"Bugbear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself forward on a staff of fifty ells' length, with a pace as swift as a bird's flight. Once when my father was out hunting he was charmed by an ogress who lived in a cave under a waterfall, and with her he begat this bugbear. The island is one-third of my father's realm, but his son finds it too small for him. My father had a ring the greatest gem, which each of us would have, sister and brother, but I got it, wherefore he has been my enemy ever since. Now ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... has been a great bugbear with the ill-informed, bit it is not nearly so deleterious as some careless or unscrupulous writers would have us believe. In the first place there is a very insignificant quantity of tannin in properly drawn teas, say in those drawn for not longer than five or eight minutes. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the Crown. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... me tell him once for all, through you, that I will come into and go out of this place as often as I like, so long as he keeps Nell here; and that if he wants to be quit of me, he must first be quit of her. What have I done to be made a bugbear of, and to be shunned and dreaded as if I brought the plague? He'll tell you that I have no natural affection; and that I care no more for Nell, for her own sake, than I do for him. Let him say so. I care for the whim, then, of coming to and fro and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to see and the energy to adopt the best feature of the American style; and the result has been a distinct advance in the raciness and readableness of some of our best-known journals. The "Americanisation of the British press" is no bugbear to stand in awe of, if only it be carried on with good sense and discrimination. We can most advantageously exchange lessons of sobriety and restraint for suggestions of candour, humour, and point; and America's share in the form of the ideal English reading journal of the future will possibly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... composition. We now know that white meats of all sorts are quite as rich in those elements known as the purin bodies, or uric-acid group, as red meats, and many of them much richer. It may be said in passing, that this last-mentioned bugbear of our diet-reformers is now believed to have nothing whatever to do with rheumatism, and probably very little with gout, and that the ravings of Haig and the Uric-Acid School generally are now thoroughly discredited. Certainly, whenever you see any remedy or any method of treatment vaunted ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the necessity for exertion; a bugbear to children and fools; only a mere stimulus to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... with the T'ai-p'ing rebellion that we associate likin, a tax which has for years past been the bugbear of the foreign merchant in China. The term means "thousandth-part money," that is, the thousandth part of a tael or Chinese ounce of silver, say one cash; and it was originally applied to a tax of one cash per tael on all sales, said to have been voluntarily imposed on themselves ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it, after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"—the ghost of the opinion of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings—returning to the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have guessed ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... forth, looking forward with delight to a continuous picnic a month long. Soon every vestige of human habitation disappeared, and we were alone in the midst of one of the loneliest lands in the world. Sahara itself, that bugbear of childhood, could not be much more desert than this. Fort Laramie, distant nearly one hundred miles, two long days' journey toward the north, was our first point of destination. Over ridge after ridge of the vast rolling plains, clothed with thin brown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... detrimental to the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married life. This was the next point touched ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... and startling contrasts, both of hues and material. Her hands are always cold and seldom clean; and she has sundry uncomfortable notions about damping the spirits of youth and checking the exuberance of its gaiety which render her a perfect terror and bugbear to the rising generation. When I was a little thing, laughing, prattling, and giggling, as children will, an admonishing look from my aunt, with a gaunt finger held aloft, and a cold "Kate, don't be silly, my dear," was always sufficient to make me dull and gloomy ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... receive prizes. Dr. London, of Hamilton, the medical attendant and much-valued friend of the Livingstones, furnishes us with a reminiscence of this occasion. He had great difficulty in persuading Livingstone to go. The awful bugbear was that he would be asked to make a speech. Being assured that it would be thought strange if, in a gathering of the children's parents, he were absent, he agreed to go. And of course he had to speak. What he said was pointed and practical, and in winding up, he said he had just two things ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... young Mrs. Harcourt laid an undue stress on what may be termed the minor morals, the small proprieties, and lesser virtues that lie on the surface of things and give life its polish, Audrey was for ever riding full-tilt against prejudices or raising a crusade against what she chose to term 'the bugbear of feminine existence—conventionality.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... has for many years been the most terrible bugbear, and to prevent its introduction into the seaports of Europe and the United States has been the chief end and aim of the absurd and ridiculous quarantine regulations to which I have referred. It has never been regarded as contagious by well-informed men in countries ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... remarkable shyness, too, made him hesitate constantly in the utterance of a word which might explain away any difficulty in which he chanced to find himself; and this helped to keep his tongue tied in the matter where Larry Hogan had continued to make himself a bugbear. He had a horror, too, of being thought capable of doing a dishonourable thing, and the shame he felt at having peeped into a letter was so stinging, that the idea of asking any one's advice in the dilemma in which he was placed made him recoil from the thought of such aid. Now, Father ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Adelaide. "I have been hearing of him as a sort of bugbear all my life. I don't think I ever saw him but once, and then he gave me a kiss and a pair of earrings. He never paid any attention to us at all, but we were taught to think that Providence had been very good to us in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... from Wallace, with all their imperfections on their heads, and has added more and greater ones to them out of his own store. In order to produce something of a startling and dramatic effect, he has strained a point or two. In order to quell and frighten