"Beset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again God has used men utterly weak and foolish and despised in the light of life's common standards. He wants men of the best mental strength, of the finest mental training, and He uses such when they are willing to be used, and governed by the true God-standards of life. But talent seems specially beset with temptation. The very power to do great things seems often to bewilder the man possessing it. Wrong ambition gets the saddle and the reins and ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... to conceal the difficulties encountered by his short fat legs in the course of this descent. And I was glad enough that we had his absurd performances to distract our minds a little from the dismalness of our surroundings, and especially from the queasiness that again beset our stomachs as our noses were assailed more and more violently by that most evil smell. The priests, I observed, had cotton stuffed in their nostrils; but for us there was nothing for it but to hold our noses tightly ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... he had the co-operation of Major Skinner and of Captain Gallwey, and to these two gentlemen the public are indebted for the greater portion of the field-work and the trigonometrical operations. To judge of the difficulties which beset such an undertaking, it must be borne in mind that till very recently travelling in the interior of Ceylon was all but impracticable, in a country unopened even by bridle roads, across unbridged rivers, over mountains never trod by the foot of a European, and amidst precipices inaccessible ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... forever, from the results of that contact. Vague declamation about immorality and vaguer warnings against it have no effect and possess no meaning, while rhetorical exaggeration is unnecessary. A very simple and concise statement of the actual facts concerning the evils that beset life is quite sufficient and adequate, and quite essential. To ignore this need is only possible to those who take a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sow in tears.... He that goeth forth and weepeth. These are not the few who have been haunted by apparent failure, or beset with outwardly painful conditions of service. They are not those who have walked in the shadow of a lost leader, or toiled in the grey loneliness of a lost comrade or of a brother proved untrue. For apparent ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... October 1888. On the faith of these concessions and the charters a sum of L240,000 was subscribed, and the company received formal charge of their concessions. The path of the company was speedily beset with difficulties, which in the first instance arose out of the aggressions of the German East African Company. This company had also received a grant from the sultan in October 1888, and its appearance on the coast was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... resumed the doctor, "Franklin intended to make his way to the American shore; but tempests beset him, and September 12, 1846, the two ships were caught in the ice, a few miles from here, to the northwest of Cape Felix; they were carried to the north-northwest of Point Victory; there," said the doctor, pointing out to the sea. "Now," he added, "the ships were not abandoned ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... reformers were beset with an almost morbid anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext could be found; and ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... near its centre; and a road, or rather pathway, for those whom business or necessity obliged to pass in that direction. At length, deserted as this wild region had always been, it became still more gloomy. Strange rumours arose, that the path of unwary travellers had been beset on this "blasted heath," and that treachery and murder had intercepted the solitary stranger as he traversed its dreary extent. When several persons, who were known to have passed that way, mysteriously disappeared, the inquiries of their relatives led to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... princes, Where are the Shestunovs, where the Romanovs, Hope of our fatherland? Imprisoned, tortured, In exile. Do but wait, and a like fate Will soon be thine. Think of it! Here at home, Just as in Lithuania, we're beset By treacherous slaves—and tongues are ever ready For base betrayal, thieves bribed by the State. We hang upon the word of the first servant Whom we may please to punish. Then he bethought him To take from us our privilege ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... ladders were descended before her home was reached. The old woman was Spider Woman, the little grandmother who belonged to the Holy Ones. Her home was well kept, clean and comfortable, and the boys were glad to rest. Said she, "My grandchildren, your journey is long and many trials will beset you before you reach the end. Take these life feathers; they will help you; if difficulties befall you, use them," and she gave to each two feathers ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Joshua's mind was like an unpiloted vessel. He was beset with doubts, in which the only thing that kept its shape or place was the character of Christ. For the rest, everything had failed him. During this time he did not neglect what I suppose may be called the secular life. He attended all such science classes as he had time for, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... north and east was beset by the enemy, it is most probable that the country below Multan, to the mouth of the Indus, was the first asylum and rendezvous of the fugitive Suders. This is called the country of Zinganen. Here ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... eye and skin be yellow, he shrewdly remarks that you have the jaundice; he feels your pulse, writes two or three unintelligible lines of Latin, for which you pay him a guinea; he keeps a chariot, and one man-servant. The standard board behind, intended for a footman, is fearfully beset with spikes, to prevent little boys from riding at the doctor's expense. He ingeniously lets himself in and out of his vehicle, by means of a strap attached to the steps, so contrived, that when in, he can dexterously cause the steps to follow. His servant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... every reason to say so of the rest of his people," said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham with reports and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the torment and the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realize to yourself the hatred those people feel ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... harassed by nomadic tribes and beset by years of drouth, village dwelling Indians left their great cliff dwellings in the myriad canyons of the Mesa Verde, and thus ended a period of 1300 years of occupancy. The story of those 1300 years, unfolded through excavation and study of the dwellings along the cliffs ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... from all quarters beset him; they ate and drank at his cost, and often went away to criticise him and his fare, as if they had done Burns and his black bowl great honour in condescending to be entertained for a single evening ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... excitement. Talma, the great French tragedian, was that evening to close his engagement by appearing in his favourite character of Leonidas; and from an early hour