"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Yes, what's all the pother?" Here Klimka bursts out Like a cannon exploding. The others are scratching Their necks, and reflecting: "It's true! What's amiss?" "Come, drink, little 'Earthworms,' Come, drink and be merry! 221 All's well—as we'd have it, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... social diseases, over which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... worry, did not influence him. His reason did not influence him, nor his personal danger. He saw a large hook in the wall to which he could cling when the exquisite crash came, and pictured a welter of broken machinery and timber ten feet below him, and the immense pother that the affair would create ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... not last for long. But this grave pother that's just now agog May reach such radius in its consequence As to outspan our lives! Yes, Bonaparte And Alexander—late such bosom-friends— Are closing to a mutual murder-bout At which the lips of Europe will wax wan. Bonaparte says the fault is not with him, And so ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... massacrant trivialities of the Italian part of Grandison. But he had it here: and it is not a fair argument to say (as even in these days I have known it said) that Pamela's honour is a commodity of too little importance to justify such a pother ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Sarkantyus, and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague was raging ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment not to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... puzzle. The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where he stood ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... wait on, always holding himself discreetly aloof from the middle breadth of the picture, until the officiating clergyman had done with his sacred offices; would wait until the white-faced wretch on whose account the government was making all this pother and taking all this trouble, had mumbled his farewell words this side of eternity; would continue to wait, very patiently, indeed, until the warden nodded to him. Then, with his trussing harness tucked under his arm, and the black ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Put aside her artful pother to rouse excitement at stages of a narrative, London's general eye upon little Croridge was but another instance of the extraordinary and not so wonderful. Lady Arpington, equal to a Parliament in herself, spoke of the place and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the end of May they will be compelled to do so; and that altogether the Government will insist on getting 200,000 men from this source. The German General Staff will be surprised to learn that our requirements are so modest, and will wonder, as we do, what all the pother is about. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... "What a pother for a bed of flowers!" I hear you say, "draining, subsoiling, sulphuring, sanding, covering, humouring, and then sunstroke or consumption at the end!" So be it, but when success does come, it is something worth while, for to be successful with these lilies is "aiming ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... deem me not absurd That I should thank thee for so apt a word. 'Tis thus that Modesty our language trims: Where men say "legs" she softly whispers "limbs." And, while they fume and rage in angry pother, Stills the big D—— and substitutes a "bother." Speaks not of "trousers"—that were sin and shame; "Continuations" is the gentler name. Turns "shirts" to "shifts," and, blushing like the rose, Converts the lowly stocking into "hose." Thus thou, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... I look back over my paper—lord! what a pother of writing about it and about! But my excuse is that many young lads and gay bachelors will read this tale, so I desire to import what of instruction I can into it. And not having the learning of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments on ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... city's growth, its splendour, size, "You're dying to be off," he cries; For all the while I'd been stock dumb. "I've seen it this half-hour. But come, Let's clearly understand each other; It's no use making all this pother. My mind's made up, to stick by you; So where you go, there I go, too." "Don't put yourself," I answered, "pray, So very far out of your way. I'm on the road to see a friend, Whom you don't know, that's near his end, Away beyond ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... whimsical, perverse, maddening in her sudden transitions of mood. And she had threatened more than once to have nothing more to do with him unless he mended his ways! Now he smiled triumphantly as he gazed upon her. All that pother about nothing! Henceforth he would pay no attention to her whims; let her rail and fume and lecture as much as she liked, there was nothing for him to be worried about. She would always come round like a lamb,—and when she was his for keeps he would ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Irish situation in which a British government seemed determined to make itself as un-English as possible. If there had not been the patriotic urge to assert our essential Americanism more strongly than ever, there still would have been a reaction against all the pledging and the handshaking, the pother about blood and water, the purple patches in every newspaper asserting Anglo-Saxonism against the world. I remember my own nervousness when, in 1918, after the best part of a year in England, in England's darkest days, I came ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... difference! In Adolphe a coal from the altar of true passion has touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate pother to strike some sort of light and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint is clay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow of brand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothing but rhetoric and fustian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... morn, met Master Cupid; They stood a moment, as though stupid, Until they recognised each other. They complimented with some pother, When Time overtook them in his walk, And then all three fell into talk Of what each one had done for man. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... to let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and Mr. JOHN FOSTER'S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such a subtlety. All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as well as bright eyes, and with more than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to appear at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Sure, the pother o' life. It's an' up an' down, so fast it makes a body dizzy in their wits. That boy, Fayetty, one day as good as a fine fish o' Friday; the next—eatin' me heart out with the worry. Never a doubt I doubt 'twas himself belabored the old man on his road home. There's ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... "shure, an' I thought ye cuddent make cake. Now, why did ye thry, an' put all in such a pother? Belikes ye want to make ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice. Close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry These dreadful ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... was left in a shabby way To Marcadee, with an abbot to pray And pother with "consolation," Reminding 'twas never too late to search For mercy, and hinting that Mother Church Was never known to leave in the lurch A king with a fat donation. But the abbot was known to Richard well, As one who would smoothen the road ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... hotch-pot[obs3]; imbroglio, chaos, omnium gatherum[Lat], medley; mere mixture &c. 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra[Lat], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat][Ovid]. complexity &c. 59a. turmoil; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder[obs3], pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour[obs3], scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb [baseball], fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have been gratified could he have seen the posthumous pother that he made by dying at this juncture. For in life he had only been important in his own eyes, and the world had taken little heed of him. This same keen-sighted world would not regret him much now and would assuredly mete out to that miserly old screw, his widow, only as much sympathy as the occasion ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... George Gordon: wrote to a friend the ship he was coming home in—Morning Star. It was the same; price on G.G.'s head to this day: shouldn't mind getting it. Needn't pother over it, sir; 'twas Gordon: but he'd never put his foot ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... acutely. Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... have us bested to take care of two instead of one, and my lady, moreover, in a pother about her son, and Sir Lancelot stirred to make a hue and cry all the more? No, no, sir, bide in peace in the safe homestead where you are sheltered, and learn to be a man, minding your exercises as well as may be till ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truth, a dawning perception of the possibilities of this kind of reasoning chilled the enthusiasm of the Aryan-hunters a good deal; it was the bare bodkin that did quietus make for much philological pother and rout. No; if you are to prove racial superiority or exclusiveness, you had much better avail yourself of the simplicity of a stout bludgeon, than rely upon the subtleties of brain-mind argumentation; for time past is long, and mostly hidden; and lots of things have happened ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... that," said the captain, "I know nothing about him. But he came to your factor and wanted to take the first ship that cleared, and seemed in such a mortal pother that Mr. Horsley suspicioned something, and gave me a slant to look out for him. And all the time we lay off Bristol, my fine fellow kept himself well out ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... so, for while all stood gaping and jeering as they fished out the sputtering hero from his pea-green bath, I sauntered back unheeded to the place where last I had seen her for whose sake all the pother arose. At first I feared she had fled, but on looking I spied her in company with an elderly woman, who soothed and chid her in turn, and began to hurry her from ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... pother about nothing. She's all right. They're in a very healthy place; a little seaside village, where it has been quite cool, they say, so far. And they will return before long, because they mean to spend the autumn in Scotland. Yes, they say it is 'quite cool' at present. Don't see how it can ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Was it round?—and thick?—and had it letters and devices graved upon it?—yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it lies; but it was not I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to express my gratification. 'Twas a mysterious business altogether—this whim to make the Shining Light ready for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and tackle and hammer and saw? 'Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle's faith in the lad he had nourished was got real and large. 