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Encumber   Listen
verb
Encumber  v. t.  (past & past part. encumbered; pres. part. encumbering)  (Written also incumber)  
1.
To impede the motion or action of, as with a burden; to retard with something superfluous; to weigh down; to obstruct or embarrass; as, his movements were encumbered by his mantle; his mind is encumbered with useless learning. "Not encumbered with any notable inconvenience."
2.
To load with debts, or other legal claims; as, to encumber an estate with mortgages.
Synonyms: To load; clog; oppress; overload; embarrass; perplex; hinder; retard; obstruct; check; block.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Encumber" Quotes from Famous Books



... strangers amongst those recesses to which from childhood she had looked with awful veneration. This girl was regarded with an unfavourable eye by all the competitors, honest Dinmont only excepted; the rest conceived they should find in her a formidable competitor, whose claims might at least encumber and diminish their chance of succession. Yet she was the only person present who seemed really to feel sorrow for the deceased. Mrs. Bertram had been her protectress, although from selfish motives, and her capricious tyranny ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... receive on board his ship a young man named Omai, a native of Ulietea; where he had had some property, of which he had been dispossessed by the people of Bolabola. I at first rather wondered that Captain Furneaux would encumber himself with this man, who, in my opinion, was not a proper sample of the inhabitants of these happy islands, not having any advantage of birth, or acquired rank; nor being eminent in shape, figure, or complexion: For their people of the first rank are much fairer, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... a useless encumbrance: no old sportsman or traveller cares to encumber himself with one; but a butcher's knife, carried in a sheath, is excellent, both from its efficient shape, the soft quality of The steel, its lightness, and the strong way in which the blade is set in ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... surfaces of the body; masses live on the intestinal surfaces and the excrement is largely composed of bacteria. It has been said that life would be impossible without bacteria, for the accumulation of the carcasses of all animals which have died would so encumber the earth as to prevent its use; but the folly of such speculation is shown by the fact that animals would not have been there without bacteria. It has been shown, however, that the presence of bacteria in the intestine ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... consciousness of the existence of the body, to be as if the body for the time were not,—this is to set the mind thinking in freedom unrestrained. For the body and the conscious sensation of the presence of the body seem to serve to drag down and encumber the energy of thought. A sound through the ear, a sight presented to the eye, a touch, an ache,—these break off sustained thinking. No wonder, when the body sleeps profoundly, the soul is often then most active. And will ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... said, and with Dryden's accustomed penetration to the root of the matter. The Latin has given us most of our canorous words, only they must not be confounded with merely sonorous ones, still less with phrases that, instead of supplementing the sense, encumber it. It was of Latinizing in this sense that Dryden was guilty. Instead of stabbing, he "with steel invades the life." The consequence was that by and by we have Dr. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... genius, but it was yet more than that—it was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... to approach those ancient Religions which once ruled the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past, as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists of antiquity, and stalk ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Dead have benison. They only have done well; and, what they did Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber: No king of Egypt in a pyramid Is safer from oblivion, though he number Full seventy cerements for a coverlid. These Dead be seeds of life, and shall encumber The sad heart of the land until it loose The clammy clods and let out the Spring-growth In beatific green through every bruise. The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... for the mere purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuel of the country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. I conceive, therefore, that a wise and provident government, which, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... as the suspicion entertained of old against the Gypsy communities of harbouring disguised priests. Gypsy women, as the writer had occasion to remark many a long year ago, have plenty of children of their own, and have no wish to encumber themselves with those of other people. A yet more extraordinary charge was, likewise, brought against them—that of running away with wenches. Now, the idea of Gypsy women running away with wenches! Where were they to stow them in the event of running ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... does, and where he does not, hear by his use or non-use of the ear-trumpet. Perhaps the reader will be good enough to imagine these occasions for himself, as he may have observed a reluctance on the part of the author to encumber the ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... sandbanks which abound on the outside of the bay, continue to encumber the navigation after it is entered, and the fleet was in consequence compelled to anchor every night. This proceeding unavoidably occasioned much delay. The first day's sail carried us only to the mouth of the James river, and the second to the mouth of the Potomac; but, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... the gates of intercourse of the great highways of the world, and justify the act by the pretension that these avenues of trade and travel belong to them and that they choose to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent, to encumber them with such unjust relations as would prevent their ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... I will not encumber this preface with my personal qualifications for this little work—the answers to the ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor

... hall, my Fathers' voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, pois'd upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur'd urns, To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; [i] My epitaph shall be my name alone: [2] If that with honour fail to crown my clay, [ii] Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, or with ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... implored, and threatened; but in vain; and the poor girl became a great thorn in the side of both father and son. She had neither beauty, talent, nor attraction, to get her a husband; and her father was determined not to encumber his already diminished property with such a fortune as would make her on that ground acceptable ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... master node is:— What takes M'Adam where a road is, To hammer little pebbles less? His organ of Destructiveness. What makes great Joseph so encumber Debate? a lumping lump of Number: Or Malthas rail at babies so? The smallness of his Philopro— What severs man and wife? a simple Defect of the Adhesive pimple: Or makes weak women go astray? Their bumps are more in fault ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... failing to support the Cause. Holy Fire, it goes on to say, has been aroused to its sacred function of purifying the country; and other agencies are also at work to see that those who are not true sons of the motherland do cease to encumber her lap. The signature is an ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... to collect. His description of the triclinium of Scaurus