in the morning, the doors of the theatre were beset with waiting crowds, extending to the very end of the large square in which it stood. It was evident that the building, spacious as it was, could not contain one-half of the eager expectants already ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... to our way." Louis Perron, such is life. The young press gaily onward, gathering the flowers, and following the gay butterflies that attract them in the form of pleasure and amusement; they forget the grave counsels of the thoughtful, till they find the path they have followed is beset with briers and thorns; and a thousand painful difficulties that were unseen, unexpected, overwhelm and bring them to a sad sense of their own folly; and perhaps the punishment of their errors does not fall upon themselves alone, but ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... beset him rose clearly before him; the scenes themselves stood up in their solid materialism—he could have touched the places; the people, the thoughts, the arguments that Satan had urged in behalf of sin, were reproduced with the vividness ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I'm dazed about my case for lo! * Troubles and griefs beset me sore; I know not whence they grow. I will be patient, so the folk, that I against a thing * Bitt'rer than very aloes' self,[FN400] endured have, may know. Less bitter than my patience is the taste of aloes-juice; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... almost unpardonable; for, being a town-lady, without any relation to the court, yet she thinks herself undone if she be not seen there three or four times a day with the princess Amalthea. And, for the king, she haunts and watches him so narrowly in a morning, that she prevents even the chemists, who beset his chamber, to turn their ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... government of Capodistrias was beset with such difficulties that it was decided to invite some European prince to set up a constitutional monarchy. The throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Coburg, the husband of the late Princess Charlotte of England. Leopold accepted, but when he learned that the Powers would not grant complete ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... at no loss to divine the cause of his disappearance. The holy father shook his head, and sighed deeply. He was accustomed to disappointments, but this day his path had to an unusual extent been beset with thorns. His faith was unshaken, and he humbly laid the fault on his own shoulders, promising further privations to his already sorely afflicted body. Meanwhile he descended the hill, directing his course to Lihou. Pausing ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... history. With this as the groundwork of his story Mr. Henty has interwoven the adventures of an English youth, Roger Hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship Swan, which had sailed from a Devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the Spaniards in the New World. He is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an Aztec princess. At last by a ruse he obtains the protection of the Spaniards, and after the fall of ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... distinctly remember how long I tossed about in this way, beset by all sorts of vagaries. Sometimes I fancied sleep had come, and that the whole matter was a ridiculous freak of fancy, including my visit to Moscow—that Russian tea was all a fiction, and vodka a mere nightmare; but with a nervous start I would ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of religion; I am as sensitive as any one; but I have never been ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... primitives of Taranto; who shall say for how many centuries they have hauled their nets upon the rock? When Plato visited the Schools of Taras, he saw the same brown-legged figures, in much the same garb, gathering their sea-harvest. When Hannibal, beset by the Romans, drew his ships across the peninsula and so escaped from the inner sea, fishermen of Tarentum went forth as ever, seeking their daily food. A thousand years passed, and the fury of the Saracens, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... sons and daughters, who were in another style, and whose vivacious kindness seemed disposed to take up Faith bodily and carry her off. It was a novel scene for Faith, and she was amused. Amused too with the overpowering curiosity which took the guise, or the veil, of so much kindness, and beset her, because—Mr. Linden had married her. Yet Faith did not see the hundredth part of their curiosity. Mr. Linden, whose eyes were more open, was proportionably amused, both with that and with Faith's simplicity, which half gratified and at least half ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... every side, Seiz'd and beset me round; I to the throne of grace apply'd, And speedy ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... such as never before assailed his ears; he thinks he hears walking in the next room; the floor creaks. Is his wife really dead; will she not suddenly rise up, run to the window, and scream for help? Beset by these terrors, he returns to the bedroom, seizes his dagger, and again strikes the poor countess. But his hand is so unsteady that the wounds are light. You have observed, doctor, that all these wounds take the same direction. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... was said that the route to Oregon was impracticable, and that it was beset with dangerous enemies, and that we could not send troops over to Oregon, nor provisions to feed them. Now, sir, we of Missouri can fit out ten thousand waggon-loads of provisions for Oregon, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... woods he felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were singing their purple beauties all unheard. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... kinds of delicate southern fruits, and tufted with flowers and aromatic plants. The nightingales throng this lovely little valley as numerously as they do the gardens of Aranjuez. Every bend of the river presents a new landscape, for it is beset by old Moorish mills of the most picturesque forms, each mill having an embattled tower,—a memento of the valiant tenure by which those gallant fellows, the Moors, held this earthly paradise, having to be ready at all times for war, and as it were to work with one hand ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... those faculties which enable us to appreciate truth, and to profit by those sources of innocent happiness which are open to us, and, at the same time, to avoid that which is bad, and coarse, and ugly, and keep clear of the multitude of pitfalls and dangers which beset those who break through the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Separated by half the world from the source of their supplies, in charge of a body of criminals of the most dangerous type, Arthur Phillip and his officers had no light task to perform, and every credit must be given to the little band of pilgrims who, beset by danger from within and without, brought the colony through its infancy without any tragedy happening. Apparently, these early adventurers were no whit behind travellers of the present day in bringing back wonderful tales of their discoveries ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... was unable to disobey thy command. And when darkness hath covered the world, the born beings were harassed by death, but having obtained thee