away the bugbear of Modern Philosophy, he was obliged to make a sort of monster of the principle of population, which was brought into the field against it, and which was to swallow it up quick. No half-measures, no middle course of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... too, there was the influence of the much paraded bugbear of social equality forced upon the whites. To use the inns, hotels, and parks, established by authority of the government and the places of amusement authorized as the necessary stimulus to progress, to buy a railroad ticket at the same window, ride ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... meantime, Mrs. Doran was dead. After giving birth to a daughter, she fell into miserable health; her husband took her abroad, and she died in Germany. Thereafter Sowerby Bridge saw no more of its bugbear; Doran abandoned commerce and became a Bohemian in earnest—save that his dinner was always assured. He wandered over Europe; he lived with Bohemian society in every capital; he kept adding to his collection of pictures (stored in a house at Woolwich, which ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... rock. The water we pumped out was fresh, not salt. There, my dear Jollivet, pray don't raise a bugbear that might scare the men and make them nervous. They are bad enough with what they fancy about goblins and evil spirits haunting the mine. Even Hardock can't quite divest himself of the idea that there is danger from gentry of that kind. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... to be apprised that I can now stand robbery a little better; that I am no longer so very poor as I once was. In Fraser himself there do now lie vestiges of money! I feel it a great relief to see, for a year or two at least, the despicable bugbear of Beggary driven out of my sight; for which small mercy, at any rate, be the Heavens thanked. Fraser himself, for these two editions, One thousand copies each, of the Lectures and Sartor, pays ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of those ornaments which belong, almost exclusively, to lodging-houses everywhere. Briefly, he is always there—ready to burst into flames at any moment, ready to misunderstand everything anybody does or says, a perpetual bugbear; and not even the emotional repentances, which are often the only partially saving grace of bad-tempered people, can atone for the atmosphere of disturbance which they always inflict. And the man or woman who loses his temper whenever anything goes in the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... out of my sunshine with your bugbear of a Charles Lamb! "I have heard you for some time with patience. I have been cool,—quite cool; but don't put me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... took their turn and gave their visitors a radio concert that was wonderful in its variety and beauty. The night happened to be unusually free of the annoying static that is the bugbear of the wireless, and every note of the music was as clear and sweet as though the performers were only a few yards away. Tim and Larry listened as though they were entranced, and when the concert was finished they were as enthusiastic "fans" as the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... abbot and the monks, seeing him flee, marvelled and questioned him of the cause, which he told them; whereupon quoth the abbot, 'Marry, thou art no child nor art thou new to the church that thou shouldst thus lightly take fright; let us go see who hath played the bugbear with thee.' Accordingly, kindling several lights, the abbot and all his monks entered the church and saw that wonder-rich and goodly bed and thereon the gentleman asleep; and what while, misdoubting and fearful, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... will be met by these friends of the daughter, he trusts that the mother's interviews with the Doctor, and a knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adele has grown up, may lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child, which has been his great bugbear in view ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... were a greater bugbear to American vessels than pirates, and Captain Parson kept ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Hoffmann's fantastic pictures. Here J.P. Lyser, a painter by profession, but a poet as well, and a musician besides. Here Carl Bauck, the indefatigable, yet unsuccessful composer of songs,—now, in his capacity of critic, the paper bugbear of the Dresden artists. He had just returned from Italy, and believed himself in possession of the true secret of the art of singing, the monopoly of which every singing-master is wont to claim for himself. C.F. Becker, too, the eminent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... state upon another is either absolute or limited by some certain terms of agreement. The dependence of these Colonies, which Great Britain calls constitutional, as declared by acts of Parliament, is absolute. If the contrary of this be the bugbear so many have been disclaiming against, I could wish my countrymen would consider the consequence of so stupid a profession. If a limited dependence is intended, I would be much obliged to any one who will show me the Britannico- American Magna Charta, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her person, she was little less elegant than a countess; yet nothing more than a merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that commander's children in a suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a palace. When they happen to be there. She had a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste; she called them "jargon"—"slang" was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... been a good deal of this kind of thing, and our Aunt Eliza puts her foot down rather strongly, which won't be a bugbear to the boy with Mrs. Brindlock; besides which, there's your old friend, Rev. Dr. Mowry, at the Fulton-Street ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... invasion, and make security more secure. The political officers of the Protectorate will be the best judges of the steps to be taken; and, if they are active and prudent, we shall hear no more of the Kumasi bugbear. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... matter in your charge, Lady Carfax. I can see you're a capable woman. I'm coming back in September to perform that operation. You will have a willing patient ready for me—by willing I mean something gayer than resigned—and my bugbear, Nap—that most lurid specimen of civilised devilry—hunting scalps on the other side ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... should first have turned to this as a mode of obtaining the desired results; but, alas! all attempts in that direction signally failed—the ware most persistently refused to have anything to do with emulsion. The bugbear was the fixing agent or hypo., which not only left indelible marks, but, despite any amount of washing, the image on a finished plate vanished to nothing at the end of an hour's exposure in the show window. There was nothing left but to seek other means for the attainment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Was it Christian Science? Did you dare, Eloise Evringham, did you dare spoil your life—my life—our future, by scaring Dr. Ballard with that bugbear?" The ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... be a relief to you to know at once that there will not be any statistics in this series of talks. We want instead just now to get broad and general, but distinct, impressions. Statistics are burdensome to most people. They are a good deal of a bugbear to the common crowd of us every-day folks. They are absolutely essential. They are of immense, that is, immeasurable, value. You need to have them at hand where you can easily turn for exact information, as you need it, to refresh your memory. And an increasing amount of it will ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... housekeeper, and had, besides, a temper as hot and ready to light as her father's pipe. The old man stopped now, half chuckling, peeping in at the window to see if all was clear within. But you must not think for this that Dode's temper was the bugbear of the house,—though the girl herself thought it was, and shed some of the bitterest tears of her life over it. Just a feverish blaze in the blood, caught from some old dead grandfather, that burst out now ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... exercise her judgment. A few minutes sufficed for forming a resolution; nor was it sooner formed than that it was begun to be put into action, yet not before the excited girl was away, no doubt to tell some of her companions of her relief from the bugbear of the man with the terrible eyes. The formation of a purpose might have been observed in her puckered lips and the speculation in her grey eyes. The spirit of romance had visited the small house in Toddrick's Wynd, where for fifteen years the domestic lares had sat quietly surveying ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... entourage gave themselves a free rein; that old bugbear Mother Goose was resuscitated, and many a child, on reading the newspaper, might have recognized the ogre of Goodman Perrault in the disguise of a socialist; they surmised, they invented; the press being suppressed, it was quite easy; it is easy to lie when the tongue of contradiction ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... said his wife, as if resenting the word. "But you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no encouragement to ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... she had been at the time of Maddox's treason, the Colonel began to doubt if her imagination had not raised a bugbear, and he questioned her, "My dear, why are you so much afraid, of this person? What ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not say all this to Lord Etherington?" said Mowbray; "wait until he propose such a terrible bugbear as matrimony, before you refuse to receive him. Who knows, the whim that he hinted at may have passed away—he was, as you say, flirting with Lady Binks, and her ladyship has a good deal of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... wherefore fear we death? Did Brutus fear it? or the Grecian friends Who buried in Hipparchus' breast the sword, And died triumphant? Caesar should fear death, Brutus must scorn the bugbear. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... sports, where it would seem that convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that way himself, but he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else employing a different ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... is, said I. Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you? Elijah. Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Antwerp they were banished by a general edict especially aimed at them supplemented by massacres in the northern provinces. [Sidenote: June 24, 1535] After the crisis at Muenster, though the Anabaptists continued to be a bugbear to the ruling classes, their propaganda lost its dangerously revolutionary character. Menno Simons of Friesland, after his conversion in 1536, became the leader of the movement and succeeded in gathering the smitten people into a large and harmless body. The ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... uncle and Miss Ainslee were sitting under a great tree, but each time that they appeared Uncle Dick would say in a strong voice: "I want to inquire about Molly's marks, Miss Ainslee. How is she getting on with her arithmetic?" As this was Molly's bugbear, she would move off hastily whenever the study was mentioned while Uncle Dick looked after her with a twinkle in his eye. He politely took his leave after recess was over, though some of Molly's friends clamored for him to stay and tell them stories of the great west, for they had heard of his powers ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... says Mr. Park, "I arrived at Kolor, a considerable town; near the entrance into which I observed, hanging upon a tree, a sort of masquerade habit, made of the bark of trees; which, I was told on inquiry, belonged to MUMBO JUMBO. This is a strange bugbear, common to all the Mandingo towns, and much employed by the Pagan natives in keeping their women in subjection; for as the Kafas are not restricted in the number of their wives, every one marries as many as he can conveniently ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... 'that Campbell does not give full sweep to his genius. He has wings that would bear him up to the skies, and he does now and then spread them grandly, but folds them up again and resumes his perch, as if afraid to launch away. The fact is, he is a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his future efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that his own fame ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... sir, that all which is said for is very extraordinary and far from encouraging. The partisans of this plan argue that fear of a war, disastrous for England, which might end by putting France once more in possession of Canada, would be the most certain bugbear for America, where the propinquity of our religion and our government is excessively apprehended; they say, in fact, that the Americans, forced by a war to give up their project of liberty and to decide between us and them, would ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on a dry goods business, he might gamble as much as should please him and the law would not take hold of him. He would ask anybody to read the law understandingly and then deny this round assertion. This act, said he, is bugbear—it is a disgrace as it now stands, for it smacks of cowardice. The legislators, he presumed, had a little sense, and they knew that some kind of a law must be passed, and they were ingenious enough ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... poor devil! Has not slept to-night? would a'not, a naughty man, let it sleep one twinkle? A bugbear take him! ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... constructed of steel. The Antoinette monoplane, so ably flown by Latham, was another very famous machine of the 1909-1910 period, though its performance were frequently marred by engine failure; which was indeed the bugbear of all these early experimenters, and it is difficult to say, after this lapse of time, how far in many cases the failures which occurred, both in performances and even in the actual ability to rise from the ground, were due to ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... don't know it; and I don't know that I understand it now you tell it me," replied the major, just a little crossly, for he did not like poetry; it was one of his bugbear humbugs. "But one thing is plain: you must not expose yourself to what in such ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... try and make a bugbear of aunt Shaw' said Margaret, laughing. 