will give the reader the best notion of the style in which such an apartment was furnished and ornamented. For each particular in the description he quotes some authority. We shall not, however, encumber our pages with references to a long list of books not likely to be in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... digging, great care should be taken to remove the small as well as the full-grown; for those not taken from the ground will remain fresh and sound during the winter, and send up in the spring new plants, which, in turn, will increase so rapidly, as to encumber the ground, and become troublesome. In localities where the crop has once been cultivated, though no plants be allowed to grow for the production of fresh tubers, yet the young shoots will continue to make their appearance from time to time for ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... but it is the case just at present; I have great need of a few thousand pounds upon my personal security. My estate is already a little mortgaged, and I don't wish to encumber it more; besides, the loan would be merely temporary. You know that if at the age of eighteen Miss Cameron refuses me (a supposition out of the question, but in business we must calculate on improbabilities), I claim the forfeit she ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Love, In vain conspire to nurse their favourite Peace, And banish dire Immanity and War. Strong Nature's bent, continual increase, Still counteracts Humanity's fond wish, The perpetuity of Peace, and Love; Alas! progressive Increase cannot last. Soon mourns the encumber'd land it's human load: Too soon arrives the inauspicious hour; The Natal Hour of the unhappy Man, Who all his life goes mourning up and down That there is neither bough, nor mud, nor straw That he ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... one of the other salons, whilst all around medallions large and small of heads and figures, male, female and infantile, with a variety of vine-wreathed Bacchuses and bow-drawing Cupids, which are considered especially fit to decorate cafes, cluster along the mouldings, encumber the panels or fill up the niches. Huge mirrors reflect the pea-green walls, the crystal chandeliers, the gilding, glass and divans; cats perambulate the apartments; people come and go—black, elegant fellows, with broad-rimmed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... themes, where, still expressing disapproval, one may do it with some grace, one of the few limitations to Mr. Hardy's great charm as a writer lies in his tendency to encumber his page with detail. At a supremely romantic moment one of his people sits down to contemplate a tribe of ants, and watches them through two whole printed pages. In another case a man in imminent deadly peril surveys through two pages the history of the geologic changes which have befallen our ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... is nothing in this scene, taken by itself, particularly interesting or impressive. The mountains are not elevated, nor particularly fine in form, and the heaps of stones which encumber the Ticino present nothing notable to the ordinary eye. But, in reality, the place is approached through one of the narrowest and most sublime ravines in the Alps, and after the traveller during the early part of the day has been familiarized with the aspect of the highest ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... create no suspicion of our being here. I think we should return to our former place of concealment, and watch their motions. There is no saying when the party with Miss Percival may return; they may have arrived while we have been away, or they may come to-morrow. It will be better, therefore, not to encumber ourselves with more ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... correctly used and not even rightly spelt, his endless iterations, lists, catalogues, categories, things not clearly visualised or even remotely perceived, but swept relentlessly in, like the debris of some store-room, all these are ugly mannerisms which simply blur and encumber the pages. The question is not whether they offend a critical and cultured mind, but whether they produce an inspiring effect upon any kind ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... best is), Has lain so very long on hand, That I despair of all demand; I've advertised, but see my books, Or only watch my Shopman's looks;— 30 Still Ivan, Ina,[78] and such lumber, My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... such useless lumber Useful bookshelves so encumber? I will tell thee; for thy question Of wonders brings me to the best one. There's a future wonder, may be— Sure a present magic baby; (Patience, friend, I know your looks— What has that to do with books?) ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... could make, I stripped off my clothes and flung them upon the rocks. My shoes and stockings followed—even my shirt was thrown aside, lest it might encumber me, and just as if I was going in to have a bathe and a swim, I launched myself upon the water. I had no wading to do. The water was beyond my depth from the very edge of the reef, and I had to swim from the first plunge. Of course, I struck out directly for the boat, and kept on without turning ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... moping in the refectory; on all sides were desolation and the sound of lamentation. Here and there lay the bloody and disfigured bodies of the slain Carlists. Not one of them had been spared. The chapel had been ransacked, and although the Mochuelo had forbidden his men to encumber themselves with plunder, all the smaller and more valuable decorations of the sacred edifice had been transferred to the haversacks of the guerillas. He had been more successful in preserving the nuns from ill usage, although, in moments of license and excitement, even his commands did ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... against the Neutrals. They carried two frontier villages, in one of which were more than 1600 men, the first at the end of autumn, the second early in the spring of 1651. The old men and children who might encumber them on their homeward journey were massacred. The number of captives was excessive, especially of young women, who were carried off to the Iroquois towns. The other more distant villages were seized with terror. The Neutrals abandoned ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne

... us, although with considerable labour to the horses. Finding it was getting late, we determined to try and return to the camp round by the head of Nickol Bay, and succeeded in climbing over the rocks and boulders that encumber this portion of the coast, until we were within a quarter of a mile of the camp, when the tide came in upon us so quickly that, after having been repeatedly thrown down by the surf, we were compelled to leave the horses jammed up in the rocks ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... milder and more fruitful clime, They come with us to pass the summer time: No sooner he begins one shoal to sum, But, more and more, still greater shoals do come, Swarm upon swarm, that with their countless number Break off his purpose, and his sense encumber. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... near to North Wilkesboro', where he proposed to make a first essay in railway journeying, Zeke seated himself under the shade of a grove of persimmon-trees by the wayside, there painfully to encumber his feet with the new shoes. As he laced these, he indulged in soliloquy, after a fashion bred of his lonely life, on a subject born of his ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... was straddling up and down the room, a pent volcano ready to explode. He knew Whaley's advice was good. It would be suicide to encumber himself with this girl in his flight. But he had never disciplined his desires. He wanted her. He meant to take her. Passion, the lust for revenge, the bully streak in him that gloated at the sight ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... scrupulous strictness to the original definition of the terms. If the same method were made use of in reasoning on other subjects, they would approach to the mathematics in simplicity and in truth, and the science of medicine in particular would be stripped of the heaps of learned rubbish which now encumber it, and would appear in true and native simplicity. Such is the method I propose to follow: I am certain of the rectitude of the plan; of the success of the reasoning it does not become ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... on at once," interrupted George; "the third dog has turned tail, like a craven, luckily for us. Now slip the bight of the lanyard over your neck, and follow me. Leave the cane-knives; they will only encumber us, and perhaps throw us down the face of the precipice. Now, look out, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... we should not encumber our pupils with accurate demonstration. The application of mathematics to mechanics is undoubtedly of the highest use, and has opened a source of ingenious and important inquiry. Archimedes, the greatest ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... found to be not at all the formidable and haughty person she would have had people believe her; not too far gone in middle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood, much of her bloom and many of those little roundnesses of contour which adorn but do not encumber. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... he acted under the incomprehensible influence of a kind of hallucination is this, that he felt neither remorse nor fear. As he was resolved not to return to his house, nor to encumber himself with luggage, he dined at a restaurant, spent a few minutes at a theatre, and then posted his letter to the board of directors, so that it might reach them ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... are from Darwin. I shall endeavour to show, however, that Darwin was probably wrong in retaining the older explanation of these facts, and that the remains of the Lamarckian theory of use-inheritance need not any longer encumber the great explanation which has superseded that fallacious and unproven theory and has rendered it totally unnecessary. Meanwhile I think it is an excellent sign that Mr. Spencer has to complain that "Nowadays most naturalists are more Darwinian than ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... asserts, will prove to the mind of every thinking man that, if we persist much longer in sustaining the acts of coinage and legal tender which now encumber the statute book, our national credit will be impaired and all our working people, whose wages are paid in money, will be subjected to the most injurious form of special taxation which could be devised; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... a hemmer is a valuable attachment of a sewing-machine. An extension, as of a railroad or of a franchise, carries out further something already existing. We add an appendix to a book, to contain names, dates, lists, etc., which would encumber the text; we add a supplement to supply omissions, as, for instance, to bring it up to date. An appendix may be called an addendum; but addendum may be used of a brief note, which would not be dignified by the name of appendix; such ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran. For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a good rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was told that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand and on his left. Two led horses, which in the field ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... said, smiling, "we must not encumber ourselves with anything unnecessary. You must bid good-bye to collars and cuffs, and be content with flannels, one to wear and one for your knapsack; and this you will have to wash and dry whenever you get a chance. We'll take some socks, but after a time we shall have to be content with nothing ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... Major was anxious not to encumber himself with all his heavy waggons to the junction of the Darling, as he would have to return again, a depot was formed, and the men divided. Mitchell, with a lightly equipped party following down the river, leaving Stapylton in charge of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... sharp corner of my desk; which casualties (exasperating to me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally made a slight bustle—M. Paul became irritated, and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to the winds that dignity and self-control with which he never cared long to encumber himself, he broke forth into the strain best calculated ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... group is to survive—to be perpetuated by the one possible means—if it withdraws all solicitude about the handicap this entails to women as a whole, introducing a spirit of laissez-faire competition between men and women, the women with sense enough to see the point will not encumber themselves with children. For each one of these who has no children, some other woman must have six instead of three. And some people encourage this in the name ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... came out here to be great boys, didn't we? I am sure you look a dozen years younger than when I last saw you, Mrs. Grandmother. By-the-by, it was a bold stroke to encumber yourself with that ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the shoulders of the people. An exhortation from the Pope was read to the multitude, granting remission of their sins to all who should join the Crusade, and directing that no man on that holy pilgrimage should encumber himself with heavy baggage and vain superfluities, and that the nobles should not travel with dogs or falcons, to lead them from the direct road, as had happened to so many during ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... and sought fruit thereon, but found none. Then he called to the gardener who attended to his vineyard, and said to him, "Behold these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none. Cut it down. Why does it encumber the ground?" ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... folds of gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil of wondrous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... voice Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone; My epitaph shall be my name alone: If that with honor fail to crown my clay, Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay! That, only that, shall single out the spot; By that remember'd, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... What should she do in Canada? Her connection with the Rollestons was played out, and for every one's happiness it was better severed. There was scarcely any demand for governesses in the Dominion, as the children commonly went to school; so she would encumber her mother with the expenses of the voyage, with no prospect of contributing anything to her ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... and a pony for his baggage, together with blankets and other necessaries for the journey. His mining outfit he decided to get at Sacramento, as, although the cost would be considerable, he did not wish to encumber himself with it on his journey across the plains. The rifle and revolver had been presented him by Mr. Willcox, and he determined to practise steadily with both on his voyage up the river, as his life might depend on ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... and smiling face, Who kept an entertaining place For travel-worn and weary fellows Who landed where Caleb S. Bellows, Out on "the Point" his habitation Built in a pleasant situation, Before the days when piles of lumber Did first fair nature's face encumber; Quite near the spot where first with skill John Perkins built his little mill, Where Philip Thompson many a year Ago, commenced his bright career, And took the ebbing of the tide, Which into golden waves did glide; He man'd his craft ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... which would admit of its being squeezed into any odd corner, but Dick the hostler got it in somehow, and Mr Chuzzlewit helped him. It was all on Mr Pinch's side, and Mr Chuzzlewit said he was very much afraid it would encumber him; to which Tom said, 'Not at all;' though it forced him into such an awkward position, that he had much ado to see anything but his own knees. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the wisdom of the saying was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... said I, 'and I will be yer substitute without money.' 'A thousand blessings upon yer head, Robie, lad!' said he; 'ye shall hae my gun, and ye may tak also my greatcoat and knapsack, for they only encumber me. Ye hae rescued a dying man.' I was nearly as tall as he; and, though his coat was loose about me, when I got it on, and his musket over my shoulder, and felt that I was marching like an armed knight ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... the power of attracting and attaching the ablest men to his service. He had five years in which to look about him and to act at leisure—as much time as had been given to Pompey for the East. Like Pompey, too, he was left perfectly free. No senatorial officials could encumber him with orders from home. The people had given him his command, and to the people alone he was responsible. Lastly, and beyond everything, he could rely with certainty on the material with which he had to work. The Roman legionaries were no longer ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... Man, every genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him at every step,—him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order; every man's is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. Is not all work of man in this world a making of Order? ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... studious think, the imaginative invent, the tuneful sing: beyond him there is no appeal but to the future. He is superstitious, as we have seen, but his gods are few and traditional. He determines to make a stand somewhere; and it is necessary for him to do so, if he would not encumber his literary Olympus with a Hindoo-like pantheon of millions. But how voracious is this general reader in regard to the effusions of his own day! What will become of the myriads of books that have passed through our own unworthy hands? How many of them will survive to the next ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... and molecules in the cells, and of the cells in the organs and tissues of the body. The more rapid and vigorous this vibratory activity, the more powerful is the repulsion and expulsion of morbid matter, poisons and germs of disease which try to encumber or ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... is not a friend that I am seeking, not one of those uncertain, light-hearted, capricious relations which encumber life without adding to it. I am dreaming like a child, of a woman who should realise the greatest possible amount of beauty in her mind and person and who should add her strength to mine in the service of the same ideals. Rose, are you that woman? Will you help me to deliver other women still who ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... were taking place in his own neighbourhood in the name of Charles V., he had attached very little importance to the intelligence. An old soldier himself, he entertained the most unmitigated contempt for the Realista volunteers, whom he looked upon as a set of tailors, whose muskets would rather encumber them than injure any body else; and who, on the first appearance of regular troops, would infallibly throw down their arms, and betake themselves to their homes. As to the parties of insurgent guerillas which he was informed were beginning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... pallid, weeping sentinel which stands guard for the great ice-caps beyond. Winter snows, summer fogs and rains have washed the hillsides clean; they are leached out and they present a lifeless, forbidding front to travelers. In many places the granite fragments which still encumber them lie piled one above another in such titanic chaos as to discourage man's puny efforts to climb over them. Nevertheless, men have done so, and by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. On this particular morning an unending procession of human beings was ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... place of the representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,—the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... in the service of the nation than in mine, by far,' said the little purse-proud gentleman, shrugging his shoulders very significantly. "Shall I send it for you, Sir?" said Margin, without noticing the last remark. 'By no means, by no means; the volume is not so large, it won't encumber me much; I believe I shall find it small enough to put in my pocket,' pursued the little great man, grinning at the shrewdness of his own observations, and stalking out with as much self-complacency as he had stalked in. I knew the man well, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... praise and incense as the foundress of this community. It has been quite easy for her to found so vast an establishment with the treasures of France, since she herself had remained poor, by her own confession, and had neither to sell nor encumber Maintenon, her ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... comprehensive idea. It was to the memory of all the bishops and canons of the cathedral! This wholesale idea may be commended to our chapters at home. It might save the too monotonous repetition of recumbent bishops, who, after being exhibited at the Academy, finally encumber valuable space in their ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... Islands or of the United States, and 2,530 acres by a corporation. The grant or sale of such land is subject to occupancy and cultivation of the acreage for a period of not less than five years, and during that period the purchaser or grantee cannot alienate or encumber the land or the title thereto. Six consecutive months' absence from the land, during the above period of five years, cancels the grant. The land granted under this Act cannot be seized for debt contracted ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... except its owner had then taken the trouble to make the least inquiry into its history. To Willie it was just the Priory, as naturally in his father's garden as if every garden had similar ruins to adorn or encumber it, according as the owner might ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... had our own game to play, and we availed ourselves of the confusion which always reigns among a ship's company preparatory to going ashore, to confer together and complete our arrangements. As our object was to effect as rapid a flight as possible to the mountains, we determined not to encumber ourselves with any superfluous apparel; and accordingly, while the rest were rigging themselves out with some idea of making a display, we were content to put on new stout duck trousers, serviceable ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... the sultan arose with the dawn, and prepared to execute his design, hiding his upper garment, which might encumber him; he then proceeded to the Palace of Tears. He found it lighted up with an infinite number of flambeaux of white wax, and perfumed by a delicious scent issuing from several censers of fine gold of admirable workmanship. As soon as he perceived the bed where the black lay, he drew his cimeter, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... was very hard to repress this feeling. The energy of a man depends so much on the outward circumstances that encumber him! It is so hard to work when work seems hopeless—so hard to trust where the basis of our faith is so far removed from sight! When large tracts of land went out of cultivation, was it not natural to think that agriculture was receding from the country, leaving the green hills once ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... resist