for a protector, they attained the utmost security. Whenever we are beset by perils, thy reverence is always our refuge; for this reason it is that we solicit a boon from thee; as thou ever grantest the boon solicited ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... soonest. There I lay, wide awake, suffering under the awful nose-chorus which I have attempted to describe, for nearly an hour. It was a dark night: there was no wind, and very little air. Horrible doubts about the sufficiency of our ventilation began to beset me. Reminiscences of early reading on the subject of the Black Hole at Calcutta came back vividly to my memory. I thought of the twelve feet by eight, in which we were all huddled together—terror and indignation overpowered me—and I roared for a light, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... is slow to acknowledge what the spiritual fact implies. The truth is the centre of all religion. It commands sure entrance into 20:27 the realm of Love. St. Paul wrote, "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that 20:30 is set before us;" that is, let us put aside material self and sense, and seek the divine Principle and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... held us back, but it was not long until we were beset by further complications. We soon had reason to believe that the recent compliance of the German Government had not been made to us in good faith, and was only temporary, and by the end of 1916 it was plain that our neutral status ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... go so far as to lavish this power upon martyrs indeed; so that no sooner has any one, acting on a preconceived arrangement, put on soft bonds in the nominal custody now in vogue, than adulterers beset him, fornicators gain access to him; instantly prayers resound about him; instantly pools of tears of the polluted surround him; nor are there any who are more diligent in purchasing entrance to the prison than they who ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... necessary for me to reply to this remark. Francis entered the room, and quite charmed me by her manner. She was cordial to all the visitors—I thought I had never seen a better hostess. I saw how amiable she could be when quite at her ease, and not beset by fears of what envious tongues might say as soon as her ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... new sensation as his troubled glance fell before her searching eyes. His daughter had left him a joyous, heedless girl. He found her a woman, strong, self-reliant, purposeful. Yet he kept on, choosing the most straightforward means as the only honorable way of clearing a course so beset with unsuspected obstacles. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... long night the fugitives had respite, though foes beset them upon either hand, on the one side that great host, on the other side the sea. They had no way of escape nor any hope of their inheritance, but halted on the hills in shining armour with foreboding of ill. And all the band of kinsmen watched and waited for ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... continued the guest, apparently not attending to Giles's question in reply, "is still sorely beset with his enemies. Had a score of knaves such as Master Cliderhow been hanged long ago, his reign had been less burdensome both to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the attention of an audience, without affecting the orator. If he had been more ambitions and more enterprising, he might have risen higher as a popular preacher, but would have held a lower place in the affections of his people. The position of a pastor in an active and growing city is beset with difficulty on all sides. To retain place and influence in one congregation during a period of thirty-five years is an evidence of prudence, character and stability of purpose more to be desired than outside fame ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... terror and the tempest of these long hours,—for there's been a fearful storm, though you haven't felt it," said mother,—"in all that, Mr. Gabriel can't have slept. But at first it must have been that great dread appalled him, and he may have been beset with sorrow. He'd brought her to this. But at last, for he's no coward, he has looked death in the face and not flinched; and the danger, and the grandeur there is in despair, have lifted his spirit to great heights,—heights found now ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... there is often a different strain. Arnold is beset with doubt, and hears no "clear call," such as Tennyson voices in Crossing the Bar. Swinburne, seeing the pessimistic side of the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the apprentice of Hans Sachs the cobbler, the most popular man in Nuremberg, is bidden by his sweetheart Magdalena, Eva's servant, to instruct the young knight in the hundred and one rules which beset the singer's art. The list of technicalities which David rattles off fills Walther with dismay, and he makes up his mind to trust to his native inspiration. The Mastersingers now assemble, and Pogner announces ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... spoken more with reference to himself than to them. He sought to keep up his own courage by these words. Yet, in spite of his efforts, a profound depression came over him, and well nigh subdued him. No one knew better than he the many perils which beset the drifting boat in these dangerous waters—the perils of storm, the perils of fog, the perils of thick darkness, the perils of furious tides, the perils of sunken rocks, of shoals, and of iron-bound coasts. The boys had gone to sleep, but there ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... of the pin—like a head at a window when there is a fire on the street—would betray themselves as but a kind of cordage. Such hard-headedness, you will admit, is of a tougher substance than that which may beset any of us on an occasion at the price of meat, or on the recurrent obligations of the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... is needless to repeat what has already been said of other fallacies that beset inductive proof; such as the neglect of a possible plurality of causes where the effect has been vaguely conceived; the extension of empirical laws beyond adjacent cases; the chief errors to which the estimate ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... pitched into, who take the world headforemost, she wouldn't be so selfish. Mary, you girls and women don't know the world you live in; you ought to be pure and good: you are not as we are. You don't know what men, what women—no, they're not women!