'Edith picked up all sorts of military slang from Captain Lennox, and aunt Shaw never took ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Anticipate no evil. I shall be firm; do not doubt me. I will cling with tenacity to that juste milieu under which we have hitherto so eminently prospered. Neither the Parcae and the Eumenides, nor Ixion and his friends, shall advance a point. I will keep each faction in awe by the bugbear of the other's supremacy. Trust me, I am ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... be either a knave or a fool. He could not place himself in the position from which the other fellow was thinking or acting. He believed that it was his duty to maintain what he held to be the popular cause against the "schemes of the aristocrats," the bugbear of that day. He was a fighter from his youth up and his theory of government was that of enforcing the control of the side for which he was the partisan. Such a man could never be accepted as the father of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... afterwards were increased also. She was still getting away from our friend Time present, and forecasting into some future delight. "The good time coming, Boys," was her, as well as many other people's bugbear. She never could feel that (with God's blessing) the ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... national question, had learnt, and were learning more and more, that the middle-class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working-class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes. The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their expansion into acts regulating almost all trades, was tolerated. Trades' Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself, were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the arts and mechanics more valour, and, when it pleased him, more discernment, grace, politeness, and nobility. But then no man had ever before so many useless talents, so much genius of no avail, or an imagination so calculated to be a bugbear to itself and a plague to others. Abjectly and vilely servile even to lackeys, he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means to gain his ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Drake Was a Bugbear to fright Children; Nurses still'd Their little Spanish Nynnyes when they cryde ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, begins to realise to its imagination that there is now no such thing as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the world and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that "the world is all before ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in the general sense of a disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of 'bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to 'bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the wretched bugbear of English spelling was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the best possible. During the last half-hour of every day, each scholar ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Europe; and their temporary allies, though they habitually scoffed at the Slavophil jeremiads, had no reason for the moment to contradict them. Very soon the Proletariat became, for the educated classes, a species of bugbear, and the reading public were converted to the doctrine that the Communal institutions should be preserved as a means of excluding the monster ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... drawing-room, and I had the pleasure of five minutes' conversation alone with her. Oddly, it came out that she had a fine picture in the room, given to her by Mr. Legge, who inherited Aston Hall, which Mr. Legge I used to hear of continually ages ago as a sort of bugbear, being the heir-at-law to Sir Thomas Holte and Lady Holte's property. "Very natural they could never bear the name of Legge," said Mrs. Howley, "but he was my relative and excellent friend;" and she pointed ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... somewhere else," said Anne cheerfully, "abroad if possible; but I have become a bugbear to Daisy, and it is best ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... she grew older, had much time to spend outdoors, there were many tasks about the house and farm she had to perform. The chest was soon filled with quilts and that bugbear was gone from her life. But there was continual scrubbing, baking, mending, and other household tasks to be done, so that much practice caused the girl to develop into a capable little housekeeper. Aunt Maria frankly ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy—viz., the grave and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... they can get easily), but I question if they try either. I recommended them to send him to Tripoli, to the English doctor there, but they heard of the proposal with horror. None of these Berkat people have ever visited Tripoli. The Turks are their bugbear. They were not extremely friendly; rude and ignorant villagers as they were, they could not understand why I wanted to go to Soudan. I observed they were all well clothed and seemed to live in Saharan ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... for a few of the smaller specimens mounted whole but in the average home they are the bugbear of the housekeeper, early exiled to the attic. A friend of mine has his collection of small game birds, occupying the plate rail of his dining room, well out of the way and admired by many. Well ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... bugbear of all runners and is out and away the most difficult to tackle. It may be hard, and then with nothing apparent on the surface to warn you, the Skis break through and catch in the crust and down you go. ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... made to seem like pleasures, or, better still, he shall have no duty but his pleasure. He shall do only what he wills, that his will may grow strong, and he can but choose the right, for he knows no evil. We will hold up before him no bugbear of future punishment, for doubtless there is no such thing; and if there be, it will not be meted out to such a child. He will love and obey his parents because they have devoted themselves to his happiness, and because they have never imposed distasteful ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... legislators; they know that when the fear of punishment is wanting, nothing else is of avail. And this is doubly so with us who are tyrants; whose power is based upon compulsion; who live in the midst of enmity and treachery. The bugbear terrors of the law would never serve our turn. Rebellion is a many-headed Hydra: we cut off one guilty head, two others grow in its place. Yet we must harden our hearts, smite them off as they grow, and—like lolaus—sear the wounds; thus only shall we hold our own. The ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... dragged down, as was most feared, their enfranchisement has tended to elevate them. Under our system of the Australian ballot, they have found that the contaminating influence of which they had been told was but a bugbear, born of fright, produced by shadows. They learned that to deposit their vote did not subject them to anything like the annoyance which they often experienced from crowds on "bargain days," while their presence drove from the polls the ward workers who ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to do "the correct thing." The fear of not doing it, or the dread of having done it unknowingly, was constantly before her—the bugbear that troubled her daily. Perhaps the daughter inherited the mother's dread, and her fear of doing or saying something that was not just "the correct thing" made her put all the responsibility of conversation on her mother's shoulder. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... of which I write) could hardly be called "a small way." she would smile modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were told that the English language embraced no such word as "authoress," she would smile again and say that it ought to, a position towards the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess, I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked from ten to one every day while she was at Poltons; how much she wrote is between ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... with her jibboom pointing in the right direction, and every mile that she now travelled was so much to the good, increasing our chances of getting across the Line and making our escape from the awful region of equatorial calms which constitute such a ghastly bugbear to those who go down to the sea in sailing-ships. Our self-congratulations proved, however, to be premature, for the breeze lasted only about half an hour when it died away again, leaving us as completely becalmed as before. But during that half-hour we had succeeded ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... The order-book each evening, reminding us of the danger, inculcated strict vigilance on picket and on guard. So long did this last without any attack being made that the shadowy expectation of what never occurred became our bugbear, a chimera which haunted us ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... withstood the attacks of some of the best of the sultan's troops. Tales have come down to us from our fathers of the marvellous prowess of the knights of your Order, and how at Smyrna, at Acre, and elsewhere, they performed such feats of valour that their name is still used by Turkish mothers as a bugbear to frighten their children. But the stories have always seemed to me incredible; now I perceive they were true, and that the present members of the Order in no way fall short of the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the Convention, warmly supported the candidacy of Mr. Jefferson Davis. New York, under the direction of Mr. Dean Richmond, gave its influence to Mr. Douglas. Of a combative temperament, Mr. Richmond was impressed with a belief that "secession" was but a bugbear to frighten the northern wing of the party. Thus he failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and impaired the value of unusual common sense and unselfish patriotism, qualities he possessed to an eminent degree. The anxieties ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... wretches that will be roasted at the stake, to our country, and I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God. We are answerable, and if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Uncle John's cry. His enormous fortune was a constant bugbear to him. He had been so interested in his business enterprises for many years that he had failed to realize how his fortune was growing, and it astounded him to wake up one day and find himself possessed of many millions. He had at once retired from active business ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... has talked to us again about an outbreak and civil war—a ridiculous bugbear which is regularly revived every time the House protests against these abuses, as it was under Craig, under Dalhousie, and still more persistently under the present governor. Doubtless the honourable gentleman, having studied ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... indeed, Elia need not have lamented over the decay of beggars, "the all sweeping besom of societarian reformation—your only modern Alcides' club to rid time of its abuses—is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity. Scrips, wallets, bags, staves, dogs and crutches, the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are fast hasting out of the purlieus of this ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The other bugbear which alarmed them was a report that the English intended either to take possession of Berbera, or that they would give it to Shermarky—a native chief and ally of ours who lives at Zeylah. In short, these numerous fears arose from Herne's long residence at Berbera. It looked suspicious ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... woman's help in the great field of human government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as she never has, and take her place. I still think that one of the main hindrances is with women. The fact is, that the worst bugbear is the never-seen, ever-felt law of caste which has always walled woman around, and which few have the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... know, you constantly reassure me? Home grows less and less a bugbear when you speak of it. How strange! It seems as if I had known you a year, instead of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... do not want to rob our neighbours; all we ask is, to keep the Prussians out of Paris." He said a good deal more which it is needless to repeat, but I willingly fulfil his request, to give my testimony that he, and thousands like him, who are the bugbear of the inhabitants of the richer districts of the city, are not by any means as black as they are painted. They are impulsive and somewhat inclined to exaggerate their own good qualities and the faults of others; they seem to think that anyone who differs from them must be a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... yourself," returned Mrs. Cheyne, quietly, as she drew the girl's face down to hers. "I have given you such a bad impression that you look on me as a sort of moral bugbear. I can be very different, when I like, and I have liked to be agreeable to-night." And then this strange woman took up a rich cashmere shawl from the couch where she was lying, and folded it around Phillis's shoulders. "The evenings are chilly. Jeffreys ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... terrifying experience in the French capital, and not knowing when the Apache band might, knowing her part in the affair, avenge themselves upon her for the failure of the snare of "The Red Crawl," residence in France became a bugbear to Ailsa Lorne. Despite the pleadings of Athalie and the baron, whom she had served so well in giving help to Cleek, she was steadfast in her determination to leave it and to return to her native land. She therefore packed up her belongings, journeyed back to London, and set about ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... politicians who knew the tricks of the trade. It would be far better for them to wait till the present generation of honest mediocrities died out, and a new and differently educated generation were ready to take hold. University-trained Labour—that bugbear of Barnes'—if there is any hope for the British Constitution, which probably there is not, I believe it lies there. It is a very small one, at the best. Anyhow, it certainly did not, at this period, lie in the parliamentary ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... by the fire might be dangerous, but as long as people were careful, it was all right, and Agatha had already assisted in some experiments at Rock Quay, which had shown her to be thoroughly understanding and trustworthy, and capable of keeping off the amateur—the great bugbear. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... throughout the district. In cases of genuine need he could be extremely kind and generous; but he did not lavish these qualities on the first comer, nor did he wear his heart upon his sleeve. His informal ways and unconventional dress were a bugbear to some critics; his old waywardness and love of adventure was still alive in him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the more irregular sides of his work. Mr. Bosworth Smith has preserved some capital stories of the crimes with which he had to deal, and how ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's gushing vehemence. He was expecting to be a sort of hero—the creator of a wild panic—and here everybody sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made fun of his bugbear. I turned and crept away—for I was that boy—and never even cared to discover whether I had dreamed the fire or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... drawn of their power and resources—power which is really derived only from intermarriages among the few remnants of the earliest loyalist settlers, or from admiration of their private conduct and abilities. In short, "the family compact" is a useful bugbear; it is kept up constantly before the Canadians, to deter them from looking too closely into other compacts, which, to say the truth, are sometimes neither so national, so loyal, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... double foundation of creation and interpretation, should descend to the meanness of persecuting a mere boy: one whose foot was not yet firmly fixed on the second round of the great ladder upon which he himself towered so securely and so high!—And yet—had not this same belittling blemish been the bugbear of his own, generous existence? Was anything impossible in one whom he had known again and again to stoop to the pettiest forms ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... later, and won't be such a bugbear as you think. If you were not worried into a morbid condition over all this trouble, you would not look so seriously upon a thing which I regard as a piece of mere night prowling, with a ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... never take the pains To seek the prize that labor gains, Until the time had passed; For, all his life, he dreaded still The silly bugbear of uphill, And died a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... She fidgetted at the sink. The music was a bugbear to her, because it prevented her from saying what was on her own mind. At length it ended, her father was turning over the various books and sheets. She looked at him ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... accomplished, and the other two were doubtful. Still, by patience, conciliation, and subsidies, we might hope in the course of time that the wounds we had inflicted would gradually be healed, and a more stable condition ensue. For a short period it was so; but then the old bugbear of Russian advance over the dreary wastes of Central Asia again supervened, and exercised its malign ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... is the greatest terror that Russian tyranny knows. He is a bugbear; but why should he be ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... affectionate compassion of the human heart, than the pitiable and touching condition of helpless little beings left to the tender mercies of a stepmother; who, with her traditional severity, may be called a kind of standing bugbear of the popular imagination. The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is roused by the wailings and sufferings of her deserted offspring, to break with supernatural power the gravestone, and to re-enter, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... "Independant," a terrible article on the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in high-sounding phrases. Aristide ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... dry-nurse; and he shared the fate of all such dry-nurses, being heartily disliked as well as feared by his principal. Still, however, the Primate's intention was fully answered. Father Eustace became the constant theme and often the bugbear of the worthy Abbot, who hardly dared to turn himself in his bed without, considering what Father Eustace would think of it. In every case of difficulty, Father Eustace was summoned, and his opinion asked; and no sooner was the embarrassment ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... neither sense nor genius, he puts on a wig, ties up his neck in a white choker, sits in a big chair, and frightens the world with his silence. Remember, if you were not a baby, he would not be a bugbear." ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the winter is like a wine, so exhilarating is its effects on the system; while its extreme dryness and elasticity prevents any discomfort from the cold which is such a bugbear to many. The extreme cold does not last but for a few days, and should the invalid choose to be domiciled during this brief interval, no great harm would come; but we apprehend that, once there, they could not be kept in-doors in consequence of it. Why, laboring men in the lumber ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... this Coppelius, therefore, the fearful and hideous thought arose in my mind that he, and he alone, must be the Sand-man; but I no longer conceived of the Sand-man as the bugbear in the old nurse's fable, who fetched children's eyes and took them to the half-moon as food for his little ones—no! but as an ugly spectre-like fiend bringing trouble and misery and ruin, both temporal and everlasting, everywhere ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... my ease. I was in the presence of a knight; but he was first and last a man. Straight to the point he went. He never puts a man through that bugbear of the soldier, a host of seemingly inconsequential questions; he has the particulars of each man who is likely to come under his direction long ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... complete bugbear," he groaned. "It ought to be indicted for a nuisance, waking people up o' mornings when they ought to be in the arms of Morpheus—I've a great mind to lie still. Half an hour's ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the thoughts of the gallows," said Turpin to Peter. "More fools they. A mere bugbear to frighten children, believe me; and never yet alarmed a brave man. The gallows, pshaw! One can but die once, and what signifies it how, so that it be over quickly. I