the toil of men, and conspire against their fame; which are cunning to consume, and {112} prolific to encumber; and of whose perverse and unwelcome sowing we know, and can say assuredly, "An enemy hath ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... satchel or bag, used by shepherds and others to carry a little food; sustenance, then, was also to be left uncared for. Dress, too, was to be limited to that in wear; no change of inner robe nor a spare pair of shoes was to encumber them, nor even a spare staff. If any of them had one in his hand, he was to take it (Mark vi. 8). The command was meant to lift the apostles above suspicion, to make them manifestly disinterested, to free them from anxiety about earthly things, that their message ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... stepped out on the colonnade, and pausing involuntarily, at sight of the stranger, they looked at each other. A man, perhaps, more, certainly not less than thirty years old, of powerful and impressive physique; very tall, athletic, sinewy, without an ounce of superfluous flesh to encumber his movements, in the professional palaestra; with a large finely modeled head, whose crisp black hair closely cut, was (contrary to the prevailing fashion) parted neither in the middle, nor yet on the side, but brushed straight back from the square forehead, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... by miracle, under your hands; but the very fragments of it, which you are inclined to neglect and overlook, will form in time a heap of unexpected treasure. Plans which you have thrown aside, because they seemed to fail, details which seemed to encumber you, accessory work which formed no part of your original plan, all will be of use ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... that this coming to you was something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardly thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conquered the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come to you to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must have something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for our lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are entitled to decline to take ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... good deal more before the opossum withdrew his cold and barren member from consideration; but the judicious fabulist does not encumber his tale with extraneous matter, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... As for us, we are all pretty fair shots and used to handling weapons. Now, look here, Captain Folsom," he said, pleadingly, advancing and laying a hand on the other's arm; "I know what you are saying to yourself. You are saying how foolish it would be for you to encumber yourself with three harum-scarum boys. But that is where you make a mistake. We have been through a lot of dangerous situations, all three of us and, I can tell you, we have been forced to learn to keep our wits about ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... eagerness to assist, and anxious to enter on my duties; but the skipper motioned me aside, saying that he'd put me into a watch and give me regular work to do as soon as we had got fairly to sea, for he "didn't want any idlers hanging round them to encumber the men." So, acting on the principle that "a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse," I sheered over to the other side of the deck. Here, Sam Pengelly was standing by the taffrail, and from this coign of vantage ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... dead. When he fell, the other three stood motionless for some minutes, as if petrified with astonishment; as soon as they recovered, they went back, dragging after them the dead body, which, however, they soon left, that it might not encumber their flight. At the report of the first musket we drew together, having straggled to a little distance from each other, and made the best of our way back to the boat; and crossing the river, we soon saw the Indian lying dead upon the ground. Upon examining the body, we found that he had been shot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... finger at the man. The one thing he really wanted to do was to give Alvin the rock treatment. One little zap would do it, and Alvin Sherdlap would encumber the Earth no more. And it wasn't as if Alvin would be missed, Forrester told himself. It was clear from one look at the lout that no one, anywhere, for any reason, would miss Alvin if he were exploded ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... effecting the improvement of the colony, and, at the same time, their own condition, must be looked for among the English and Scotch farmers; these cannot fail. To such we would recommend not to encumber themselves, and incur a great and unnecessary expense, by carrying out live-stock from home, but to take them from the Cape of Good Hope. At Algoa Bay, which is perfectly safe for six months in the year, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various

... the stress is past, and the aid no longer necessary, overwhelming the sufferers with caresses. I will not stand by and see my fellow-man drowning, without stretching out a hand to help him, till he has, by his own efforts and presence of mind, reached the shore in safety, and then encumber him with aid. With suffering Greece, now is the crisis of her fate—her great, it may be her last struggle. Sir, while we sit here deliberating, her destiny may be decided. The Greeks, contending with ruthless ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... The true truth about the cactuses runs just the other way; they are all stem and no leaves; what look like leaves being really joints of the trunk or branches, and the foliage being all dwarfed and stunted into the prickly hairs that dot and encumber the surface. All plants of very arid soils—for example, our common English stonecrops—tend to be thick, jointed, and succulent; the distinction between stem and leaves tends to disappear; and the whole weed, accustomed ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... absurd fashion of converting the ancient leather girdle, meant to support the waist, into a kind of heavy padded band, studded with gilded ornaments and precious stones, and apparently invented expressly to encumber the person wearing it. Other contemporary writers, and amongst these Pope Urban V. and King Charles V. (Fig. 422), inveigh against the poulaines, which had more than ever come into favour, and which were only considered correct in ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and industrious race;—copyists with their heart. The common painter-copyists who encumber our European galleries with their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. The real copyists—the men who can put their soul into another's work—are employed at ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... time Don Alfonso was arrived, With torches, friends, and servants in great number; The major part of them had long been wived, And therefore paused not to disturb the slumber Of any wicked woman, who contrived By stealth her husband's temples to encumber: Examples of this kind are so contagious, Were one not punished, all would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... to man's encumber'd hours The tuneful joys of truth serene, And twined our life's neglected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... perspiration, breathing hard, he kept up a steady pace for, so he thought, an hour, after which he walked a mile or two, and then broke into a run again. The grass was short; he struck no brush, and the ax did not encumber him. He imagined that dawn must be getting near when a dazzling flash swept the prairie and there was a long reverberatory rumbling overhead. He was almost blinded and bewildered, doubly uncertain where he was going; and then a great stream of white ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... the man, slept or wept: these doubtfull speaches were vsed much in the old times by their false Prophets as appeareth by the