—what creatures, beset us in every foreign port, and boarding-houses that are gates of hell; and then, if a fellow comes back from all this and don't walk exactly straight, you just draw up the hems of your garments and stand close to the wall, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... down on the side of the sufficiently eloquent page. As the picture of a man's soul being pulled for rises before my mind, I can think of no better companion picture to that of Pliable than that of poor, hard-beset Brodie of Brodie, as he lets us see the pull for his soul in the honest pages of his inward diary. Under the head of 'Pliable' in my Bunyan note- book I find a crowd of references to Brodie; and if only to illustrate our author's marginal ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Great temptations beset an ignorant or an unprincipled mind-practice in opposition to the straight and narrow path of Christian Science. Promiscuous mental treatment, without the consent or knowledge of the individual treated, is an error of much magnitude. People unaware of the indications of mental treatment, ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... beset with scandalous nuisances, of which the following letter, from Arthur Murphy to Garrick, April 10, 1768, presents a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... had the least chance to think about it," he said, sitting up, "because I've always been so damnably beset by the facts of living. I know I am not the first of my race to feel convinced that his own problems are the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... together, and of the ups and downs in our lots since that first day I brought her in the boat from Rathmullan to Knockowen. Then she spoke of her father and the peril he was in, and of the feuds and dangers that beset our distracted country. From that we came to talk of my adventures, and of Tim. But I could not find it in my heart to tell her of the paper under the hearth at Kilgorman, or of the villainy by which her father came into the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... soul and the father and mother who give it a body is a real one; I don't profess to know what it is, or why it is that some parents have congenial children and some quite uncongenial ones—that is only one of the many mysteries which beset us. Holding all this, it does not seem to me on the face of it impossible that the soul of the child should have been brought into contact with Maud's soul; though of course the whole affair is quite capable ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... noted for its pearl fisheries and its supply of rubies, sapphires, and cats'-eyes as much as for its spices; and from the hour the traveller lands until the steamer carries him off he is beset with dealers offering precious stones, worth hundreds of dollars in London or New York, for a few rupees; but those who purchase no doubt find their fate in the story of the innocent who bought his gold cheap. The government keeps the pearl ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... unstained under this untainted sky which the same God made who fashioned me. I have known shame and grief and terror; I have lain cold and ill and sleepless; I have wandered roofless, hunted, threatened, mocked, beset by men and vice. Soldiers have used me roughly—you yourself saw, there at the Poundridge barracks! And only you among all men saw truly. Why should I not give to you my ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... notified the Stratford management that Miss Marlowe had received a threatening letter from a crank who might possibly appear and make an attempt on her life. When Ongley entered the hotel lobby innocently carrying the gun he was beset by four huge porters and borne to the ground. The police were summoned and he was hauled off to jail, where he spent twenty-four hours. The newspapers made great capital of the event, and it ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... and shouted. Under the fighting fog that beset each one in its own way, there came snatches of song, humming and whistling. There were those, too, who fought silently, as though deeply wrapped in thought, and there was bickering when a hasty comrade crowded too close for free operation ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... the middle of June or before. By sailing then, they run less risk, and will reach Nueva Espana one month or even two months earlier. Then, they can leave that country in January and come here [i.e., to the Filipinas] by April without any of the dangers which beset them among these islands if they sail late, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... again. But, somehow, the men seemed soon to exhaust the mystery and fascination of fatherhood just as they had exhausted the mystery and fascination of husbandhood. They became restless and irritable. It seemed to me that another danger beset us—vague, monstrous, looming—but I did not know what. You see they have the souls of discoverers and explorers and conquerors, these earth-men. They are creators. Their souls are filled with an eternal unrest. Always they must attempt ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... beset in his camp by the Equians, the Roman people were filled with such alarm lest their army should be destroyed, that they appointed a dictator, always their last stay in seasons of peril. Their choice fell on Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, who at the time was living on his small ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and awful, gave answering blow; the sea-king {38f} he slew, and his spouse redeemed, his good wife rescued, though robbed of her gold, mother of Ohtere and Onela. Then he followed his foes, who fled before him sore beset and stole their way, bereft of a ruler, ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... I seen a church so hemmed in by surrounding buildings. The little houses beset it as the pigmies beset Antaeus. After some difficulty I found my way in, and wandered for a while among its white immensities. It is practically a church within a church, the region of services being isolated in the midst, in the unlovely Dutch way, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... was bending over the panting runaway, rubbing his temples, and speaking sweet words of hope and comfort to him. In a short time he was in some measure recovered from the effects of his fearful struggle with the fate that beset him. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... controversy in every form, and to spend the remainder of my days in studies, which, if they last long enough, may produce a book or two that will not subject me to that sort of personal inquisition which I find has beset me hitherto. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... which he dates from Queens', and it is interesting to find that he wrote in a querulous fashion of the bad wine and beer he had to drink when his friend Ammonius failed to send him his usual cask of the best Greek wine. He also complained of being beset by thieves, and being shut up because of plague, but it need not be thought from this that Cambridge was much worse than ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... hush upon the ancient pile of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes of mystery upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into the smooth white snow and now seemed to come out of it, as the moon's path was more or less beset. Within, the Chemist's room was indistinct and murky, by the light of the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to the knocking and the voice outside; nothing was audible but, now and then, a low sound among the whitened ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... A greater peril beset the nation in the decay which slowly crept over our family life. The family has in every civilized age been justly regarded as the pillar of the state, but the integrity which it possessed among our fathers, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... truly a great unhappiness. These four robber knights did beset me. And when I was overcome they demanded great ransom which I had no means wherewith to satisfy. Then, when I heard the tale of how long these fellow prisoners had been here I was greatly discouraged as to carrying out my intent to prove to King Arthur ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... in