think no more of the last leap into eternity than clearing a five-barred gate. A rope's ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the bugbear of two generations of Englishmen; and classical scholars, who interpreted modern politics by the light of ancient Greece, saw in the absorption of Athens by Macedon a convincing demonstration of the fate which the modern barbarian of the north was to inflict upon the British heirs of Hellas. India ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... followed that George Falkner, looking out on the stoep one fine afternoon, and descrying the approach of his bugbear, stifled a bad cuss-word or two, and then exploded aloud in more ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Philip, with an air of pleasant detachment, "I see. You are in a first-rate fix. I was always prepared for that. Coke told me about Bulmer—warned me off, so to speak. I forgot his claims at odd times, just for a minute or so, but he is a real bugbear—a sort of matrimonial bogey-man. If all goes well, and we enter Pernambuco without being fired at, you will be handed over to the British Consul, and he will send a rousing telegram about you to England. Bulmer, of course, will cause a rare stir at home. Who wouldn't? ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... that huge empire was a mere blank to be filled up by the imaginings of prejudice and hostility. Was it not a task worth setting before oneself, worth pursuing for a lifetime, that of trying to make known to English folk their bugbear of the East? ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... evil—resulting from the magnitude of the country, the conflict of interests in its different sections, the State organizations and semi-sovereignty, and the consequent lack of that strong centralization of administrative powers and functions which, however much of a bugbear to many people's imaginations, is indispensable to a complete nationality—has threatened us in the past and may be expected to threaten us in the future. The latter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... he said. "Is it necessary that I enlighten you, madam? He is my bugbear—my death's head! The sight of him poisons my life, and something gnaws at me, driving me nearly mad! To see that man chills me, like the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... equality," said Dr. Latimer, "is only a bugbear which frightens well-meaning people from dealing justly with the negro. I know of no place on earth where there is perfect social equality, and I doubt if there is such a thing in heaven. The sinner who repents on his death-bed cannot ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of fear, though a vague notion as to its cause—a sort of extempore superstition—a power which hath most hold on the mind in proportion as its limits and operations are least known or understood. The bugbear owing its magnitude and importance to obscurity and misapprehension, becomes divested of its terrors when it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... victory of the war in the Battle of Tannenberg. He won it because the ground was exceedingly difficult, and because he knew the ground far better than any other man on earth. He was entitled to very high credit. He got it. He became the idol of the German populace, and the bugbear of the Allied countries. But he has done nothing since. Soon after Tannenberg he made a fool of himself on the Russian frontier, and showed that success had got into his head. He subsequently initiated several ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this Augustine's remaining doctrines, that all this does not depend on the man's own sins and omissions, but was already predestined to happen, one really is at a loss what to think. Our highly educated Rationalists say, to be sure, "It's all false, it's a mere bugbear; we're in a state of constant progress, step by step raising ourselves to ever greater perfection." Ah! what a pity we didn't begin sooner; we should already have ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Sabbath face concerning the declaration of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be slain for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial communities as rivals ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the bugbear of youthful vanity, and it is considered knowing to quarrel with existing institutions and established truths; our experienced reflection regrets this inclination and we become weary of distracting ourselves with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... the Academy were years of steady progress. "The Immortals" were soon left far behind. At the end of the first twelve months he stood fifty-first in a class of seventy-two, but when he entered the first class, and commenced the study of logic, that bugbear to the majority, he shot from near the foot of the class to the top. In the final examination he came out seventeenth, notwithstanding that the less successful years were taken into account, and it was a frequent remark ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that bugbear of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he himself had a couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week. Their chief attraction was that the great Half-Truth Liberty had recommended them. They tied him to nothing, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heights of Fisher's Hill had long been the bugbear of the valley. The position was, in truth, a purely defensive one, its chief value being that there was no other. Except for defence it was worthless, because it was as hard to get out of as to get at; and even for defence it was subject to the drawback that it could be easily and secretly turned ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... a sort of bugbear to you," said Rapp. "You'll keep prodding him till he horns you one ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Methodism, was just beginning to be the bugbear set up for those whom the world held to be ultra-religious, and my mother was so far disturbed at our interest in what was termed Oxford theology that the warning would have alarmed her if it had come from any other ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curtain in the wing window, and the yellow placard in the suspicious window at the top, still kept their places with provoking tenacity; and I could never, with all my art, seduce the good-natured abbe into any bugbear story about the occupant of the dim chamber on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... men of her imagination! What matter? She loved adventures! And moving like a king among the rest, she saw the thin, travel-beaten, eccentric form of Lord Philip—the hated, adored, pursued; Society's idol and bugbear all in one; Lord Philip, who shunned and disliked women; on whom, nevertheless, the ambitions and desires of some of the loveliest women in England were, on that account alone, and at this moment of his political triumph, the more intently and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you will find him to be the bugbear you imagine. He can take defeat like a man. He is devoted to you, he is devoted to me. Your decision no doubt wrecks his fondest hope in life, but it doesn't make a ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the procureur-general," said Conrart, "and we have M. Fouquet left us still, of whom we have no reason to complain; but, as he is no procureur-general without his gown, we agree with M. de la Fontaine and pronounce the gown to be nothing but a bugbear." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... presumed to stay him. Two hundred square miles of fertile Ohio lands were to be their reward. An invitation to other colonies to join in the assertion of English ownership met with scanty response, or none at all. The idea of a union was in the air, but it was complicated with that old bugbear of a regular revenue to be exacted by act of Parliament, which Shirley and the others still continued to press with hungry zeal; while the assemblies were not less set upon making all grants annual, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... police officer approached the "Human Dog" would immediately roll over on his back, with his legs in the air, and yelp piteously; in fact, he combined the "lay" of insanity with that of starvation in a most ingenious and skilful manner. He was a familiar sight and a bugbear to the police, who were constantly arresting him; but, as he never asked for money, they had great difficulty in doing anything with him. Usually the magistrate sent him to the "Island," for thirty days and then Gottlieb would get him out on a writ of habeas ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... whit happier than another, nor so happy as one in ten thousand. Cui bono, then I ask—where is this moral machinery which I sometimes dreaded? I cannot perceive its operations. It has no existence; it is a mere chimera; like many another bugbear, the foul offspring of credulity and fear on the one side—of superstition and hypocrisy on the other. No; life is merely a thing of chances, and its incidents the mere combinations that result from its evolutions, just like the bits of glass in the kaleidoscope, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... alleging that the movement would be mutually beneficial, that it would induce white immigration, relieve the congested overproduction of the staples of the Southern States, introduce a higher class of industries, and simplify the so-called problem by removing the bugbear of Negro ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... too bad," sighed Zellerndorf; "though it may not be without its advantages after all, for now we still have this second bugbear to frighten Leopold with. So long, of course, as the American lives there is always the chance that he may return and seek to gain the throne. The fact that his mother was a Rubinroth princess might make ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... living, the climacteric or change of life, has become the bugbear of womanhood. It seems to be universally assumed that this period in a woman's life must be fraught with manifold sufferings and dangers. It is taken as a matter of course that during these changes in her organism a ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... My dear Cole, don't trouble to perjure yourself. I don't mind, believe me. They're easily shocked, these country clergy, and no doubt I'm a bugbear to 'em. Yet, I could have sworn I'd never seen this one before. Let's have ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... saw. If, however, I and his friend Hammond, who seemed afraid of being eaten, in preference to the fine beef and venison which we had seen in such profusion on the plain, really felt alarmed at the bugbear legends of our vagabond Indians, before any demonstration of hostility had been made, we were welcome to take two-thirds of the men and mules and make our retreat as best we could, while he would advance ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... Crampsford by his academic learning, Theobald walked over to the Rectory one Sunday morning early in December—a few weeks only after he had been ordained. He had taken a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the subject of geology—then coming to the fore as a theological bugbear. He showed that so far as geology was worth anything at all—and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it—it confirmed the absolutely historical character of the Mosaic account of the Creation as given in Genesis. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... long loitering at Munich, thinking that in both places there was danger of Guy's being led into mischief by his musical connections. Therefore he did his best, for Amabel's sake, to turn them from their purpose, persuaded in his own mind that the fever was a mere bugbear, raised up by Arnaud; and, perhaps, in his full health and strength, almost regarding illness itself as a foible, far more the dread of it. He argued, therefore, in his most provoking strain, becoming more vexatious as the former ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look alive. It has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... very well know. After having violated other laws, I do not see why we should be frightened at an old saw. We pretend to judge for ourselves, and ought to be above shrinking from a bugbear of a proverb. Beside, this is a good deed, and I should think no more harm of being the ruin of such a thief than of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... rest an' set 'em down, an' carry home the booty. 'T was then the merry times began, the blunders, an' the laffin', The nudges an' the nods an' winks an' stale good-natured chaffin'. Ole Uncle Hiram Dane was there, the clostest man a-livin', Whose only bugbear seemed to be the dreadful fear o' givin'. His beard was long, his hair uncut, his clothes all bare an' dingy; It wasn't 'cause the man was pore, but jest so mortal stingy; An' there he sot by Sally Riggs a-smilin' an' a-smirkin', An' all his children lef' to home a diggin' an' a-workin'. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of death. But its fear is only because of its lack of understanding. If it knew, it would by no means be afraid or shudder at death. Our reason is like a little child who has become frightened by a bugbear or a mask, and cannot be lulled to sleep; or like a poor man, bereft of his senses, who imagines when brought to his couch that he is being put into the water and drowned. What we do not understand we cannot intelligently ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... consequences in practice, and irrespective of the beneficial results that might have followed its modification, we can only regret that the deity was not acquainted with Emerson's opinion that "a foolish consistency is the bugbear of little minds." Even what is said to be the greatest mind of all might easily have benefited ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... 1st of July, Bressant sat at his table, with his books and papers about him. He was in an excellent humor, for he had just arrived at the conclusion that he might, and would, safely encounter his bugbear Cornelia. If the professor invited him to tea, and to spend the evening, he was resolved to accept; and, at that moment, he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder, and, turning quickly round, recognized the sombre figure ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... presents with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various |