Oracles of Delphos and and of the Sybille prophecies deuised by the religious persons of those dayes to abuse the superstitious people, and to encumber their busie braynes with vaine hope or ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... last. And so notorious is all this, that the corruptions of Christianity, as years rolled on, have ever been to assimilate it to the other religions of the earth; to abate its spirituality; to relax its austere code of morals; to commute its proper claims for external observances; to encumber its ritual with an infinity of ceremonies; and, above all, to uncover the future and invisible, on which it left a veil, and add a purgatory into the bargain! Thus, whether contrasted with other religions or with its corrupted self, Christianity ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... a vision, that flits in a luminous haze, Of figures forever eluding the gaze; It fleets through the doorway, it gleams on the glass, And the weird words pursue it—Rouge, Impair, et Passe! Like a sound borne in sleep through such dreams as encumber With haggard emotions the wild wicked slumber Of some witch when she seeks, through a nightmare, to grab at The hot hoof of the fiend, on ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... far from being one, Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass, The mere material with which Wisdom builds, Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, Wisdom is humble that he ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... distinction, if observation did not force the faults he avoided so perpetually upon our notice. He had no verbiage. We do not merely mean by this that he never used a superfluous word (which, in fact, he rarely did), but that he kept quite clear of the hazy, half-relevant ideas which encumber meaning and are the chief source of prolixity. He threw away every idea that did not decidedly help on his argument, and expressed the others in the fewest words that would make them clear. He began at once where the pith of his argument began; and had the secret, possessed by few writers, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... intermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the agregation and the doctorat, there are four years, and naturally we shall want three examinations just to see how the future professor is getting on with his theses, to encumber him with assistance and to prevent him doing them alone; first examination called the Bibliography of the Theses for the Doctorat, second examination called the Methodology of the Doctorat, third examination called ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... the Christian doctrine of redemption, is monstrous. There is no proof that Abel know anything about it. The probabilities lean all the other way. It is a pity those self-satisfied theorizers have not something else to do, than to encumber religion and perplex good ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... rest, could one not proclaim Martial Law? Not easily; for now, it seems, Mayor Petion is gone. On the other hand, our Interim Commandant, poor Mandat being off, 'to the Hotel-de-Ville,' complains that so many Courtiers in black encumber the service, are an eyesorrow to the National Guards. To which her Majesty answers with emphasis, That they will obey all, will suffer all, that they are sure ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber officers at ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... the wedding Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... below the hole they have been working in all night. These sawyers form a fine feast for the woodpeckers, and jointly they assist in promoting the rapid decomposition of the gigantic forest- trees, that would otherwise encumber the earth from age to age. How infinite is that Wisdom that rules the natural world! How often do we see great events brought about by seemingly insignificant agents! Yet are they all servants of the Most High, working his will, and fulfilling his behests. One great want ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... temporal existence. Then, of course, the obeah, the cannibalism, the devil-worship of the whole world, including that of Hayti, which Mr. Froude predicts will be adopted by us Blacks in the West Indies, shall no more encumber and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... friend! say I; the friend who will encumber himself with the responsibility of thinking what's to become of you, when you are down in the world. Those tender-hearted souls who can't bear to think of your misfortunes are a much more numerous ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... this Paulinus objected, saying they ought to wait, and not immediately after a journey engage men who would have been standing in their arms and arranging themselves for battle at their leisure, whilst they were making a long march with all their beasts of burden and their camp followers to encumber them. As the generals were arguing about this matter, a Numidian courier came from Otho with orders to lose no time, but give battle. Accordingly they consented, and moved. As soon as Caecina had notice, he was much surprised, and quitted his post on the river to hasten to the camp. In the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Thousand men in blue, I think they said was the number,— Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,— Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet, And then ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends' friends, and so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He packed a portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required, and then took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... smaller knife is often slung on behind. In ordinary times, a yataghan or pistol may be dispensed with; but whatever may be the occupation of man or boy, the gun is never left behind, whether ploughing, or cutting wood, or carrying the heaviest burdens. It is almost extraordinary that they should thus encumber themselves, as, within their own boundary, none are so safe, and their mountains seldom afford them a living mark. I believe it arises very much from a fondness for the weapon. The greatest care is taken of it, and it undergoes a complete cleaning after every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... Marquis, I will state the facts in a few words, without going into particulars. Thanks to an expedient devised by me, we shall obtain for twenty hours a release from all the mortgages that now encumber your estates. On that very day we will request a certificate from the recorder. This certificate will declare that your estates are free from all encumbrances; you will show this statement to M. de Chalusse, and all his doubts—that is, if he has any—will ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... a race of bold and fierce naval adventurers, as the Anglo-Saxons themselves had been two centuries before. Most extraordinary accounts are given of their hardihood, and of their fierce and predatory habits. They haunted the bays along the coasts of Sweden and Norway, and the islands which encumber the entrance to the Baltic Sea. They were banded together in great hordes, each ruled by a chieftain, who was called a sea king, because his dominions scarcely extended at all to the land. His possessions, his power, his subjects pertained all ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... and that this supposed continent must be another Indies. Both of these fancies being now sufficiently overthrown by the investigations of our immortal Cook, and other modern navigators, it were useless to encumber our pages with such ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... souvenirs! I know there are a number Who stuff their homes with memories of dread; The ancient hat-stand in the hall encumber With Pickelhaubes and delight to slumber With heaps of nasty nose-caps round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various