fact, often resembles, in its vigor and directness, a masculine personality; while the second theme, in grace and tenderness, resembles the feminine. As long as music confined itself to the presentation of but one main theme it was hampered by the same limitations which beset the early Greek tragedians, in whose primitive plays[88] we find but one chief actor. The introduction of a second theme can not be attributed to any single man; indeed it resulted from a tendency of the times, the demand of which was for more homophonic melodies rather than for an ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... thanks unto the Lord. But there dwelt in that desert many divers beasts, and all kinds of serpents, and dragon-shaped monsters, and these met him, not now as apparitions but in sober sooth, so that his path was beset by fear and toil. But he overcame both, for love, as saith the scripture, cast out fear, and longing made toil light. Thus he wrestled with many sundry misfortunes and hardships until, after many ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... forth. Now she saw him, Odysseus of Ithaca, her love, alone, beset with foes, and a cry broke from her. She tore away the veil that hid her face, and her beauty flashed out upon the sight of men as the moon flashes from the evening mists. She pointed to the gate, she stretched out her arms towards the host of Pharaoh, bidding them look upon her and follow ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... my heart-strings sound, I groan with every breath; Horror and fear beset me round ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... become censorious. That starts him badly. Also he is likely to become serious. That marks him down fifteen points out of a possible thirty. He flocks by himself, thinking high thoughts about his purity of purpose, his vast wisdom, his acute realization of the dangers that formerly beset his path and now beset the path of all those who are not walking side by side and in close communion with him. He pins medals all over himself, pats himself on the chest, and is much better than ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... fixed species of animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements, where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties, and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification essentially artificial. Lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... and looked up at the great Cathedral which towered above the wall of the garden. She had been pacing to and fro for a long time. She did not feel tired, but she was beset by an unaccustomed sensation of weariness, mental and spiritual rather ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... so. Actually, the prisoner in a criminal trial is the only person supposed to have a knowledge of the facts who is not compelled to testify! And this amazing exemption is given him by way of immunity from the snares and pitfalls with which the paths of all witnesses are wantonly beset! To a visiting Lunarian it would seem strange indeed that in a Terrestrial court of justice it is not deemed desirable for an accused person to incriminate himself, and that it is deemed desirable for a subpoena to be more ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... upon Pillerault. The old merchant took them as a horse takes a down-pour; but he was alarmed by the gloomy silence Birotteau maintained when it was a question of the meeting. Those who comprehend the vanities and weaknesses which in all social spheres beset mankind, will know what a martyrdom it was for this poor man to enter as a bankrupt the commercial tribunal of justice where he once sat as judge; to meet affronts where so often he had been thanked for services rendered,—he, Birotteau, whose inflexible opinions about bankruptcy were ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... that beset the path of these two noble champions on their quest for the Fairy Quicken Tree. Here they met an enormous white stoat, but this was slain by the intrepid Bran, and they buried its bleeding corse and raised a cairn over it, with the name 'Stoat' graven on it in Ogam; there ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that the embassadors, being thus repulsed, and having found, too, that the war had broken out, and that Saguntum was actually beset and besieged by Hannibal's armies, would proceed immediately to Carthage to demand satisfaction there. He knew, also, that Hanno and his party would very probably espouse the cause of the Romans, and endeavor to arrest his designs. He accordingly sent his own embassadors to Carthage, to ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... have been her condition, when, among all the imaginary anxieties and calamities which so constantly beset her, she now saw looming ahead a serious cause for annoyance—something really likely to arouse doubts ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... held to this commendable programme, despite frequent urgings to depart from it. Yet observe what pitfalls beset the path of the popular fictionist. There came a breezy, shrewd-eyed young woman of beguiling tongue who announced herself ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... took refreshment and drank His Majesty's health, first in wine and then in a crystal draught from the spring. In returning we kept on the bank of the rivulet until it swelled into a small river. The ground then became thickly beset ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... pigeon-toed, beset by countless conflicting emotions. His ingenuity was taxed to its utmost by the demands of this complex situation. But for his returning suspicion that Muriel was leading up to something; that she was detaining him for some purpose not yet apparent, he would have told her of ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... cultivated of the hard-headed business men could not fail to regard with special pleasure the silent work that Duncan was doing for the salvation of at least a considerable group of young men who might otherwise have fallen victims to the evil conditions that beset them. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Hobbomak returned alone, breathless and terrified. He reported that they had hardly arrived at Namasket when Corbitant beset the wigwam into which they had entered with a band of armed men, and seized them both as prisoners. He declared that they both should die, saying that when Squantum was dead the English would have lost their tongue. Brandishing ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... great for navigation, a Portuguese fleet of thirteen ships set out from Lisbon to round the Cape of Good Hope. In trying to escape the long calms which had beset Bartolome Dias in the Gulf of Guinea, Pedro Cabral, commander of the fleet, struck out quite far from the Morocco coast and got into the Equatorial Current. The existence of this powerful westward current had never been suspected by either ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Nemours, but he knew no one except the abbe, who was always at the beck and call of his parishioners, and Madame de Portenduere, who went to bed at nine o'clock. So, much against his will, he too had taken to going to bed early, in spite of the thorns that beset his pillow. It was therefore a great piece of good fortune for him (as well as for the doctor) when he encountered a man who had known the same world and spoken the same language as himself; with whom he could exchange ideas, and who went to bed late. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... to 1875, as will appear, there was but one party (that led by Deak) which accepted the Compromise, and hence could be intrusted with office; and from 1875 to the present day there has been but one great party, the Liberal, broken at times into groups and beset by more or less influential conservative elements, but always sufficiently compact and powerful to be able to retain control of the government. Under these conditions it has worked out in practice that ministries have retired repeatedly by reason of decline of popularity, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... touching his arm, whose life was suspended, as it were, by memory of a tragic love. And he thought: 'If I had met you when I was young I—I might have made a fool of myself, perhaps.' And a longing to escape in generalities beset him. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Guerre, or Strategy, as it is called, is beset with extraordinary difficulties, and we may affirm that very few men have clear conceptions of the separate subjects, that is, conceptions carried up to their full logical conclusions. In real action most men are guided merely by the tact of judgment which hits the object more ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades, beset by hardship. This note is left ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... few public functions now. He was beset with invitations, but he declined most of them. He told the dog story one night to the Pleiades Club, assembled at the Brevoort; but that was only a step away, and we went in after the dining was ended and came away before ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... And now, beset with many ills, A toilsome life I follow; Compelled to carry from the hills These logs to the impatient mills Below there ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... tall pillars, were each a mile in length. The palace itself was tiled with gold (probably gilding), the walls covered with the same metal, and richly adorned with precious stones and mother-of-pearl: and the ceiling of one of the banqueting rooms represented the firmament beset with, stars, turning about incessantly night and day, and showering ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the American's teeth are gilded; he is shaved in a tonsorial parlor; he travels in a parlor-car; and Miss Maudie's parlor proves how far an ancient and respected word may wander from its origin. One example, of many, will illustrate the accidents which beset the life of words. No examples will prove the plain absurdity which has flattered the vanity of some American critics that their language has faithfully adhered to the tradition ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... foundation of the Geological Club (in 1824) was, if I remember rightly, the last occasion on which the late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even so small a public as the members of that body. Our veteran leader lighted up once more; and, referring to the difficulties which beset his early efforts to create a rational science of geology, spoke, with his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social ostracism which pursued him after the publication of the "Principles of Geology," ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... this period he had remained in a constant state of tranquillity and consolation, without any interior knowledge of the trials that beset the spiritual life. But during the time that the vision lasted, sometimes for days, or a little previous to that time, his soul was violently agitated by a thought that brought him no little uneasiness. There flashed upon his mind the idea of the difficulty that attended the kind ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... what was in his mind, he told Jimmie a little about his own life. He pictured a big household, with a father beset by business cares, and turning over the managing of his home to employees. "My mother was a fool," said Lacey. "I suppose it sounds bad for a man to say that, but I've known it all my life. Maybe the old man was too busy to look up a woman with sense—or ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... in her altered voice, "I am beset by enemies. But you will not forsake me? You will stand by me to the end—will you not, my friend? I can count ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... miserable. I—I'd rather be out alone on the downs in the storm without any home at all, or—or—" Here Kitty's voice faltered, and once more the tears brimmed up in her eyes—a most unusual occurrence with her; but the events of the day, the storm, and the difficulties that beset her, were proving ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and another fear beset him. If a serpent had crawled into the house, the creature might have hidden itself, and might not come out till sometime in the night. Comale guiltily slipped into the veranda again. The unprotected ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... only in emigration the solution of the evils with which they were beset, immediately called another convention to consider and decide upon the subject of emigration from the United States. According to the call, no one was to be admitted to the convention who would introduce ...
— The Early Negro Convention Movement - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9 • John W. Cromwell
... game of chess right forward, the player's own and his adversary's moves in attack or defence—to have calmly mapped out the proper course for the lad through the rocks, shoals, and quicksands which beset his path. As it happened, all his mental struggles proved to be in vain; for, as is frequently the case in life, the maze of difficulties shaped themselves into a broad, even path, along which the boy travelled till the exciting ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... obliged firmly to check a rising desire to write a hasty bread-pill prescription and fling him in the direction of Marlborough House. The half-hour chimed, and still Sir Henry explained the strange symptoms by which he was beset—the buzzings in the head, the twitchings in the extremities, the creepings, as of insects with iced legs, about the roots of the hair. His eyes shone with the ardour of the determined valetudinarian closeted with one paid to attend to ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... sat on the edge of his bed staring blankly at the rug, trying to find a pick-up to the emotions that beset him. One thing issued clearly: He had wanted to kiss the child. He still wanted to kiss her. Why hadn't he? Unanswerable. It was still unanswerable even when the pallor of dawn began slowly to absorb the artificial ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to veil my movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimes it swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no one knew. Among the farmers near the Bend there was ample ability to conduct researches beset by far more difficulties than was that of the origin of the Pikes; but a charge of buckshot which a good-natured Yankee received one evening, soon after putting questions to a venerable Pike, exerted a depressing influence upon the spirit of investigation. They were ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the Town Hall resounded with the ring of horse-hoofs, the crack of whips, the bawling of coachmen, the clank of carriage steps and clang of coach doors. A promiscuous mob of the plebs and profanum