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More "Incumbrance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both hands to keep it at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these ridiculous trains because they think they look more graceful in them. But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel the most profound contempt for a woman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... stays had long ago been cut, and the tresses, which were in the way of the cigars, were thrown back in dishevelled elegance. The landlord found his stuffing somewhat warm, and had laid aside half his fleshy incumbrance. Every one was at his ease, and a most uproarious chorus had just been sung by the whole strength of the company, when we heard the ominous sound of a quiet double rap ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... these days there is need of "little books on great subjects." It was something of that feeling which led me to the idea of supplementing the large and learned works of Muston, Monastier, Gilly, and others, by a pocket volume, so small that the tourist might not feel it an incumbrance, and yet so comprehensive, that those who have not the leisure for larger works, might obtain useful knowledge of ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... the Letter which you have writ me hath given me some incumbrance, and made me more then three times to ruminate upon the question you propounded to me concerning Marriage; for it is a matter of great importance, that ought to be well pondered and considered of, before one ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... succeed to the inheritance, presuming that the next heir would take the best care of an estate, to which he has a prospect of succeeding: and this they boast to be "summa providentia[i]." But in the mean time they forget, how much it is the guardian's interest to remove the incumbrance of his pupil's life from that estate, for which he is supposed to have so great a regard[k]. And this affords Fortescue[l], and sir Edward Coke[m], an ample opportunity for triumph; they affirming, that to commit the custody of an infant to him that is next in succession, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... as he heard the tone, and then he took off his spectacles as though he felt them an incumbrance. Phillis had a very good view of a pair of handsome eyes, with a lurking gleam of humor in them, which speedily died ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the length of her tail and the profundity of her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance, liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron, or a pitchfork. To you, I allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use them ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mails were all carried in coaches drawn by horses, there were some routes on which the weight of the newspaper mails was a serious incumbrance. But at present, so great has been the extension of steam power, that I question if there is a single route to which the number of newspapers sent would be a burden, unless, perhaps, it may be the route by the National Road, from Cumberland ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... said Lord Marney, "you don't know what it is to have to keep up an estate like this; and very lucky for you. It is not the easy life you dream of. There's buildings—I am ruined in buildings—our poor dear father thought he left me Marney without an incumbrance; why, there was not a barn on the whole estate that was weather-proof; not a farm-house that was not half in ruins. What I have spent in buildings! And draining! Though I make my own tiles, draining, my dear fellow, is a something of which you ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... about twenty of them were counted, and seemed to be coming on with much resolution, our people prepared for whatever might be the event. The sloop was put under easy sail, her decks cleared of every incumbrance, and each man was provided with a competent number of musket balls, pistol balls, and buck shot, which were to be used as the distance might require; for it was intended that not a man should escape ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... upholstered in velvet. But a throne is a seat of power too. The form of government is the shape of a tool—an instrument. But twenty thousand bladders inflated by the noblest sentiments and jostling against each other in the air are a miserable incumbrance of space, holding no power, possessing no will, having ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... where the means of transport is limited, travellers must content themselves with less. Thus Captain Speke, who started on his great journey amply equipped with log-books and calculation-books, such as I have described, found them too great an incumbrance, and was compelled to abandon them. The result was, that though he brought back a very large number of laborious observations, there was a want of method in them, which made a considerable part of his work of little or no use, while the rest required very careful treatment, in order ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... palings, along which he rushed, in the vain quest of some practicable point of egress, for the fence was higher in this part of the park than elsewhere, owing to the inequality of the ground. He had cast away his gun as useless. But even without that incumbrance, he dared not hazard the delay of climbing the palings. At this juncture a deep breathing was heard close behind him. He threw a glance over his shoulder. Within a few yards was a ferocious bloodhound, with whose savage nature Luke was well acquainted; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... cold, unfeeling world, at best! as experience of long years doth confirm. Thy little day hath not yet taught thee, that the world is born of sin, for thou only lookest on the human face as divine. How Natalie was to render assistance to her mother, by relieving her of any incumbrance, of which she, herself, might be the cause, had not yet been matured, until Delwood had spoken of the popular picture-gallery, of the unknown artist; when as we have said, her face was lit up with a new thought. "I ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... no means looked like insects, but rather resembled bits of the dry bark of the vine. The tree had a plentiful crop of grapes set, when this pest appeared upon it; but the fruit was manifestly injured by this foul incumbrance. It remained all the summer, still increasing, and loaded the woody and bearing branches to a vast degree. I often pulled off great quantities by handfuls; but it was so slimy and tenacious that it could by no ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and Paine's divisions as garrisons at Nashville, Bragg's force would have outnumbered Buell's command before he reached Louisville three to two. With the defeat of Buell, Nashville would have been worse than worthless, proving an incumbrance instead of a benefit. On the other hand, with Bragg driven out of Kentucky, and opening the struggle for that State in Tennessee, the possession of Nashville as a second base of supplies for our army was an absolute necessity. Bragg, however, was correct in refusing ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... your charge embraces only the wounded of the garrison. This dead man can only be an incumbrance to you, and it shall be my care that his ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I could regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless jellyfish, absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me out and bury me. But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and see great and beautiful human souls ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... are frequently gratified upon the spot. This, however, is comparatively nothing. If any of the women happen to be with child, which in this manner of life happens less frequently than if they were to cohabit only with one man, the poor infant is smothered the moment it is born, that it may be no incumbrance to the father, nor interrupt the mother in the pleasures of her diabolical prostitution. It sometimes indeed happens, that the passion which prompts a woman to enter into this society, is surmounted when she becomes a mother, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... a form of poetry recording the more dramatic actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high patriotic ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... was bright moonlight. I could see the lion distinctly. He was a huge, black-maned brute, and he held Luki by the shoulder. The poor lad kept screaming frightfully. The man-eater must have dragged me forty yards before he became aware of a double incumbrance to his progress. Then he halted and turned. By Jove! he made a devilish fierce object with his shaggy, massive head, his green-fire eyes, and his huge jaws holding Luki. I let go of Luki's foot and bethought ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... crushed the flesh, and crept up the narrow stairs, glad enough to get away and be alone. I had never loved Chevet, but he had taught me to fear him, for more than once had I experienced his brutality and physical power. To him I was but a chattel, an incumbrance. He had assumed charge of me because the law so ordained, but I had found nothing in his nature on which I could rely for sympathy. I was his sister's child, yet no more to him than some Indian waif. More, he was honest about it. To his mind he did well by me in thus finding me a husband. I ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... accounts of the growth and development of the West, and decided to be unusually economical in the future, so as to be able to pay up the note due to Mr. Crawford, that he might feel that he owned his Western property without incumbrance. ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... they were passing through a forest several shots were fired at them from the covert. No damage was done beyond one man wounded slightly, and Dick, under orders, led a short pursuit. He was glad that they found no one, as prisoners would have been an incumbrance, and it was not the custom in the United States to shoot men not in uniform who were defending the soil on which they lived. He had no doubt that those who had fired the shots were farmers, but it had been easy for them to make good their escape ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... keeps shop in the proper way, if, that is, she makes it to their interest to buy in her market. Indeed, colonies of all kinds seem to him quite useless. They ever are, he says, and ever were, "a drain to and an incumbrance on the Mother-country, requiring perpetual and expensive nursing in their infancy, and becoming headstrong and ungovernable in proportion as they grow up." All wise relations depend upon self-interest, and that needs no compulsion. If Gibraltar and ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the moment in as low a condition and as badly managed as it was possible for estates to be. It was not the fault of Mr. Longstaffe, who had all the business of the county in his hands, and who had tried in vain to save from incumbrance the property which Lord Markland had weighed down almost beyond redemption. Mr. Longstaffe, indeed, when he heard of the fatal accident to his client, had been unable to refrain from a quick burst of self-congratulation over a long minority, before he composed his countenance ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... from executing that maneuver. After being foiled in this manner two or three times his turtleship seemed disposed to abandon this mode of proceeding, and tried to paddle off with his forward flippers, as if to escape from the incumbrance. Church was now in his glory. By PULLING one hind flipper and PUSHING the other he could guide the reptile in whatever direction he pleased, and soon navigated him alongside the schooner, when a rope was hospitably ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... been a great poet, but he was an exquisite critic of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm, but he possessed a fine discrimination, and those less practical, more irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the apostle of good sense and moderation. For when men are young they are much occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute truth; as they grow older they generally become more practical; they accept, more or less, the idea of compromise, and make the best of things as ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... so often dog the footsteps of honest effort, while the success that comes from trickery and dishonor is greeted with the world's applause? How is it that the loving father of one family is taken by death, while the worthless incumbrance of another is spared? Why is there so much unnecessary pain, sorrowing and suffering in the world—why, indeed, should ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... is equal to a large and judicious plantation by a proprietor, as a provision for his younger children. The premium in this case will not need to run longer than twenty-five years, and he has not only beautified his estate and made it more valuable, but also transmitted it to his heir without incumbrance. ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... self-denial, and much pinching. We have kind friends, too. But Flora, I am too proud to be indebted to friends for the common necessaries of life; and without doing something to improve our scanty means, it might come to that. The narrow income which has barely supplied our wants this year, without the incumbrance of a family, will not do so next. There remains no alternative but ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... enemy crushed under his hunter, and evidently in the pangs of death. He had been flung on a heap of stones, and the weight of the falling horse had broken his spine. I poured some brandy down his throat, relieved him from the incumbrance of the hunter—attempted to give him hope—but he told me that it was useless; that he felt death coming on, and that I was the last man who should wish him to live, "as he had pledged himself to my extinction." For a while, his recollections were wild, and he talked of events in France ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... in him. In unfilial fashion Apollonius had concealed the danger from him in order to be able to take the whole credit for the rescue to himself. Or he looked upon his father as a helpless, blind old man who was not, and could not be anything but an incumbrance. This latter feeling the old gentleman could forgive him less than the former, even in face of his grief over his son's death, which he now deemed a certainty. The more he thought of it, the more convinced he became that things would never have come to such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... it discriminates men and things more clearly than does the horse. In going over difficult ground it studies its surface, and picks its way so as to secure a footing in an almost infallible manner. Even when loaded with a pack, it will consider the incumbrance and not so often try to pass where the burden will ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... been utterly spoiled. A hundred petty annoyances and griefs, which Mary barely remarked, and which brave Mrs. Buckley, in her strong determination of following her lord to the ends of the earth, and of being as much help and as little incumbrance to him as she could, had laughed at, were to her great misfortunes. Why, the very fact, as she told me, of sitting on the top of a swinging jolting dray was enough to keep her in a continual state of agony and terror, so that when she alit at night, and sat down, she could not help weeping ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... way. To draw money from my business is impossible. My business fluctuates like quicksilver, and it is enormously extended. If they should have two thousand a year, it would be a princely income; I should feel so now, if they had it clear of incumbrance." