excitement. Though his chaos had not settled into order, it was easy to read ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... as to the fate of poor Sel, which was mournful enough. Her trances grew gradually more frequent and erratic, till she became so thoroughly diseased in mind and body as to be entirely unfitted for household work, and, in short, nothing but an encumbrance. We kept her, however, for the sake of charity, and should have done so till her poor, tormented life wore itself out; but after the advent of a new servant, and my mother's death, she conceived the idea that she was a burden, cried over it a few weeks, and at last, one bitter ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of the astonishing scenery from the windows of the train, and you can see nothing of the huge expanses of moorland stretching away from the precipices on either side. So that we, who would learn something of this region, must make the journey on foot; for a bicycle would be an encumbrance when crossing the heather, and there are many places where a horse would be a source of danger. The sides of the valley are closely wooded for the first seven or eight miles north of Pickering, but the surrounding country gradually loses its cultivation, at first gorse and bracken, and then heather, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... only steamer that ever visits that Post. Not to connect with the Pelican would, therefore, mean imprisonment in the north for an entire year, or a return around the coast by dog train in winter. The former of these alternatives was out of the question; the latter would be impossible with an encumbrance of four men, for dog teams and drivers in the early winter are usually all away to the hunting grounds and hard to engage. I therefore concluded that but one course was open to me. Three of the men must be sent back and with a single companion I would push on to Ungava. This, then, was the line ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
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