vulgus of Gylingden beset the door, to see the ladies—the slim and the young in white muslins and artificial flowers, and their stout guardian angels, of maturer years, in satins and velvets, and jewels—some real, and some, just as good, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hear all music loud and clear, Whose first notes they ventured here. Then fear not thou to wind the horn, Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn; Ask for the castle's King and Queen; Though rabble rout may rush between, Beat thee senseless to the ground, In the dark beset thee round; Persist to ask, and it will come; Seek not for rest in humbler home; So shalt thou see, what few have seen, The palace ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cross; Some beset with jewelled moss And boughs all bare; where others run, Bluebells bathe in mist and sun Past a clearing filled with clumps Of primrose round the nutwood stumps; All as gay as gay can be, And bordered with dog-mercury, The wizard flower, the wizard green, Like a Persian carpet ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... progress; and, in the second, we were short of cash. Next we contemplated a flying trip to Fuga, for which alternative Sultan Majid had provided us with introductions to the king, Kimueri, living there; and this, of course, being known to the people through the medium of Sheikh Said, they at once beset our doors to meet our proposals and make ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the perplexities that beset her, sweeping her thoughts hither and thither, as sea-weed is swept by the wash of the waves. She strove to collect her faculties. How should she rid the house of her cavaliers? She had regularly to refuse some half-dozen of them each day ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... was a little remorseful. This feeling, on the drive homeward, was swept away by sheer elation at the prospect of the trip before her. She had often dreamed of the great world beyond Coniston, and no one, not even Jethro, had guessed the longings to see it which had at times beset her. Often she had dropped her book to summon up a picture of what a great city was like, to reconstruct the Boston of her early childhood. She remembered the Mall, where she used to walk with her father, and the row of houses where the rich dwelt, which had seemed like palaces. Indeed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and so brave a warrior as you, King Olaf," he said. "But, for my own part, I do not believe this tale. I have known the Dane King in past times, and he is far too wary to attempt so bold an attack. Howbeit, if you misdoubt that war will beset your path, then will I be of your company with my ships. The time has been when the following of the vikings of Jomsburg has been deemed of ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... frequent flashes a point on which the waves were beating wildly; and beyond there was a promise of smooth water and safety. It was only a little way, scarcely an eighth of a mile; but the way was beset ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... and own that you are beaten. Nay, smooth that frowning brow: it makes you look like Robert Moncton. Your profession is a fortune in itself, if you persevere in acquiring it. Be not discouraged by difficulties that beset the path. A poor man's road to independence is always up-hill work. Duty fences the path on either side, and success waves her flag from the summit; but every step must be trod, often in ragged garments, and with bare feet, if ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... a fine art the business of keeping clear of the authorities. If he could escape from the Governor it would be to take up his old eventless life, with a recrudescence no doubt of the ills that had so long beset him; and he had utterly forgotten that he had ever been an invalid. He grinned as he reflected that he had been obliged to shoot a man to find a cure ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... done it [he said always after], had it not been for Comte de Saxe!' Undeniable it is, Saxe, as vanguard, took that Castle of Ellenbogen; and, time being so precious, gave the Tolpatchery dismissal on parole. Undeniable, too, the Tolpatchery, careless of parole, beset Caaden Village thereupon, 4,000 strong; cut off our foreposts, at Caaden Village; and—In short, we had to retire from those parts; and prove an Army of Redemption that could not redeem ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the breaking up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on those who had not previously been ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... aware that, besides skilful editing, sound and practical business management was necessary to render the new Review a success. The way in which he informs Mr. Scott about Gifford's proposed review of "Juvenal" and "Persius," shows that he fully comprehended the situation, and the dangers which would beset an editor like Gifford, who lived for the most part amongst his books, and was, to a large extent, secluded ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... then cast him off, robbed of his money, seared in his conscience, and in a miserable condition of soul and body. Many benevolent efforts have been made to protect and fortify some of those who are thus beset, and to reclaim such as are not utterly lost; and associations have been formed for the purpose of affording temporary relief and instruction to seamen, who might otherwise become outcasts, and perish in want and ignorance. I allude to such institutions as the 'Sailor's Home,' or 'Destitute Sailor's ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... know'st thou not that narrow path So thick beset with thorns and briars? It is the path of righteousness, And after ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... one of those quick movements which betray surprise, and it was very apparent, that, just at the moment, he was more affected by some interest of his friend, than by the apprehensions which usually beset him when any very direct allusion was made to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... At length the horse, beset on all sides, exhausted, wounded, dropped to the ground, unable longer to hold out. With a cry of savage triumph the wolves leapt upon him in a hideous, howling, struggling mass. Sigurd, scarcely gaining ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... has won so long as the authors are discussing the right way to form a constitution which may satisfy the wants and appease the prejudices then actually existing. In spite of such miscalculations as beset all forecasts of the future, they show admirable good sense and clear appreciation. But when they think it necessary to appeal to Montesquieu, to tag their arguments from common sense with little ornamental formulae learnt from philosophical writings, they show a very amiable ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... clock, however, every five minutes in an agony of suspense until Dan came in. Then she had to fight against the impulse to question him, which beset her as strongly as the impulse to follow him, and that was always upon her except when his presence arrested it. Never once through it all, however, did she think of death as a relief; it was life she looked to for help, more life and fuller. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of this fete, in the midst of which Madame Desvarennes suddenly appeared, was a happy diversion from the serious thoughts which beset her. She remembered that Serge and Micheline must be there. She came from under the shadow of the avenue into the full light. On recognizing her, all the workpeople, who were seated, rose. She was really mistress and lady of the place. And then she had fed these people ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... prepared, for Homaging and solemn Instalment of Karl Theodor Kur-Pfalz, as heir of Baiern; with immediate intent to execute the same. Euchar orders strict closure of the Town-gates; the Soldiery to draw out, and beset all streets,—especially that street where Imperial Majesty's Ambassador lives: 'Rank close with your backs to that House,' orders Euchar; 'and the instant anybody stirs to come out, sound your drums, and, at the same instant, let the rearmost ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... only made him wiser, but better. I do not mean to say that Harry was a remarkably good boy, that his character was perfect, or anything of the kind. He meant well, and tried to do well, and he did not struggle in vain against the trials and temptations that beset him. I dare say those with whom he associated did not consider him much better than themselves. It is true, he did not swear, did not frequent the haunts of vice and dissipation, did not spend his Sundays riding about the country; yet he had his faults, and captious people did ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... of particular regard, and became the admiration of all his comrades. Under the banners of this adventurous warrior did Tigranes toil with various fortunes during the space of many years; sometimes victorious in the fight, sometimes baffled; at one time crowned with conquest and glory, at another beset with dangers, covered with wounds, and hunted like a wild beast through rocks and forests; yet still the native courage of his temper sustained his spirits, and kept him firm in the profession which he had chosen. At length, in a decisive battle, in which the chieftain, under whom Tigranes ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... in those old, unquiet times, when every one did wrong according to his pleasure, or helped the right as his liking led him, traders on their way to the fairs were so wilfully beset and harassed by waylayers, both of noble and ignoble birth, the princes and other persons of power caused their people to be accompanied to Frankfort by an armed escort. Now, the burghers of the imperial city would yield no rights pertaining to themselves or their district: they went ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... body, if it were to be found, and here you are alive. When I heard the report of firearms and knowing that those devils had your weapon, I feared the worst. How on earth did you manage to escape them? Seeing you down and beset by the whole tribe, I gave you ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... black forest, murderers beset us. They bound our teacher to a tree, and God knows if he ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... the news to Ghent. I have ordered that fresh horses shall be brought you from the prince's stable. Councillor Moens will ride with you to act as spokesman; but before starting, take, I pray you, a goblet of wine and some bread. It were well that you took your men-at-arms with you, for you might be beset on the road by some of the people who did not succeed in entering the gates, or by some of the cowardly knights who stood by and saw the citizens being defeated without laying lance in rest to aid them. Fresh horses shall be prepared for your ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... for work is usually thrown into a state of nervous prostration by the difficulties that beset his task. By a perusal of the following hints he may learn to acquire an invulnerable calm, and if he follows the directions given he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... to the east. We waited for the conditions to improve, and the scientists took the opportunity to dredge for biological and geological specimens. During the night a moderate north- easterly gale sprang up, and a survey of the position on the 20th showed that the ship was firmly beset. The ice was packed heavily and firmly all round the 'Endurance' in every direction as far as the eye could reach from the masthead. There was nothing to be done till the conditions changed, and we waited through that day and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... earthquake in the Abruzzi, which wrought more ruin to more people than the Messina catastrophe, also the floods that had destroyed crops in the fertile river bottoms a few weeks before, one could understand popular opposition to more dangers and more taxes. These were some of the perplexities that beset the Government. No wonder that the diplomats were weighing their words cautiously at the Consulta, also weighing with extreme fineness the quid pro quo they would accept as "compensation" from Austria ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... The defection of the Tungani, who had formed a large proportion, if not the majority, of the Chinese garrisons, paralyzed the strength of the Celestials in Central Asia. Both in the districts dependent on Ili, and in those ruled from Kashgar and Yarkand, the Chinese were beset by many great and permanent difficulties. They were with united strength a minority, and now that they were divided among themselves almost a hopeless minority. The peoples they governed were fanatical, false, and fickle. The ruler of Khokand ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... brains with a hatchet if he should refuse. But he did refuse, and had the good fortune to save his head as well as his conscience. Mr. Williams's own account of his stay in Canada is chiefly devoted to anecdotes of the temptations to Romanism with which he was beset by the Jesuits. His son Samuel was almost persuaded to embrace the faith of Rome, and his daughter Eunice was, to his great chagrin, forced to say prayers in Latin. But, for the most, the Deerfield captives proved intractable, and were still aggressively Protestant when, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... his ingenuity in conflict with the professionally ingenious minions of the law, of being brave in the face of danger, of testing his fortitude in the time of trouble, of the loyalty of his comrades to himself as leader, or of his loyalty to his chief when the latter is beset by his enemies. But courage and loyalty and fortitude and ingenuity are no more degrading ideals than are material possessions and intellectual accomplishments. Only it happens that many boys find these particular ideals ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... she glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular sense of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his ken. Some one touched his arm, and a voice, many voices, beset him: ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a word.... You have been so beset with people all the afternoon that I never got a chance to put my oar in. Dear Reverend Mother, everything has gone off so well. No clergyman will ever preach again about Providence spreading a table ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... beset with disaffected Americans during the rebellion, that it was deemed necessary to check them by stationing this force in the heart of the district; and since then the military expenditure and the excellent situation of the place has ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle |