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... serious obstacle to the ready sale of location orders. It was not, however, unnecessary: many casual visitors and masters of merchantmen obtained grants, which they sold instantly and cleared a considerable sum. Land speculators were greatly disconcerted by the incumbrance: many were anxious to throw up land orders, and attempted to recover money for the goods given in exchange. A trial (1825), in which Mr. Underwood, of Sydney, was the plaintiff, is a curious example of this traffic. The defendant had given in payment for 21 cwt. of sugar, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon, also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that ceremony did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught. They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement. He gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages, and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them for slaves. Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect an armistice or compromise ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... me. He was the only one who seemed to care for me, or to have any sympathy for me. But he, like myself, was poor; and, being compelled to flee from our home, and to live in obscurity, where my husband could not find me out, the child was an incumbrance I had no means of supporting. I parted with her-yes, yes, I parted with her to Mother Bridges, who kept a stand at a corner ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance than assistance; by this I obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to my work, which would in time be ended, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... assaulted Julius Caesar upon the flank, and his tail not whisking as well as usual, because of the incumbrance, he missed the enemy at the first swish and moved uneasily forward for several feet. As it chanced, this movement left the other string of firecrackers fairly in the lap of Cocoanut. The boys ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... great deal too quick, as foreigners are with things which require quiet comprehension. For instance, I was annoyed at having a stupid woman put over me, as if I could not mind myself—a cook, or a nurse, or housekeeper, or something very useful in the Hockin family, but to me a mere incumbrance, and (as I thought in my wrath sometimes) a spy. What was I likely to do, or what was any one likely to do to me, in a thoroughly civilized country, that I could not even stay in private lodgings, where I had a great deal to think of, without this dull ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... on, "what will you do here? You have no longer a home when your father marries; unless you can consent to be subject to the woman who was once his housekeeper. You will have no place in the world; you will only be an incumbrance; your step-mother will wish you out of the way, and your father will learn to wish as his new wife does. Oh, Kate, come with me! Come to Glen Keith, and reign there; we will travel over the world; you ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... now set himself to steadily forgetting all the genius he had learned, feeling that it would be nothing but an incumbrance in his new career; and he succeeded so well that in the course of a few years he had become as dull ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in both Notre Dame and the Abbey Church of St. Ouen, is found that gorgeous functionary, commonly called "the Suisse," who seeks your gold or a portion thereof, in return for which he will favour you by opening an iron wicket into the choir, an incumbrance unnoticed elsewhere, except at ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... Creole and Spanish women are born and bred to this, and the hardiest American or English woman will scarcely venture out a second time without the severe escort of husband or brother. These relatives are, accordingly, in great demand. In the thrifty North, man is considered an incumbrance from breakfast to dinner,—and the sooner he is fed and got out of the way in the morning, the better the work of the household goes on. If the master of the house return at an unseasonable hour, he is held to an excuse, and must prove a headache, or other suitable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... portcullis. beaver dam; trocha^; barricade &c (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne^; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock^. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance^; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, drag chain, drag weight; stay, stop; preventive, prophylactic; load, burden, fardel^, onus, millstone round one's neck, impedimenta; dead weight; lumber, pack; nightmare, Ephialtes^, incubus, old man of the sea; remora. difficulty &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her in her second child-bed. The powers of the parish clapped their hands; political economy was glad; prudence chuckled; and a coarse-featured farmer (he meant no ill), who occasionally had given Roger work, heartlessly bade him be thankful that his cares were the fewer and his incumbrance was removed; "Ay, and Heaven take the babies also to itself," the Herodian added. But Acton's heart was broken! scarcely could he lift up his head; and his work, though sturdy as before, was more mechanical, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... unacquainted with the principles upon which this mode of teaching is founded, it must appear strange, that a child should be able to read before he knows the names of his letters; but it has been ascertained, that the names of the letters are an incumbrance in teaching a child ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Burgoyne to restrain the Indians, who were an incumbrance to his army, and whose conduct alienated great numbers of Loyalists ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... associative system, here in faultless operation, by which the fragments of a large piece of ground are paid for by degrees and cleared of all incumbrance in eight or nine years by the profit on the contributed moneys. This plan is assisted by the best men in the town, who participate in the associations, receive themselves a reasonable profit, and supply the credit and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... gold brocade, Go pray, in sober Norwich crape array'd. Thy pendant diamonds let thy Fanny take, Their trembling lustre shows how much you shake; Or bid her wear thy necklace row'd with pearl, You'll find your Fanny an obedient girl. 50 So, for the rest, with less incumbrance hung, You walk through life, unmingled with the young; And view the shade and substance as you pass With joint endeavour trifling at the glass, Or Folly dress'd, and rambling all her days, To meet her counterpart, and grow by praise: Yet ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... taking it along for a time had thrown it away before the end of our first day's pilgrimage, it being as much as we could do to drag ourselves along without being hampered with an empty cask that might after all be a useless incumbrance. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... engineers, an ice pilot, eight sailors, and two others, eighteen men in all, comprising Dr. Clawbonny, of this town, who will introduce himself to you when necessary. The Forward's crew must be composed of Englishmen without incumbrance; they should be all bachelors and sober—for no spirits, nor even beer, will be allowed on board—ready to undertake anything, and to bear with anything. You will give the preference to men of a sanguine constitution, as they ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... not quite so easily as ye seem to opine. I grant most of your folk left the Highlands expedited as it were, and free from the incumbrance of baggage; but it is unspeakable the quantity of useless sprechery which they have collected on their march. I saw one fellow of yours (craving your pardon once more) with ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... still lingering in him. A free air of graceful stoicism, of easy silent dignity sits well on him; in his heart, could we reach it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice, true human valour. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an incumbrance in the Present; perish disastrously out of the Future! From no section of the Future would we lose these noble courtesies, impalpable yet all-controlling; these dignified reticences, these kingly simplicities;—lose aught of what the fruitful Past ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... and clothing were kept on deck until nearly the hour when we were to be ordered below for the night. During this interval * * * the decks washed and cleared of all incumbrance, except the poor wretches who lay in the bunks, it was quite refreshing after the suffocating heat and foul vapors of the night to walk between decks. There was then some circulation of air through ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... comfortably for three hundred pounds a-year; but, as he has a son to educate, we will allow him five hundred; then there will be an accumulating fund of seven hundred a-year, principal and interest, to pay off the incumbrance; and, I think, we may modestly add three hundred, on the presumption of new-leasing and improving the vacant farms: so that, in a couple of years, I suppose there will be above a thousand a-year appropriated to liquidate a debt ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to his brother. He therefore resolved not to wait until their means were totally exhausted: the next day he disposed of all his clothes except one suit, and found himself richer than he had imagined. Having paid his landlord the trifle due for rent, without any other incumbrance than the packet of articles picked up in the trunk at sea, three pounds sterling in his pocket, and the ring of Madame de Fontanges on his little finger, Newton, with his father, set off on foot for ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... circumstances for the reform of abuses that had been the growth of many months long. But Regnier, the second in command, was made of "different stuff;" he was a harsh and stern disciplinarian, who rarely forgave a first, never a second offense, and who deeming the Salle de Police as an incumbrance to an army on service, which, besides, required a guard of picked men, that might be better employed elsewhere, usually gave the preference to the shorter sentence of "four spaces and a fusillade." Nor was he particular in the classification of those crimes he thus expiated: from the most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... with emphasis. I forgot my tears; for some way my heart had got so strangely light and glad, tears seemed an unnecessary incumbrance; and even the thought that had been awaked by the disturbing harmonies of Beethoven's majestic conceptions were folded peacefully away ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... much the worse for you and for my poor nag, on whose back you shall be in three minutes," rejoined the landlord. "I have spoken to you as I would to my own son, if I had such an incumbrance.—Here, you ragamuffin; saddle the gray, and lead ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this decision, but was hardly successful. He had thought that he could explain the reasons to the Minister, but found himself incapable of explaining them to himself. In regard to means of subsistence he was no better off now than when he began the world. He was, indeed, without incumbrance, but was also without any means of procuring an income. For the last twelve months he had been living on his little capital, and two years more of such life would bring him to the end of all that he had. There was, no doubt, one view of ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... What's Conscience?—he is safe from Law— The closest Union can divide, Take Husbands from their Spouses' side, But it turns out to better Use, Wives from their Husbands to seduce; And as their Journey lies up-Hill, Ev'ry Incumbrance were an Ill; And lest their Speed shou'd be withstood, He takes ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... anywhere; I know I am a scandal and incumbrance. There was a time when it was otherwise. But ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... warranty deed a piece of land over which there is a public or a private way, without conveying subject to such way; for if you do you may be called upon to make up the difference in value in the land with the incumbrance upon it and with it off, which is regarded as a just compensation for the injury ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... reinterred, after the cessation of the troubles: it is the same that is alluded to in the inscription, which also informs us that a monument was raised over it in 1642, but was removed in 1742, it being then considered as an incumbrance in the choir. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... irregular to say that the Reverend Matthew and Mrs. Cotton were the incumbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the incumbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... honor in the creature to whom these words were addressed, the appeal would not have been in vain. But his original stock of this attribute had been limited, and he had long since disposed of the little he once possessed. Such an attribute as honor or pity was viewed by him as a useless incumbrance, for he was a miserable, heartless wretch, seeking the gratification of his own depraved appetite, and careless ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... about walking," said Ormond, with a little laugh; "but I'll come with you if you don't mind an incumbrance." ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... so to the starving wretches who came from the high lands far north beyond the Niger. Scarcely a day broke without one or more of the lean, weak negroes being attacked, and as a sick slave is only an incumbrance, they were left to die while we were marched onward. Whose turn it might next be to be left behind to be devoured alive none knew, and in this agony of fear and suspense we pushed forward from day to day until we at last ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... pair. The stolen fortune, on which they had counted, had slipped through their fingers. The berths in the steamer for New York had been taken and paid for. James had married a woman with nothing besides herself to bestow on him, except an incumbrance in the ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... can mortgage or sell her real estate without the husband's signature and without regard to his curtesy. He can do the same with his separate property but subject to her dower. Both must join in an incumbrance ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... amount of the pressure of the uncondensed steam on the other side of the piston. An engine working on this principle has therefore been called a high-pressure engine. Such an engine is relieved from the incumbrance of all the condensing apparatus and of the large supply of cold water necessary for the reduction of steam to the liquid form; for instead of being so reduced, the steam is in this case simply allowed to escape into the atmosphere. The operation, therefore, of high-pressure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... guide the horse. Cavalry is never really efficient unless trained to rush into close contact with the enemy. To see the whites of their eyes is not sufficient; they must ride over the foe. In the rapid charge the carbine is not only useless, but a positive incumbrance. The saber is comparatively harmless; it serves to frighten the timid, but rarely ever deals a death-wound. Let two men encounter each other in the charge, one relying upon his pistol, the other upon his saber, and the former, though an ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... reason unknown, young Armadale has chosen to let it, and a tenant has come in already. He is a poor half-pay major in the army, named Milroy, a meek sort of man, by all accounts, with a turn for occupying himself in mechanical pursuits, and with a domestic incumbrance in the shape of a bedridden wife, who has not been seen by anybody. Well, and what of all this? you will ask, with that sparkling impatience which becomes you so well. My dear Lydia, don't sparkle! The man's family affairs ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a family of some note, whose heirs had outstripped their fortunes. It had been long deserted and uninhabited; and when Aram settled in those parts, the proprietor was too glad to get rid of the incumbrance of an empty house, at a nominal rent. The solitude of the place had been the main attraction to Aram; and as he possessed what would be considered a very extensive assortment of books, even for a library ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... has been hardly earned by your mental labour, and with difficulty obtained by me for you, only by great perseverance. We are therefore most anxious it should be the means of freeing you from all debt or incumbrance, in order that your mind may be once more at ease, and that you may revel with your muse at will, regardless of all hauntings save hers, and when she troubles you can pay her off in her own coin. The sum you stated some time since I think was L35 as sufficient to clear all ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... thinking how droll it was that a person whom we all considered a sort of incumbrance and superfluity at first should really turn out an object of prime importance to us ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... the talents and character of Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was superior to the author. When he threw aside his pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he became not only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous, natural, honest; hearty and determined, "the king of good fellows and wale of old men." There are as many smart repartees, profound remarks, and keen invectives to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to be thinking. Then he added, looking up keenly under his brows: "How about the—the incumbrance on the property? Of course, when I go I'll have to take that ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... report to his superiors any circumstances which may render it advisable that the credit should be contracted or withdrawn. So far are we from holding that the multiplication of branch banks is any evil or incumbrance, that we look upon it as an increased security not only to the banker but the dealer. The latter, in fact, is the principal gainer; because a competition among the banks has always the effect of heightening the rate of interest given upon deposits, and of lowering the rates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... what she meant for a severe rebuke. I happened to be walking with her and a gentleman whose wife had lately experienced, on some occasion, a narrow escape of her life; "and so Miss Bassett I had nearly become a gentleman free of incumbrance, and then I should have come ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... could see no way out for her. She could get work, I knew, for there was always work for a woman in our pioneer houses. The hired girl who went from place to place could find employment most of the time; but the baby would be an incumbrance. It would be a thing that the eye of censure could not ignore, like the scarlet "A" on the breast of the girl in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story. I could not foresee how the thing would work out, and lay awake pondering on it until after midnight, and I had hardly fallen asleep, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... up in an unsavoury scandal with a common soldier: annoying to have people going about with long faces, when she had planned a festive week. Really this Claire Gifford was becoming more and more of an incumbrance! Mrs Fanshawe paused with her hand on the coffee-pot, to ask ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that hypocritical tone!" said the man. "I did not leave you so destitute; and I took the child off your hands that no incumbrance might ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... he was insane. Therefore nobody thought of blaming Dr. Dolliver for what had happened; and, if the plain truth must be told, everybody who saw the wretch was too well content to be rid of him, to trouble themselves more than was quite necessary about the way in which the incumbrance ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exclusive of the joy we felt at the return of his Majesty's birth-day, and the celebrating it in this distant part of the globe, we with pleasure saw some large piles of wood burnt that had been along time collecting, and which were a great incumbrance to us. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... the house being to be paid by the ladies, every one that entered should have only this incumbrance—that she should pay for the whole year, though her mind should change ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... Belief. It was almost inevitable that speculative minds, starting from this point, should diverge into one or other of three courses; either following the line of the "subject" exclusively, and treating the "object" as a superfluous incumbrance, so as to reach, as Schulz and Maimon did, a pure Subjective Idealism, akin to utter Skepticism; or following the line of the "object," and giving it greater prominence than it had in the system of Kant, so as to lay the foundation, as Jacobi and Herbart did, of a system of Objective ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... in shoals: Mr. and Mrs. Quiverful and their three grown daughters. Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick and their three daughters. The burly chancellor and his wife and clerical son from Oxford. The meagre little doctor without incumbrance. Mr. Harding with Eleanor and Miss Bold. The dean leaning on a gaunt spinster, his only child now living with him, a lady very learned in stones, ferns, plants, and vermin, and who had written a book about petals. A wonderful ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... uppermost, near to the spot to which it is understood the tiger usually retires during noon-tide heat. If by chance the animal should tread on one of these smeared leaves his fate is certain. He commences by shaking his paw, with the view to remove the adhesive incumbrance, but finding no relief from that expedient, he rubs the nuisance against his jaw with the same intention, by which means his eyes, ears, &c. become covered with the same substance. This occasions such uneasiness as causes him to roll perhaps among many more smeared leaves, till at ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... hairy; and Pan has struck his hoof against it!—A camel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape or history-piece. This is not merely from its romantic and oriental character; for an elephant has not the same effect, and if introduced as a necessary appendage, is also an unwieldy incumbrance. A negro's head in a group is picturesque from contrast; so are the spots on a panther's hide. This was the principle that Paul Veronese went upon, who said the rule for composition was black upon white, and while ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... received me with great joy and satisfaction, as one risen from the dead. Finding that the wearing apparel which I had left under his care was not sold nor sent to England, I lost no time in resuming the English dress, and disrobing my chin of its venerable incumbrance. Karfa surveyed me in my British apparel with great delight; but regretted exceedingly that I had taken off my beard; the loss of which, he said, had converted me from a man into a boy. Dr. Laidley readily undertook to discharge all the pecuniary engagements I ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... now deemed it necessary to move farther into the wilderness. The poor woman, in her deplorable condition, did nothing but weep, and the Indians, deeming her an incumbrance, resolved to get rid of her. They placed her upon the ground with her child, divested her entirely of clothing, and for an hour sang and danced around their victim with wildest exultation. One then approached ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... was brought to agree to a compromise. "The purchaser that I have ready," says he, "will be much displeased, to be sure, at the incumbrance on the land, but I must see and manage him; here's a deed ready drawn up; we have nothing to do but to put in the consideration money and our names to it." "And how much am I going to sell?—the lands of O'Shaughlin's Town, and the lands of Gruneaghoolaghan, and the lands of Crookagnawaturgh," ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... but declared his resolution of not going away. He would be as little incumbrance as possible to Captain and Mrs Harville; but as to leaving his sister in such a state, he neither ought, nor would. So far it was decided; and Henrietta at first declared the same. She, however, was soon persuaded to think differently. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is to register deeds in that county, took the little piece of paper, and after scanning it, took down some great deed-books and mortgage-books, and turned the pages awhile, and then wrote "Francis Gray, owner, no incumbrance," on the same slip with the description, Jack had the ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... toward the pan ice, to be rid of the incumbrance of it, and lifted himself on his palms and toes. By this the distribution of his weight was not greatly disturbed. It was not concentrated upon one point. It was divided by four and laid upon ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... several very pretty jests without departing from his profession. He said, "If Joseph and the lady were alone, he would be more capable of making a conveyance to her, as his affairs were not fettered with any incumbrance; he'd warrant he soon suffered a recovery by a writ of entry, which was the proper way to create heirs in tail; that, for his own part, he would engage to make so firm a settlement in a coach, that there should be no danger of an ejectment," with an inundation ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... sombrero, low in the crown and wide in the brim. On his shoulder, and crossing his breast like a scarf, one of them carried a shirt, the colour of chamois leather; the body of this garment was rolled up and thrust into one of its sleeves: the other, though travelling without incumbrance, bore on his chest what seemed a large pack, but which proved, on closer inspection, to be the remains of a starched ruff, now stiffened with grease instead of starch, and so worn and frayed that it looked like a ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... gained something in point of probability, by diminishing the distance which the Niger has to flow in order to reach the Atlantic. But the length of its course, even when thus reduced, is still a considerable difficulty, and a great incumbrance on the hypothesis. The objection arising from the Niger's being conceived to penetrate the Kong Mountains, seems to be nearly of equal weight in both cases, on the supposition that this vast chain of mountains is of the extent generally imagined; which there appears ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... in the parents. Under the conventional (unnatural) management of the infant, these hereditary tendencies to weakness and disease and their corresponding signs in the iris become more and more pronounced, proceeding through the various stages of incumbrance from acute, infantile diseases through chronic catarrhal conditions ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... you wrong me when you imagine that I care for any one but you. I did disapprove of your following me here, for you know that I must depend upon my wits for a living, and I think I might do better without the incumbrance of a wife." ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... of Walkirk, I fear with some petulance, if he had known of the incumbrance attached to this candidate; and he replied that she had informed him that she was married, but he had no idea she intended to bring her husband with her. He was very sorry that this was necessary, but in his judgment the man ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... pleasant to live in perpetual vacancy, that he soon dismissed his attention as an useless incumbrance, and resigned himself to carelessness and dissipation, without any regard to the future or the past, or any other motive of action than the impulse of a sudden desire, or the attraction of immediate pleasure. The absent were immediately forgotten, and the hopes or fears of others had no ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of my regard and interest, I give and bequeath the sum of five thousand dollars; and to his mother, as a token of gratitude for her faithful nursing when I was dangerously sick with the smallpox, I give and bequeath, free of all incumbrance, the cottage in ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of the pony, with the life yet remaining (for they are constrictors,) instantly wrapped in a half dozen folds around it! Pete snorted aloud, and, springing forward, ran a hundred paces with all the fleetness of which he was capable. But being unable to shake off the terrible incumbrance, with his tongue hanging out in agony, he turned back and ran directly for the horse. When he came up to the steed, he pushed his head under his neck, manifesting the greatest distress, and stamping and ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... an old mulatto woman took care of him and nursed him as well as her scanty means would admit. The fever continued for seven days, when he became convalescent and able to walk out; but feeling that he was an incumbrance to those around him, he packed his clothes into a little bundle and started for Charleston on foot. He reached that city after four days' travelling over a heavy, sandy road, subsisting upon the charity of poor ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... languished, and each needed just a little more, money to save that which had been invested. He hadn't a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no marketable value above the incumbrance on it. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... letter from my confidential man in Gray's Inn, London, saying (in reply to some ninety-ninth demand of mine) that he thought he could get me some money; and inclosing a letter from a respectable firm in the city of London, connected with the mining interest, which offered to redeem the incumbrance in taking a long lease of certain property of ours, which was still pretty free, upon the Countess's signature; and provided they could be assured of her free will in giving it. They said they heard she lived in terror of her life from me, and meditated ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is not entity to be killed by a shot from a professional gun, but a condition, an effort of outraged nature to free itself from an incumbrance, and should be aided rather than hindered by the administration of any nerve irritant. There never will come a time when the laws of health can be evaded. Nor is there any vicarious atonement. The full penalty of disobedience will invariably be exacted. The ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... whose annual income little more than suffices to meet the annual expenses of a very moderate establishment, an unsought honour may be an incumbrance. It appears, at any rate, opposed to the spirit of such an honour, that it should be loaded with Court Expenses in its ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and again encountered on the stair—a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt —sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... cried Mr. Grewgious. 'Thank you, my dear! The honour is almost equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a most satisfactory conversation with my ward, and I will now release you from the incumbrance of my presence.' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... retaining their places—I mind my knitting, events progress, circumstances glide past; I see one which, if pushed ever so little awry, will render untenable the post I wish to have vacated—the deed is done—the stumbling-block removed—and no one saw me: I have not made an enemy, I am rid of an incumbrance." ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the great aim of Moodajee's political manoeuvres, while the Governor-General's wish to defeat it was avowedly more intent on the removal of a nominal disgrace than on the anxiety or resolution to be freed from an expensive, if an unavoidable incumbrance." ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... magistrate, Lord Milton, or Lord Fitzwilliam, for instance, if they were within reach, and I would tell him that I had left my wife and family chargeable to the parish, as I was unable to support them by my labour; but as I knew the leaving of my family as an incumbrance upon the parish was an offence against the laws, for which I was liable to be committed to prison, and as I did not wish to give the parish officers more trouble than was absolutely necessary, I had come to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... and since his return has effected everything English, and looks quite like the dude of the period. He, too, seems interested in your return; and I don't know but you might be mistress of Tracy Park, if you could fancy the incumbrance. Dick St. Claire is going to Vassar to see you and Nina graduate; and Harold, too, if he possibly can. He is very busy just now with something he must finish, and perhaps he cannot be there. Tom is going, and Fred Raymond, and Billy Peterkin—quite ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... to abandon his basket of food, which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with the indomitable spirit of avarice ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... your ponies; drive straight to Mapleton, and don't mention me. You will be admitted to mother. Father is there, and Frank; give them the least chance, and they will tell you about Sybil, and then you can manage the rest. Tell them to bring her back, even with that beastly incumbrance. They will listen to you; they won't to me. If you fail ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Diana had already done, and as the Princess was like at any moment to do, unless they took in every rag of sail, and did their best with their oars to gain the nearest port. But in order that the rowers might exert themselves to the utmost, it was necessary that the soldiers, who were a useless incumbrance on deck, should go below. Thus only could the ship be properly handled. The captain, anxious to save his ship and his life, consented. Most of the soldiers were sent beneath the hatches: a few were ordered to sit on the benches among the slaves. Now there had been a secret understanding ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... forward or deliver this and is on his return to England, can inform you of our different movements, but I am very uncertain as to my own return. He will probably be down in Notts, some time or other; but Fletcher, whom I send back as an incumbrance (English servants are sad travellers), will supply his place in the interim, and describe our travels, which ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... a little above the middle height, well limbed and muscular; with little incumbrance of flesh beyond that which gives shape and manliness to the outline of the figure; with a firm tread, an erect carriage, a countenance strongly patrician, both in feature, profile, and expression, and an appearance remarkable and distinguished. Few could approach him on any duty, or, ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... anywhere with you, papa; anywhere—even though you may feel me an incumbrance. I could endure the humiliation of feeling that, so long as I was allowed to remain ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... defrayed all the expenses of the burial, and settled upon the widow an income sufficient to enable her to live in comfort and respectability. With the full consent of the unloving mother, who was but too willing to be relieved of her incumbrance, the young Duchess of Hereward adopted little Marie Perdue; "perdue" no longer, but the cherished ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... stone shirt, killed Si-kor', (the crane,) and stole his wife, and seeing that she had a child, and thinking it would be an incumbrance to them on their travels, he ordered her to kill it. But the mother, loving the babe, hid it under her dress, and carried it away to its grandmother. And Stone Shirt carried his captured bride ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... in Spilsbury or Godbold. It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is productive of real benefit. To say that the Scottish peasant is less likely than the Englishman to become an incumbrance on his parish, is saying, in other words, that this country is less populous,—that there are fewer villages and towns,—that the agricultural classes, from the landed proprietor down to the cottager, are individually more knit and cemented together;—above ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... back, ma'am, sit down; it's a pity—you've no business, ma'am, as I said before, to have incumbrances, when you haven't got any visible means of support. Now, if you only had one, one incumbrance—and that you'd no business to have"—said the old gent, doggedly, tapping an antique tortoise-shell snuff box, and applying "the pungent grains of titillating dust," as Pope observes, to his proboscis, "if you had only one incumbrance—but you've ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... time, to alienate them from him. They do not appear to have been made angry by any part of his conduct, or to have disliked him personally. But they had, we suspect, taken the measure of his mind, and satisfied themselves that he was not a man for that troubled time, and that he would be a mere incumbrance to them. Living themselves for ambition, they despised his love of ease. Accustomed to deep stakes in the game of political hazard, they despised his piddling play. They looked on his cautious measures with the sort of scorn with which the gamblers at the ordinary, in Sir ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... This is how I used to draw it in my innocent childhood, but it is incorrect. More than one German on the bayonet at a time is an incumbrance. And it would be swank—a thing we ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in her estimation; a thing in the abstract, and a most charming thing on the whole. He, on the other hand, looked upon her not as a woman, but as a soul, and a purified soul at that: an angel, indeed, without the incumbrance of wings, was she, and with a rather more comprehensive knowledge of dress than is attributed to most of angels. But two people cannot go on forming an ideal of each other continuously without at some time reaching a ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... dreadful and repeated blows that had fallen upon him, blows that had robbed him of everything that made life worth living, and given him in return nothing but an infant who could not inherit, and who was therefore only an incumbrance. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... been set for profit, these trees received little care. Orchards were cropped in the regular rotation, or with hay, or pastured. Farmers then knew little of modern methods of orchard management. The orchard was regarded as an incumbrance to the land, which had to be farmed to as good advantage as possible under the circumstances, and if the apple trees by any chance yielded a crop, the owner regarded himself ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... Manhood, that may not be: From lechery fast you flee. For incumbrance it will bring thee, And all ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... all, she had cleverly played upon the feminine instinct for fine raiment, slyly mentioned a trunk that she had brought with her from the East, packed to the top with substantial finery which was not in the least needed by her—an incumbrance, rather—and which, she hinted, might become the property of another, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... pack slipping, Casey surmised, and had proceeded to divest himself of the incumbrance in the manner best known to mules. Having kicked himself out of it, he had undoubtedly discovered a leaking can—supposing the cans had escaped thus far—and had battered them with his heels until they were all leaking copiously. William had saved ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... property, and invites the young females of the village to assist in rendering homage to his medicine; all the inhabitants may join in the solemnity, which is performed in the open plain and by daylight, but the dance is reserved for the virgins or at least the unmarried females, who disdain the incumbrance or the ornament of dress. The feast is opened by devoting the goods of the master of the feast to his medicine, which is represented by a head of the animal itself, or by a medicine bag if the deity be an invisible being. The ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... last, *fragments And in the privy softely it cast. Who studieth* now but faire freshe May? *is thoughtful Adown by olde January she lay, That slepte, till the cough had him awaked: Anon he pray'd her strippe her all naked, He would of her, he said, have some pleasance; And said her clothes did him incumbrance. And she obey'd him, be her *lefe or loth.* *willing or unwilling* But, lest that precious* folk be with me wroth, *over-nice How that he wrought I dare not to you tell, Or whether she thought it paradise or hell; But there I let them worken in their wise Till evensong ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the corps were ordered to unsling knapsacks and divest themselves of every incumbrance preparatory to a charge. Colonel Upton commanding the Second brigade of the First division, was directed to take twelve picked regiments from the corps and lead them in a charge against the right center ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... here, and I have far too many engagements not to feel it. To end the matter at once, I intend to borrow L10,000, with which my son's marriage-contract allows me to charge my estate. At Whitsunday and Martinmas I will have enough to pay up the incumbrance of L3000 due to old Moss's daughter, and L5000 to Misses Ferguson, in whole or part. This will enable us to dispense in a great measure with bank assistance, and sleep in spite of thunder. I do not know whether ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its highest degree I call astonishment; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... necessity and expediency of restoring her, not only out of regard to his own character and that of his nation, but also with a view to his ease, which would in a little time be very much invaded by such an incumbrance, that in all probability would involve him in a thousand difficulties and disgusts. Besides, he assured him that he was already, by order of the lieutenant de police, surrounded with spies, who would watch all his motions, and immediately discover the retreat in which he had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... you, Sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignify of yours is a terrible incumbrance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sincere desire to bear worthily an honored name? Who shall say that the eccentricities of a certain celebrity of acknowledged talent, whose name would be quickly recognized, were not the result of the same cause, the length, and weight of the name given him at his birth proving too great an incumbrance for him to overcome. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... transporting goods overland,—live wholly on vegetable food. They are large, very robust, and strong; and bear prodigious burdens on their backs, travelling over mountains too steep for loaded mules to ascend, and with a speed which few of the generality of men can equal without incumbrance.' ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... but only to liberate slaves. Soon, also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that ceremony did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught. They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement. He gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages, and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them for slaves. Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect an armistice or compromise ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... no tent. Such an incumbrance would have been troublesome to them, travelling, as they were, afoot. Indeed, all three had their full loads to carry, as much as they could well manage, without the additional weight of a tent. Each had his ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... consent to his plan, he informed her that all opposition on her part was unavailing, as he had already selected another partner; and that, if she could not see his new wife as a friend, she must receive her as a necessary incumbrance, for he was resolved that she should be an inmate in his house. The poor Dark-Day heard these words in silent consternation. Watching her opportunity, she stole away from the cabin with her infants, and fled to her father, who lived at ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... built it, obtaining half this sum on mortgage, he hoped to pay it up by degrees; but it turned out that, from sickness and other causes, this proved impossible. When, five months before, he had died suddenly, the house, which was all he left, was subject to this incumbrance. Upon this, interest was payable semi-annually at the rate of six per cent. Forty-five dollars a year is not a large sum, but it seemed very large to Mrs. Carter, when added to their necessary expenses for food, clothing and fuel. How it was to be paid she did not exactly see. The same problem ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... systematical method, which it is well known the poet never designed; and the same instruments of torture were here used as in the "Essay on Man," to reconcile a system of fatalism to the doctrines of Revelation.[179] Warton had to remove the incumbrance of his Commentaries on Pope, while a most laborious confederacy zealously performed the same task to relieve Shakspeare. Thus Warburton pursued ONE SECRET PRINCIPLE in all his labours; thus he raised edifices which could not be securely inhabited, and were only impediments ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... restrain the Indians, who were an incumbrance to his army, and whose conduct alienated great numbers of Loyalists from the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... dazzled by his brilliant parts, charmed by his plausible manners, and regardless of his poverty and his incumbrance of many children, she insisted on marrying him. Her family was indignant, and cast her off; nor did she long find comfort in her husband. She was a Royalist, and remained so to the end of her days; he was a Jacobin. Moreover, she soon found that his tastes led him to drink ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... kept their station: and this task, Whereon thou lookst, began with such delight, That they surcease not ever, day nor night, Their circling. Of that fatal lapse the cause Was the curst pride of him, whom thou hast seen Pent with the world's incumbrance. Those, whom here Thou seest, were lowly to confess themselves Of his free bounty, who had made them apt For ministries so high: therefore their views Were by enlight'ning grace and their own merit Exalted; so that in their will confirm'd They stand, nor feel to fall. For do not doubt, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Though wounded to the heart, he may speak. Then what may be chance to say? What looks of reproach may he cast upon me? The musket may miss fire. If I wound him, the wound may be less mortal than I contemplated. Then what may I not have to fear? His dead body will be an incumbrance to me. It must be moved from the place where it lies. It must be buried. How is all this to be done by me? By one precipitate act, I have involved myself in a long train of loathsome ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the present regularity of our military establishment, this great evil is taken away; as the soldier requires no credit of the victualler, he is considered as no great incumbrance on his trade; and being treated without indignities, like any other member of the community, he inhabits his quarters without violence, insolence, or rapacity, and endeavours to recommend himself by officiousness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Walkirk, I fear with some petulance, if he had known of the incumbrance attached to this candidate; and he replied that she had informed him that she was married, but he had no idea she intended to bring her husband with her. He was very sorry that this was necessary, but in his judgment the man ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... rose another noble Lord, on the ministerial side, Grenville. This man ought to be as strong in the back as a mule, or the sire of a mule, or it would crack with the weight of places and offices. He rose, however, without feeling any incumbrance, full master of his weight; and thus said this noble ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances where, .. after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvious. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... low a condition and as badly managed as it was possible for estates to be. It was not the fault of Mr. Longstaffe, who had all the business of the county in his hands, and who had tried in vain to save from incumbrance the property which Lord Markland had weighed down almost beyond redemption. Mr. Longstaffe, indeed, when he heard of the fatal accident to his client, had been unable to refrain from a quick burst of self-congratulation over a long minority, before he composed his countenance to the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... to save that which had been invested. He hadn't a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no marketable value above the incumbrance on it. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... in, a gentleman well known in all fashionable circles, parliamentary, social, and racing, who was rather older than his company on this occasion, but still not so much so as to be found to be an incumbrance. Lord Glasslough too, and others joined them, and a good deal was said about the horse. "I never keep these things dark," said Tifto. "Of course he's ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... assured, keeps the soul in constant health; but idleness corrupts and rusts the mind; for a man of great abilities may by negligence and idleness become so mean and despicable as to be an incumbrance to society and a burthen to himself. When the Roman historians described an extraordinary man, it generally entered into his character, as an essential, that he was incredibili industria, diligentia singulari—of incredible industry, of singular diligence and application. And Cato, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... he said, with emphasis. I forgot my tears; for some way my heart had got so strangely light and glad, tears seemed an unnecessary incumbrance; and even the thought that had been awaked by the disturbing harmonies of Beethoven's majestic conceptions were folded peacefully away in ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... pages would last half a year. Of course where the means of transport is limited, travellers must content themselves with less. Thus Captain Speke, who started on his great journey amply equipped with log-books and calculation-books, such as I have described, found them too great an incumbrance, and was compelled to abandon them. The result was, that though he brought back a very large number of laborious observations, there was a want of method in them, which made a considerable part of his work of little or no use, while the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... to his infinite satisfaction. In addition to the consequences which our sanguine hopes led us to expect from this dawning of cordiality, it affords proof, that the beard is considered by this people more as an incumbrance than a ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... his pack slipping, Casey surmised, and had proceeded to divest himself of the incumbrance in the manner best known to mules. Having kicked himself out of it, he had undoubtedly discovered a leaking can—supposing the cans had escaped thus far—and had battered them with his heels until they were all leaking copiously. William ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... velvet. But a throne is a seat of power too. The form of government is the shape of a tool—an instrument. But twenty thousand bladders inflated by the noblest sentiments and jostling against each other in the air are a miserable incumbrance of space, holding no power, possessing no will, having ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... manoeuvres, while the Governor-General's wish to defeat it was avowedly more intent on the removal of a nominal disgrace than on the anxiety or resolution to be freed from an expensive, if an unavoidable incumbrance." ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... right to the final possession of the Bishop farm, it can hardly be doubted that he relied upon the provisions of his will to secure to them the immediate, complete possession of all his other lands, without the incumbrance of any claim of dower or otherwise of John's widow. But the pressure of public duties prevented his duly executing his will, and putting it into a new shape, in conformity with the circumstances of the case. The troubles that followed teach the necessity of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and when the firing commenced at the camp, they were fastened at top to his belt, but hanging loose below. Although an active runner, yet he found that the pursuers were gaining and must ultimately overtake him if he did not rid himself of this incumbrance. For this purpose he halted somewhat and stepping on the lower part of his leggins, broke the strings which tied them to his belt; but before he accomplished this, one of the savages approached and hurled a tomahawk at him. It merely grazed ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... footsteps of honest effort, while the success that comes from trickery and dishonor is greeted with the world's applause? How is it that the loving father of one family is taken by death, while the worthless incumbrance of another is spared? Why is there so much unnecessary pain, sorrowing and suffering in the world—why, ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... a valuable service rendered to me on one occasion, and as a mark of my regard and interest, I give and bequeath the sum of five thousand dollars; and to his mother, as a token of gratitude for her faithful nursing when I was dangerously sick with the smallpox, I give and bequeath, free of all incumbrance, the cottage in ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... fingers had crushed the flesh, and crept up the narrow stairs, glad enough to get away and be alone. I had never loved Chevet, but he had taught me to fear him, for more than once had I experienced his brutality and physical power. To him I was but a chattel, an incumbrance. He had assumed charge of me because the law so ordained, but I had found nothing in his nature on which I could rely for sympathy. I was his sister's child, yet no more to him than some Indian waif. ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Grace came next, and Sir George Templemore and the Captain brought up the rear. Grace wondered the young baronet did not offer her his arm, for she had been accustomed to receive this attention from the other sex, in a hundred situations in which it was rather an incumbrance than a service; while on the other hand, Sir George himself would have hesitated about offering such assistance, as an act ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... struck with one of them, tall as a giant, with huge shoulders almost too broad; but she had simply said, perhaps with a touch of mockery: "There is one who is tall, to say the least!" And the sentence implied beneath this was: "What an incumbrance he'll be to the woman he marries, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the agriculturists who are compelled to become purchasers of farm products themselves. Tariffs and indirect taxes can not improve the economic condition of the majority of the farmers: he who has little or nothing to sell, what, to him, does the tariff boot, be it never so high! The incumbrance of the small farmer and his final ruin are thereby promoted rather ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... was very wise to leave Auxerre," said Madame Vermut; "she was silly and wicked both. As if it were necessary to have recourse to drugs to annul a husband! Are not there other ways quite as sure, but innocent, to rid ourselves of that incumbrance? I would like to have a man dare to question my conduct! The worthy Monsieur Vermut doesn't hamper me in the least,—but he has never been ill yet. As for Madame de Montcornet, just see how she walks about ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... "The fathers of New England" had no reverence for the "nuptial tie" among their slaves, and, therefore, tore slave families asunder without the least compunction of conscience. "Negro children were considered an incumbrance in a family, and, when weaned, were given away like puppies," says the famous Dr. Belknap. But after the Act of 1705; "their banns were published like those of white persons;" and public sentiment began to undergo a change on the subject. The following Negro marriage was prepared by the Rev. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... however, 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 incumbrance. ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... percent.; that is for the whole kingdom at at least from two and one-half to three millions a year. On this Ricardo founded his proposal to base the bank notes on gold bars. In its time, the essay: Guineas an unnecessary and expensive Incumbrance on Commerce, or the Impolity of repealing the Bank-Restriction Bill considered (London, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... viands heaps the liberal board, To crown our triumphs, and reward our toils. Here must the instructive Muse (but with respect) Censure that numerous pack, that crowd of state, With which the vain profusion of the great Covers the lawn, and shakes the trembling copse. 180 Pompous incumbrance! A magnificence Useless, vexatious! For the wily fox, Safe in the increasing number of his foes, Kens well the great advantage: slinks behind And slily creeps through the same beaten track, And hunts them step by step; then views escaped With ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Drainage Companies, and of Government loans in aid of improvements by drainage in Great Britain. One of these acts provides for a charge on the land for such improvements, to be paid in full in fifty years. That is to say, the expense of the drainage is an incumbrance like a mortgage on the land, at a certain rate of interest, and the tenant or occupant of the land, each year pays the interest and enough more to discharge the debt in just fifty years. Thus, it is assumed by the Government, that ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... unspoilt romance; and, still more than this, he remains an example of one who made a great and triumphant resignation of all that he held most dear, for the sake of doing what he thought to be right. He was not an ascetic, giving up what is half an incumbrance and half a terror; nor was he naturally a melancholy and detached person; but he gave up work which he loved passionately, and a life which he lived in a full-blooded, generous way, that he might try to share his blessings with others, out of a supreme pity ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... but many brown oval husky shells, which by no means looked like insects, but rather resembled bits of the dry bark of the vine. The tree had a plentiful crop of grapes set, when this pest appeared upon it; but the fruit was manifestly injured by this foul incumbrance. It remained all the summer, still increasing, and loaded the woody and bearing branches to a vast degree. I often pulled off great quantities by handfuls; but it was so slimy and tenacious that it could ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave. For cowards the road of desertion to the enemy should be left open; they will carry over to them nothing but their fears. The poltroon, like the scabbard, is an incumbrance when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... horse. Cavalry is never really efficient unless trained to rush into close contact with the enemy. To see the whites of their eyes is not sufficient; they must ride over the foe. In the rapid charge the carbine is not only useless, but a positive incumbrance. The saber is comparatively harmless; it serves to frighten the timid, but rarely ever deals a death-wound. Let two men encounter each other in the charge, one relying upon his pistol, the other upon his saber, and the former, though an ordinary marksman, will almost invariably ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Canadian, American, Chinese and Negro Hydas; Hydas with fiery red hair, tow heads, blue eyes, and all complexions from black to pale white. Many of these homeless half-breeds are farmed out with relatives, by their mothers, when single, thus leaving them free to go and come without incumbrance. Barrenness, disease and early death are the fruits of such promiscuous intercourse, to such an extent that their utter extinction from these causes is inevitable, unless they are speedily removed. Their only hope of long surviving ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... of the house being to be paid by the ladies, every one that entered should have only this incumbrance—that she should pay for the whole year, though her mind should change as to ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... leisure to entertain a herd of fools: things who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness that time which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you; they are not capable; or, if they were, it should be to you as a mortification: for, sure, to please a fool is some degree ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... call themselves the laboring classes,—as if none but those whose hands were hardened by the use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also a fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the guideboards. He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that oftentimes very innocent-sounding ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... down his box and sprang at Tom. The latter also quickly rid himself of the incumbrance, and the two were soon wrestling at close quarters. Pat, by his impetuous onset, came near upsetting his adversary; but, by ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... husband's calculated virulence and legal—at least not illegal, a great distinction, in my opinion, though not so set down in the books—despotism. He espoused her for her wealth: that secured, he was desirous of ridding himself of the incumbrance to it. A common case!—and now, if you please, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... was obliged to own, for my settling down would not have saved me from quarrelling with Garcia, neither would it have cleared my uncle from the incumbrance upon his home. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Topsail—and so was Jimmie Grimm—and so was Donald North—and so was Bagg—so were they all amazed, every one, when they were told that fish had gone to three-eighty, and each found himself the possessor, in his own right, free of all incumbrance, of one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. But this amazement was hardly equal to that which overcame them when they sat down to dinner with Archie and Sir Archibald and Lady Armstrong in the evening. ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... Bourbon regiment, where he is nicknamed Reckless, and kills two men, and fights fifteen duels in six months. His other exploits are as a corporal of grenadiers, of course, a deserter, and a prisoner of the revolution. He then marries, but does not reform. Of course a wife is but a temporary incumbrance to a man of Vidocq's dexterity. In chapter iii, we find him at Brussels, where he joins a set of nefarious gamblers at the Cafes, and has a most romantic adventure with a woman named Rosine. But we can follow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... prentice, while her truly noble parents looked on with generous pleasure, and encouraged the mirth of the moment. Priests, ladies, gentlemen of the very first quality, romped with the girls of the house in high good-humour, and tripped it away without the incumbrance of petty pride, or the mean vanity of giving what they expressively call foggezzione, to those who were proud of their company and protection. A new-married wench, whose little fortune of a hundred crowns had been given her by the subscription of ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... priest, or is he not? If he is, why, if the secular cura is perpetual—so that, if he does not become unworthy, neither the ordinary nor the vice-patron can remove him—will not the regular also remain a cura, supposing the incumbrance of collation and canonical institution? Why does that institution give all favorable things to the secular and deprive the regular of all relief? It imposes upon the regular the duty of feeding the sheep. It binds him to the territory, so that the provincial cannot ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... citizens. Besides, he was in want of funds to pay them. He resolved, therefore, to strike boldly for Normandy.[222] Having persuaded the reiters to dispense with their heavy baggage-wagons,[223] which had proved so great an incumbrance on the previous march, he started from Orleans on the first of February with four thousand troopers, leaving his brother D'Andelot as well furnished as practicable to sustain the inevitable siege. The lightness of his army's equipment precluded the possibility of pursuit; its strength secured it ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its highest degree I call astonishment; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... seriously ill for some days, and has left me and still keeps me so weak and dispirited, that, if I shall not soon be able to get some repose, my poor head or body will not be able to resist. For the empty title, I trust you do not suppose it is any thing but an incumbrance, by larding my busy mornings with idle visits of interruption, and which, when I am able to go out, I shall be forced to return. Surely no man of seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the incumbrance to her ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... slackened. The strings of the stays had long ago been cut, and the tresses, which were in the way of the cigars, were thrown back in dishevelled elegance. The landlord found his stuffing somewhat warm, and had laid aside half his fleshy incumbrance. Every one was at his ease, and a most uproarious chorus had just been sung by the whole strength of the company, when we heard the ominous sound of a quiet double rap ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... over this, and Long finally gave in, although he expressed himself as certain that the boys would prove a great incumbrance. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... not unguardedly attracted my attention by what she meant for a severe rebuke. I happened to be walking with her and a gentleman whose wife had lately experienced, on some occasion, a narrow escape of her life; "and so Miss Bassett I had nearly become a gentleman free of incumbrance, and then I should have come and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... it. You are very kind; but we need no help, I do assure you. My mind is quite made up about the horse. It would only be an incumbrance now. And, to satisfy you, I will mention that I have declined repeated offers of accommodation—offers very strongly urged. All I need ask of you is, to help me to dispose of my ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... may not be: From lechery fast you flee. For incumbrance it will bring thee, And all that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... wrote, "that my capital in business amounts to five thousand pounds, I meant it to be understood that if I quitted business to-morrow, the whole of my property being sold, even disadvantageously, it would leave a balance in my favour, free from debt or any incumbrance, of the sum above specified. But you will observe that, continuing it as I shall do in business, I know it to be far more considerable and productive. I will hope that it has not been thought uncandid in me if I did not earlier specify the amount ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... lady her nineteenth year, they lost their uncle, who had been to them as a parent. The only sentiment in which they united, was a tender regard to this common friend; and deeply did they lament his death. The idea that they should now be freed from the irksome incumbrance of each other's company, however, afforded them some consolation. Under these impressions, you may judge of the dismay they both experienced, upon opening their uncle's will, to find that his fortune was left equally between them, provided they accomplished his wish, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... woman, a little coaxingly put on an appearance of wishing me to stay to supper; I did not, however, comply, but told them I proposed remaining longer with them on my return; leaving as a deposit my little packet, that had come by water, and would have been an incumbrance, had I taken it with me. I continued my journey the next morning, well satisfied that I had seen my father, and had taken courage ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... character, Colin M'Cleod, of the same name with the family under whose roof we now were. Dr Johnson was much pleased with the Laird of Macleod, who is indeed a most promising youth, and with a noble spirit struggles with difficulties, and endeavours to preserve his people. He has been left with an incumbrance of forty thousand pounds debt, and annuities to the amount of thirteen hundred pounds a year. Dr Johnson said, 'If he gets the better of all this, he'll be a hero; and I hope he will. I have not met with a young man who had more desire to learn, or who has learnt more. I have seen nobody that ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... weakest points. So, too, he contrived to make that first errand lead to another, and still another,—to make the solitary woman depend on his help, and expect his coming; fifty thousand dollars, with no more incumbrance than such a woman, was worth scheming for, and the prey ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a long story short, I could plainly perceive, young as I was, long before I had cut my eye teeth, that I was looked upon as an uncalled-for incumbrance by my relatives, senior and junior alike—Aunt Matilda never being dissuaded, by any fear of hurting my feelings, from continually speaking of my pauper condition, and throwing it, as it were, in my face, wondering in her ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Woman had found the Prophet Elisha grateful for all the Favours he had received at her House; where she had from time to time accommodated him in his Journies, and thought it an Honour rather than an Incumbrance. She had experienced the Power of his Prayers, in answer to which the Child had been given; and 'tis extremely probable, that she also recollected the Miracle which Elijah had wrought a few Years before, ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... especially after it had been for some time possessed, represented the necessity and expediency of restoring her, not only out of regard to his own character and that of his nation, but also with a view to his ease, which would in a little time be very much invaded by such an incumbrance, that in all probability would involve him in a thousand difficulties and disgusts. Besides, he assured him that he was already, by order of the lieutenant de police, surrounded with spies, who would watch all his motions, and immediately discover the retreat in which he had disposed his prize. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... bubble burst like the gas of the Pall-Mall lamp-lighter: Reason's dragon-teeth had been buried long enough, and a race of men succeeded. The worshipful John Bull acted the part of the cow, in Tom Thumb. Ridicule, that infallible emetic of sick minds, had eased your stomach of its baby incumbrance; Miss Mudie returned to her mamma, and Master Betty also retired to break Priscian's head, and hide his own in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... her? No, surely; I can't say she had any reason for it. But I had her indeed before me; now I have not God in my view: He is in heaven. Yet, let me see; my master (and I can't help thinking he must know) used to say that God is a spirit, and not confined by the incumbrance of a body, as we are; now, if it is so, why may He not virtually be present with me, though I don't perceive Him? Why may He not be at once in heaven and elsewhere? For if He consists not in parts, nothing can circumscribe Him: and, truly, I believe it must be ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... will be admitted to mother. Father is there, and Frank; give them the least chance, and they will tell you about Sybil, and then you can manage the rest. Tell them to bring her back, even with that beastly incumbrance. They will listen to you; they won't to me. If ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the President. The confiscation act had but little influence upon the result of the war, except that it gathered at the wake of our armies in the south a multitude of negroes called "contrabands," who willingly performed manual labor, but were often an incumbrance and had ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... his eyes as he heard the tone, and then he took off his spectacles as though he felt them an incumbrance. Phillis had a very good view of a pair of handsome eyes, with a lurking gleam of humor in them, which speedily died ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the discouragement of land speculation on a large scale a further provision is made by the enactment of a further tax upon all lands held by individuals or corporations of a value exceeding $25,000 clear of incumbrance. This is called the graduated land tax, and provides for a farther taxation on all such lands, beginning at one-eighth in addition to the original tax, and rising by advances of an additional eighth for each sum ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... say what you must." I was thinking more especially of rhymed verse. Rhythm alone is a tether, and not a very long one. But rhymes are iron fetters; it is dragging a chain and ball to march under their incumbrance; it is a clog-dance you are figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seul. Consider under what a disadvantage your thinking powers are laboring when you are handicapped by the inexorable demands of our scanty English ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... barricade &c (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne^; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock^. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance^; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, drag chain, drag weight; stay, stop; preventive, prophylactic; load, burden, fardel^, onus, millstone round one's neck, impedimenta; dead weight; lumber, pack; nightmare, Ephialtes^, incubus, old man of the sea; remora. difficulty &c 704; insuperable &c 471; obstacle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passing through a forest several shots were fired at them from the covert. No damage was done beyond one man wounded slightly, and Dick, under orders, led a short pursuit. He was glad that they found no one, as prisoners would have been an incumbrance, and it was not the custom in the United States to shoot men not in uniform who were defending the soil on which they lived. He had no doubt that those who had fired the shots were farmers, but it had been easy for them to make good their escape ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... without its advantages. It has enabled us to visit all the visible objects without the incumbrance of engagements, and given me leisure to note and to comment on things that might otherwise have been overlooked. For several months we have had nothing to do but to see sights, get familiarized with a situation that, at first, we found singularly novel, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... comfort in this addition to her family, Mrs Harrel proved to her nothing more than a trouble and an incumbrance; with no inherent resources, she was continually in search of occasional supplies; she fatigued Cecilia with wonder at the privacy of her life, and tormented her with proposals of parties and entertainments. She was eternally in amazement that with powers so large, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... studieth* now but faire freshe May? *is thoughtful Adown by olde January she lay, That slepte, till the cough had him awaked: Anon he pray'd her strippe her all naked, He would of her, he said, have some pleasance; And said her clothes did him incumbrance. And she obey'd him, be her *lefe or loth.* *willing or unwilling* But, lest that precious* folk be with me wroth, *over-nice How that he wrought I dare not to you tell, Or whether she thought it paradise ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... but they also found sympathy, and at the end of nine years, in which they sought no relief from the usual claims of social and religious obligations, every debt was discharged and their real estate freed from all incumbrance. The example was most commendable, illustrating the sterling virtue and high determination of the men in circumstances where weak minds would have faltered, and unconscientious persons ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... faltered, never tired. She proved herself to be no incumbrance. Day after day, the officer in command expected the expedition which would take her back to Manila; forces came up from the south, but none were ready to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... so carelessly, and trifled With this the noblest and the best oblation, A woman—but a poor divinity, I fear at best, my Florence!—may receive, The heart of a true gentleman. I mean No creature of dull circumstance, himself A mean incumbrance on his own great wealth. How oft before their lovers women try To seem what they are not—if true their hearts, As thine is, apes not more fantastic show— If mean and paltry, frankness is the flag 'Neath which they trim their pirate, little bark To ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... with his subjects, were under confinement in his dominions. Mr Anson was himself extremely desirous to get rid of the Spaniards, having, on his first arrival, sent about an hundred of them to Macao, and those who remained, near four hundred more, were, on many accounts, a great incumbrance 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 mandarines, that to show his readiness to oblige the viceroy, he would release the prisoners, whenever they, the Chinese, would send boats to fetch them off. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... presuming that the next heir would take the best care of an estate, to which he has a prospect of succeeding: and this they boast to be "summa providentia[i]." But in the mean time they forget, how much it is the guardian's interest to remove the incumbrance of his pupil's life from that estate, for which he is supposed to have so great a regard[k]. And this affords Fortescue[l], and sir Edward Coke[m], an ample opportunity for triumph; they affirming, that to commit the custody of an infant to him that is next in succession, is "quasi agnum committere ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... hind of the forest, and the linnet of the grove; let them consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are happy. Let us, therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live; throw away the incumbrance of precepts, which they, who utter them, with so much pride and pomp, do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim: That deviation from nature is ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... welcome, Madam!" rejoined Kneebone, spitefully. "But, I should think, after the specimen you've just given of your amiable disposition, no person would be likely to saddle himself with such an incumbrance." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... you when you meet again, are placed in my father's hands. We must have your assistance in removing our treasure. Our horses are all ready, and a few hours will put us in safety; but we must look to you for following us in your carriage, and conveying for me what would prove so great an incumbrance to our necessary speed. When Albert sees you again, he will be able to tell you where it is deposited. Follow us quick, and you will always have the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... engine, by the amount of the pressure of the uncondensed steam on the other side of the piston. An engine working on this principle has therefore been called a high-pressure engine. Such an engine is relieved from the incumbrance of all the condensing apparatus and of the large supply of cold water necessary for the reduction of steam to the liquid form; for instead of being so reduced, the steam is in this case simply allowed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... mortals approximate the understanding of Christian Science, they take hold of harmony, and material incumbrance disappears. Having one God, one Mind, one consciousness,—which includes only His own nature,—and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute Christian Science, which must demonstrate the nothingness of any other state ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... admiration, had diverted the gaoler's attention from demanding the key that opened their padlock, and it was still in their possession. On entering Versailles, and observing the crowd preparing to attack them, they divested themselves of their fetters, and of every other incumbrance. In a few moments their carriages were surrounded, their companions at one end were already murdered, and themselves slightly wounded; but the confusion increasing, they darted amidst the croud, and were in a moment undistinguishable. They were afterwards taken under the protection of an ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Is it possible that with Union or disunion before us we can hesitate as to taking on this incumbrance? In a hard-working land vagabonds must die off,—'tis a hard case, but the emergency for the white men of this and a coming age is much harder. After all, there are only some fifteen hundred or two thousand lazy free negroes in New York city,—the climate, we are told, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sufficient to establish this general conclusion, that in all cases in which a vowel serves neither to exhibit the vocal sound, nor to modify the articulations of the syllable to which it belongs, it may be reckoned nothing better than an useless incumbrance. There seems, therefore, much room for simplifying the present system of Gaelic Orthography, by the rejection of a ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... chained, and as the authorities were thus slow in relieving us of what we believed to be an unnecessary incumbrance, we set our wits to work to free ourselves. One of the party had managed to secrete a small knife while they were searching him, and with this made rude keys from the bones of the meat given us, and in a short time opened every ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... carry one's revolver, water-bottle, and haversack, which with glasses slung over all and separately, complete all one requires as a gunner. Swords were not carried during this war by officers, as in cases where the rifle was substituted, they only proved an incumbrance. A stick for the marching officer, like "Chinese Gordon" had, cannot ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... islanders. As about twenty of them were counted, and seemed to be coming on with much resolution, our people prepared for whatever might be the event. The sloop was put under easy sail, her decks cleared of every incumbrance, and each man was provided with a competent number of musket balls, pistol balls, and buck shot, which were to be used as the distance might require; for it was intended that not a man should escape if they ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the problem necessarily presented itself to Bentham in a form in which selfishness is the predominating force, and any recognition of independent benevolence rather an incumbrance than a help. If we take the 'self-preference principle' absolutely, the question becomes how a multitude of individuals, each separately pursuing his own happiness, can so arrange matters that their joint action may secure the happiness of all. Clearly a man, however ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Empire. To its resources and exigencies we now seem for the first time to awaken.[see Note 46] Hitherto we have been content to consider it as a magnificent incumbrance, that testified to our greatness but had nothing to do with our interests or the welfare of our population."—The Times, 20th ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... performance of bucking and jumping, the rider all the time clinging to the saddle with his knees. Sometimes the horse tries to lie down and roll in order to free himself from his incumbrance; he succeeds occasionally, but as a general thing he does not. Even should he manage to shake off his ride, the latter is on the creature's back again before he gets fairly on his feet, and then the kicking and jumping are renewed. The rider keeps at the horse ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... brought orders with him that set the town astir. Such a breaking up of all the comfortable and luxurious arrangements of messes and quarters had not been lately seen. For Elvas was the Capua of the brigade, which had to lighten itself of many an incumbrance, including much of what Shortridge termed its heavy baggage, in order to bring itself to a condition to march. There was many a woeful parting, too, and scandal says that the ladies of Elvas might have laid the dust with their tears. But we will leave ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... territory, building its roads, etc. "Is this federation," he asked, "proposed as a step towards nationality? If so, I am with you. Federation implies nationality. For colonial purposes only it would be a needless incumbrance." ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... four of us; and as I take it this brisk little musteno is fairly our property, there'll be no need for any of us riding double—to say nothing of one having a witch behind his back. Without such incumbrance, it'll be so much the better for the saving of time; which at this present moment presses, with not the hundredth part of a second to spare. So hijos mios, and you, hija mia querida, let us mount ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the appeal would not have been in vain. But his original stock of this attribute had been limited, and he had long since disposed of the little he once possessed. Such an attribute as honor or pity was viewed by him as a useless incumbrance, for he was a miserable, heartless wretch, seeking the gratification of his own depraved appetite, and ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Davenant; but I know that I, and my wife and John, have so made up our minds, and we are of a race not given to change. The land would but be an incumbrance and a trouble to us. John would far rather make his path in life, as he chooses it, than live upon the rents of ill-gotten lands. You will receive your own again, and ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... what a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both hands to keep it at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these ridiculous trains because they think they look more graceful in them. But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... no legal direction of their interests; strangers decide upon the propriety of the sale of the property—earned, perhaps, by her own and her husband's mutual efforts—and her interest in the estate is coolly designated as the "widow's incumbrance!" In the extremity of her bereavement there is piled upon her, not only the dread of separation from her children, but that of being sent homeless from the spot where every object has been ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... away, Caroline, because I was no longer of any use in the house after you had been removed, and I did not choose to be an incumbrance to your aunt. I preferred gaining my livelihood by my own exertions, as I am now doing, and to which resolution on my part, I am indebted for the pleasure of our ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... immediately report to his superiors any circumstances which may render it advisable that the credit should be contracted or withdrawn. So far are we from holding that the multiplication of branch banks is any evil or incumbrance, that we look upon it as an increased security not only to the banker but the dealer. The latter, in fact, is the principal gainer; because a competition among the banks has always the effect of heightening the rate of interest given upon deposits, and of lowering the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... triumphant record of the talents and character of Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was superior to the author. When he threw aside his pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he became not only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous, natural, honest; hearty and determined, "the king of good fellows and wale of old men." There are as many smart repartees, profound remarks, and keen invectives to be found in Boswell's "inventory ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlook upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... as the permanent system of a country, over a currency convertible into coin; while it is not at all difficult to see what would be its disadvantages, since land is far more variable in value than gold and silver; and besides, land, to most persons, being rather an incumbrance than a desirable possession, except to be converted into money, people would submit to a much greater depreciation before demanding land, than they will ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... his resolution of not going away. He would be as little incumbrance as possible to Captain and Mrs Harville; but as to leaving his sister in such a state, he neither ought, nor would. So far it was decided; and Henrietta at first declared the same. She, however, was soon persuaded to think differently. The usefulness of her staying! She who had not been able ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... America. She had glimmerings on the subject of her privilege to carry her own nationality into her own drawing-room. And then she was called upon to deal between an Italian Count with an elder brother, and an English Honourable, who had no such incumbrance. Which of the two was possessed of the higher rank? "I've found it all out, Aunt Mary," said Livy. "You must take the Count." For Livy wanted to give her sister every chance. "How have you found it ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... be thinking. Then he added, looking up keenly under his brows: "How about the—the incumbrance on the property? Of course, when I go I'll have to take ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... now been out of office for some time, but he was soon to have employment again. Tangier, which was acquired at the marriage of the King to Katharine of Braganza, had long been an incumbrance, and it was resolved at last to destroy the place. Colonel Legge (now Lord Dartmouth) was in August, 1683, constituted Captain-General of his Majesty's forces in Africa, and Governor of Tangier, and sent with a fleet of about twenty sail to demolish and blow up the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... cleet where they ought not to be, to their proper place. This occurred early in Jack's watch, according to Josh's story, and had not been reported, as the boat did not properly belong to the brig, and was an incumbrance rather than an advantage. The mate admired the negro's cunning, as Don Juan related this part of his story, which put him in a situation to throw all the blame on Jack's mendacity in the event of a discovery, while it had the effect to allow the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... something of the 'cheerfulness of pride' still lingering in him. A free air of graceful stoicism, of easy silent dignity sits well on him; in his heart, could we reach it, lie elements of generosity, self-sacrificing justice, true human valour. Why should he, with such appliances, stand an incumbrance in the Present; perish disastrously out of the Future! From no section of the Future would we lose these noble courtesies, impalpable yet all-controlling; these dignified reticences, these kingly simplicities;—lose aught of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... pretty steadily to school until about sixteen. At that time I had a misunderstanding with father. I got the idea that he looked upon me as an incumbrance, and declared I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... town; there, standing on his hind legs, his fore paws resting on the ledge of the window, and his chin laid between them, he amused himself with watching all that was going on. The children were also fond of this scene; and one day, finding Sai's presence an incumbrance, they united their efforts and pulled him down by the tail. He one day missed the governor, and wandered with a dejected look to various parts of the fortress in search of him; while absent on this errand the governor returned to his private rooms, and seated himself at a table to write; presently ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Betty Bruce, that attracted most attention, her appearance giving rise to some degree of amusement. Nor was this without reason. The woman was so ungainly in appearance, and walked with so awkward a stride, that the skirts which clung round her heels seemed a decided incumbrance to her progress. Her face, too, presented a roughness that gave hint of possibilities of a beard. She kept unobtrusively behind her mistress, her peculiar gait set the goodwives of the village whispering and laughing as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... are always glad to increase the amount they use. Of most kinds of consumers' goods a person wants at one time one unit and no more, and a second unit, if he has to use it himself within the same time in which he uses the first, would be an incumbrance. Its utility would be a negative quantity. Two quite similar coats would never be bought by the same person if he had only his own needs in view and must use both coats through the same period. The first unit of his supply is, for this period, also ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... clerk, whose office it is to register deeds in that county, took the little piece of paper, and after scanning it, took down some great deed-books and mortgage-books, and turned the pages awhile, and then wrote "Francis Gray, owner, no incumbrance," on the same slip with the description, Jack had the ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... might be worth investing in as a possible successor to his unrivalled namesake. There is surely money in it. Chang's present earnings are rather less than 7s. a month, without board and lodging; he is unmarried, and has no incumbrance; and he is slightly taller and much more massively built than a well-known American giant whom I once had permission to measure, who has been shown half over the world as the "tallest man on earth," his height being attested as "7ft. 11in. in his ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... furniture; whatever she likes that way. To draw money from my business is impossible. My business fluctuates like quicksilver, and it is enormously extended. If they should have two thousand a year, it would be a princely income; I should feel so now, if they had it clear of incumbrance." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... interior tribe, of whom they held the land, at defiance, these Fishmen put an interdict upon their trading with foreigners, except through their own agency. Eight or ten years ago, however, the inland natives sold the land to the Colonization Society, subject to the incumbrance of the Fishmen's occupancy, during good behavior; a condition which the colonists likewise pledged themselves to the Fishmen to observe, unless the conduct of the latter should ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... pressed as the enthusiastic painter by the "besoin d'aimer et de se faire aimer," she very composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand, the trifling achievement of getting rich—quite sure that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run that race without the incumbrance ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... months, and the game of the woods had got pretty well starved out. Mark did'nt take his rifle with him, thinkin' of course that he would see no game on the ice worth shootin', and a gun would only be an incumbrance to him. Well, he did his errand at the shanties, and started for home. I don't know whether he took a drop or not, but they generally keep a barrel of old rye in the lumber shanties, and my opinion is that Mark was invited to take a horn, in which case, I'm bold ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... when a few months perhaps will free my Grace from her incumbrance. Mother, you are giving me bad ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Report of the Committee be accepted, and they are instructed to take the Titles, after P.A. Jay shall have examined the Records, and be satisfied that the property is free of incumbrance. ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... kindnesses to him, by offering to bear her company on her journey, and during her stay in a town which was strange to her and thoroughly familiar to him. It was to no purpose that he protested how unfit was one invalid to be the nurse of another; and how great an incumbrance a man would be in a coach in the bad season, when for many days he was absolutely unable to leave his chamber without danger. Diderot, with his usual eagerness to guide a friend's course, wrote him a letter urging that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... himself to steadily forgetting all the genius he had learned, feeling that it would be nothing but an incumbrance in his new career; and he succeeded so well that in the course of a few years he had become ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stroke of work in their lives, and whom, with or without slavery, this Republic will have to support. Take some Pacific Island for a great Alms-House, and inaugurate an exodus of the genuine Southern pauper; he is only an incumbrance to the industrious and humble-minded blacks, from whose toil the country may draw the staples of free sugar and free cotton, raised upon the soil which is theirs by the holy prescription of blood and sorrow. "If it were not for your presence in the country," says the President to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... powers of the parish clapped their hands; political economy was glad; prudence chuckled; and a coarse-featured farmer (he meant no ill), who occasionally had given Roger work, heartlessly bade him be thankful that his cares were the fewer and his incumbrance was removed; "Ay, and Heaven take the babies also to itself," the Herodian added. But Acton's heart was broken! scarcely could he lift up his head; and his work, though sturdy as before, was more mechanical, less high-motived: and many a year of dreary widowhood he mourned a loss all ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... inseparable from regular armies. The regular forces will act as the back-bone of the expedition, but the rock and cover fighting will be done better by levies of such specially raised irregulars. For war with native countries, I think that, except for the defence of posts, artillery is a great incumbrance, far beyond its value. It is a continual source of anxiety. Its transport regulates the speed of the march, and it forms a target for the enemy, while its effects on the scattered enemy is almost nil. An advance of regular troops, as at present organised, is just ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... off by saying I would ride on to Pendle Hill, and, stationing myself on its summit, give them a signal when they should advance upon their prey. And now, good mistress, I pray you dismiss me. I want to cast off this shape, which I find an incumbrance, and resume my own. I will return when it is time for ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... great incumbrance, he made headway rapidly, but, fast as he ran, he heard that dreadful sound coming nearer, mingled with loud yells of triumph from the pursuing rebels He had, with surprise and indignation, listened to ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... class of scientists is climbing the ladder of synthesis, by assigning a reason for a higher law that may be predicated of a lower, we shall find the broader and more analytical mind accepting the higher mystery for the lower, and, by divesting its faith of all metaphysical incumbrance, landing in the belief of an all-encompassing law, which shall comprehend the entire assemblage of known laws and facts in the universe. And the natural drift of the human mind is ever towards this abstract conception—this one all-encompassing law of the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
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