... representing successive periods and dynasties from 2500 B. C. to 1600 A. D., encumber the plains immediately surrounding the city of Delhi, within a radius of eighteen or twenty miles; and you cannot go in any direction without passing through the ruins of stupendous walls, ancient fortifications ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... own keeping in the armoury, where 'tis right they should be; for men of peace, as these most surely are, encumber not themselves with ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... said a thousand things in his justification. But without believing the half of his fine protestations, we felt very happy in having overtaken him; for it is most certain they had had no intention of encumbering themselves with our unfortunate family. I say encumber, for it is evident that four children, one of whom was yet at the breast, were very indifferent beings to people who were actuated by a selfishness without all parallel. When we were seated in the long-boat, my father ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,— As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';— Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';— Or such ambiguous giving out, to ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... your bikes and go ahead. Tell the refugees you meet to pull to the right and not encumber the whole road. We're rushing a wounded man to the hospital. When I think you've got the way clear I'll drive on full speed. Tell our carts to head for Melun and keep on going till they get there. I can't bother with them. We'll meet ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... awhile," answered Olfan. "Take this," and he handed Leonard the spear of the third captain, who had left it when he started down the mountain, fearing that it might encumber him, "and drive him along with you at its point. Should we be overpowered, you may buy your lives as the price of his. But should we hold them back and you escape, then do with him what ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... in earnest, madam?" said the doctor, opening his eyes. "Would you really encumber yourself with a person whose reason is in suspense, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... to the end of my life, I shall be a desolate, miserable, broken-hearted woman. Can you understand, now, the valuelessness of my riches, and how desolate my splendid house must seem to me? They have been given me for no useful purpose here or hereafter; they encumber me, and do no good to others. Who is to have them when I die? Hospitals and schools? I hate the medical profession, and I am against the education of the poor. I think it the great evil of the day, and I would not leave a penny of mine to such ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... should have been too late," Count Charles replied. "We lost no time when your messenger came, Guy, but it took some time to rouse the men-at-arms and to saddle our horses. You must have made a stout defence indeed, judging by the pile of dead that encumber ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... made the suggestion that probably his brother had died in infancy. 'The conclusion I have arrived at, after years of legal work,' he said, 'is that the undesirable person lives, while the useful or much wanted one dies. Those who encumber the ground remain longest upon it, and the person in receipt of a large annuity or pension is proverbially long-lived. However, we have so far not found a single trace of the existence of Edward Ogilvie, though you must remember we have not yet ascertained in which different parts of Spain ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... overweight you—nor encumber your memory with pledges— these two and no more. And here we part. See what it is to sin against society. I, whom your conversation has so interested, to whom your company is so agreeable—in one word, I, who love you, can find no kinder word to say to you to-day than this—let me never ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... had the sense to put a finger to her lip. The man wheel'd round without another word, led us aft over the blocks, cordage, and all manner of loose gear that encumber'd the deck, to a ladder that, toward the stern, led down into darkness. Here he sign'd to us to follow; and, descending first, threw open a door, letting out a faint stream of light in our faces. 'Twas the captain's cabin, lin'd with cupboards and lockers: and the light came from an oil lamp ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... of the first degree is to symbolize the struggles of a candidate groping in darkness for intellectual light, that of the second degree represents the same candidate laboring amid all the difficulties that encumber the young beginner in the attainment of learning and science. The Entered Apprentice is to emerge from darkness to light; the Fellow Craft is to come out of ignorance into knowledge. This degree, ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh

... feel his advantage. Anxious to keep his means of further defence in the best condition, he directed all the guns to cease, and the damages to be repaired. Then he went with a party toward the boat that had fallen into his hands. To encumber himself with prisoners of any sort, in his actual situation, would have been a capital mistake, but to do this with wounded men would have been an act of folly. The boat had tourniquets and other similar appliances in it, and he directed some ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... read. I am all of a tremble. What a tale! What a— But why encumber these sheets with words of mine? I will insert the letter and let it tell its own portion of the strange and terrible history which time is slowly unrolling ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... For safety and for succour. I alone, With bended bow, and quiver full of arrows, Hover'd about the enemy, and mark'd The road he took; then hasted to my friends; Whom, with a troop of fifty chosen men, I met advancing. The pursuit I led, Till we o'ertook the spoil encumber'd foe. We fought—and conquer'd. Ere a sword was drawn, An arrow, from my bow, had pierc'd their chief, Who wore, that day, the arms which now I wear. Returning home in triumph, I disdain'd The shepherd's slothful ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... in London that night, and, the next day, being singularly fine for an English summer, he resolved to go to Moleswich on foot. He had no need this time to encumber himself with a knapsack; he had left sufficient change of dress in his lodgings ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... its difficulties, but they vanish when compared with those which encumber its rivals. There are various facts in science obviously connected, and whose connections we are unable to trace; but we do not think of filling the gap between them by the intrusion of a separable spiritual agent. In like manner though we are ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... this eccentric proceeding: he wants to make us all happy, especially my mother, without seeming to lay us under too great an obligation. Surely good-nature was never carried so far before; ha, ha! Monsieur, I will encumber you with my friendship forever, if you permit me, but farther than that I will not abuse ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... to be disguised that the organization of our judicial system is at once a difficult and delicate task. To extend the circuit courts equally throughout the different parts of the Union, and at the same time to avoid such a multiplication of members as would encumber the supreme appellate tribunal, is the object desired. Perhaps it might be accomplished by dividing the circuit judges into two classes, and providing that the Supreme Court should be held by these classes alternately, the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... overpowering knowledge of the world which only comes with the experience of twenty-five, and to this he superadded the active imagination of a newspaper man. A plot to rob the bank? These mysterious absences, that luggage which he doubted not was empty and intended for spoil! But why encumber herself with the two children? Here his common sense and instinct of the ludicrous returned and ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... after defeating all the others, Dame Garsende has recourse to a stratagem to overcome him, which fails in regard to him, but overwhelms her son in confusion, and causes his defeat: she cuts the cord of a canopy under which the knight has to pass, in the hope that it will fall in his way, and encumber his advance; but he adroitly catches it on the end of his spear, and Odon, in falling from his horse after the knight's attack, gets entangled in the garlands and drapery, and makes a very ridiculous figure. Of course ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... began to work away with might and main. The water quickly came up in a clear, bright stream, which told too plainly, without their sounding the well, the large amount of water which had either leaked in or found its way below. They had left their coats and shoes in the cabin, everything that would encumber them, in case they should be washed from their hold. The waves rose up around them, the spray in dense showers dashing every instant over their heads, and almost blinding them when it struck them in the face. Still undaunted they stood ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... thou thus insatiable? why thus unreasonable? why encumber the world?—"Aye, but I fain would have my wife and children with me too."—What, are they then thine, and not His that gave them—His that made thee? Give up then that which is not thine own: yield it to One who is better than ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... Edward Law's expense. "Lord Ellenborough," says the 'Table-Talk,' "was once about to go on circuit, when Lady Ellenborough said that she should like to accompany him. He replied that he had no objection provided she did not encumber the carriage with bandboxes, which were his utter abhorrence. During the first day's journey Lord Ellenborough, happening to stretch his legs, struck his foot against something below the seat; he discovered that it was a bandbox. Up went the window, and out went the bandbox. The coachman ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... and reporting determined the whole tenor of his life. It was to shield this duty from invasion and distraction that he dwelt in the country, that he consistently declined to entangle himself with associations or to encumber himself with functions which, however he might believe in them, he felt were duties for other men and not for him. Even the care of his garden, "with its stoopings and fingerings in a few yards of space," he found "narrowing and poisoning," and took to long free walks and saunterings instead, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... casual notices of travellers, who seem to have tasted it, and sometimes not to have liked it: a Russian ambassador, in 1639, who resided at the court of the Mogul, declined accepting a large present of tea for the Czar, "as it would only encumber him with a commodity for which he had no use." The appearance of "a black water" and an acrid taste seems not to have recommended it to the German Olearius in 1633. Dr. Short has recorded an anecdote of a stratagem of the Dutch in their second voyage to China, by which they at first obtained ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... it," said the other, "for we are short of seats; and when you leave us, the one you now encumber with your carcass will be occupied by some ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... against the Turk. One condition was attached to the bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on the Piazza of St. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the proud republic had never accorded a similar honor, nor did they choose to encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded the condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco, where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, to the purpose. Here accordingly the finest bronze ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... height and depth as far as it extended, and displayed in its precincts, at a little distance from the course of the stream, the towering and lordly castle to which it gave the name. The mist which continued to encumber the valley with its fleecy clouds, showed imperfectly the rude fortifications which served to defend the small town of Douglas, which was strong enough to repel a desultory attack, but not to withstand ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... Chaucer, there comes in, provoked by that unlucky repentance, an expatiating and arguing review of the now extinct quarrel, showing a liberty and vigour of thought that agree ill with the threatening cloud of dissolution, and somewhat overlay and encumber the proper business to which the dying man has now turned himself—made imperative by the occasion—the formal and energetic eulogy on Palamon. The praise, however, is bestowed at last, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... Doors open out of it to the right and left. A table stands in the centre of the room. Trunks and boxes encumber the floor, and preparations for departure are evident. TRIGORIN is sitting at a table eating his breakfast, and ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... last night. I am in no danger there. But I know a man, Jessie,—a man I think much of, too,—who is very much drawn to one of those ladies. He has confessed as much to me. What advice shall I give him? He is a man that can please himself; he has abundant means, and no ties to encumber him." ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... retreat. And accordingly retreat seems to have been at once determined on. As a first step, the whole fleet, except some dozen vessels, was burned, since twelve was a sufficient number to serve as pontoons, and it was not worth the army's while to encumber itself with the remainder. They could only have been tracked up the strong stream of the Tigris by devoting to the work some 20,000 men; thus greatly weakening the strength of the armed force, and at the same time hampering its movements. Julian, in sacrificing his ships, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... the forts of Matagorda and Puntales, affords generally good anchorage, and contains a harbour formed by a projecting mole, where vessels of small burden may discharge. The entrance to the bays is rendered somewhat dangerous by the low shelving rocks (Cochinos and Las Puercas) which encumber the passage, and by the shifting banks of mud deposited by the Guadalete and the Rio Santi Petri, a broad channel separating the Isla de Leon from the mainland. At the mouth of this channel is the village of Caracca; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... entirely of the present day, presents, in contrast with the Louis XV. gallantries, a charming collection of mahogany furniture; it resembles a boudoir; the bookshelves are full, but the fascinating trivialities of a woman's existence encumber it; in the midst of which an inquisitive eye perceives with uneasy surprise pistols, a narghile, a riding-whip, a hammock, a rifle, a man's blouse, tobacco, pipes, a knapsack,—a bizarre combination ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... particular reading was retained, or through how many editions it ran. It is to be assumed, however, that it was retained in all intermediate editions till the next change of text is stated. It would encumber the notes with too many figures if, in every instance in which a change was made, the corresponding state of the text in all the other editions was indicated. But if no new reading follows the text quoted, it is to be taken for granted that the reading in question was continued in every ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight



Words linked to "Encumber" :   throttle, restrain, bound, constrain, bridle, trammel, curb, cumber, clog, restrict



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