'Twas not for that he bred me; but 'twas the only reward—and that a mean, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... groom, "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? Ye are not he that was bespoken ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the beach and seemed to try to embrace the earth, possess it. But it fell away baffled. Over its subsiding pother sprang a new wave with the same bosomful of desire and the same frantic clutching here and there—the same rebuff, the same destruction under the surge of the next and the next. The descending night gave a strange ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hair-splitting he solemnly pronounces it "psychologically possible."[171] LeGrand points out[172] that his change of heart is not a conversion, but merely a professed reconciliation to the loss. But there is no need for all this pother. The simple truth is that Plautus was through with his humorous complication and was ready to top it off with a happy ending. It is the forerunner of modern musical comedy, where the grouchy millionaire papa is propitiated at the last moment (perhaps by the pleadings of the handsome widow), ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this pother—for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler's invasion of the Tavora nunnery—and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece; but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother about it." ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... stingy old father, who permitted her to get into the scrape, would come up like a man and pay what he ought to pay, there would be no more pother about this business. He hasn't lived up to his bargain. The—Mr. Pless has squandered the first million and now he wants the balance due him. A trade's a trade, John. The old man ought to pay up. He went into it with his eyes open, and I haven't ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... there had been many rooks in the trees beyond the wall of Holy Innocents, between it and the Brewery. But, gazing aloft, he saw that these were sea-gulls, wheeling and mewing and making a mighty pother. And then—O wonder!—as he rubbed his eyes he looked up at a tall cliff, a wall of rock rising sheer, and a good hundred feet from its base where the white water was breaking. The boat had ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The sheep bleat in their desolate pasture. The wind shakes the house. A loon, seeking, I suppose, some quieter resting-place than on the troubled waves, was seen swimming just now in the cove not more than a hundred yards from the hotel. Judging by the pother which this "half a gale" makes with the sea, it must have been a terrific time, indeed, when that great wave rushed and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of shimmering blue with her small ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... missing section of Jan's right ear; but, short of that, he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Brand, Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; having nothing but the various Readings on a ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hisself in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, "Well, well, well!" jus' as everybody ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... her brows and shrugged impatient shoulders. Here was a deal of pother about a trifling affair. "His lordship saw you as he entered, sir, and inquired of me who you ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... much noise as they choose, for their own pleasure," said Philip, laughing, as the report of the culverins, which startled the colonists from their sleep, were heard; "but it is only a useless pother, and a vain rubbing of drowsy eyes. I should like to see how valiant Captain Endicott will look, when he finds that the bird ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... "But why all this pother? Why not let me send a knave or two and knock the fellow some dark night in the head? It will save ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... toiling to provide our meat and bread! Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... don't 'old with me there—I 'ad something of an upset the other day when a gentleman came in—a titled man, too, he was, and I think he told me he'd wrote on the topic, and I 'appened to cite out something about 'Ercules and the painted cloth. Dear me, you never see such a pother. But as to this, what you've kindly confided to us, it's a piece of work we shall take a reel enthusiasm in achieving it out to the very best of our ability. What man 'as done, as I was observing only a few weeks back to another ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... could wait if Marka were the only disquieting feature. But what about Taghati and the Russian activity? What on earth is going on or about to go on in this square inch of mountain land to make all the pother? If it is a tribal war on a first-class scale then we must know about it, for it is in the highest degree our concern too. If it is anything else, things look more than doubtful. All the rest I don't mind. It's open and obvious, and we are on the alert. But that little bit of frontier there ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... said of his Majesty that he was delighted to see his courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless, cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... some Hungarians. A fracas was always conducted with rapiers and daggers in those days, and must have been a picturesque, if inconvenient, event. It was all about a lady too, which sounds quite likely: it was said that she was not worth all the pother: this is the sort of thing some people would say. As a consequence of this fracas several Bohemians were executed for robbery with violence, which sheds a different light on the incident, but I do not think it matters much ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... like a drum. Mme. Janouschoffsky, an exceedingly capable artist, was the Santuzza, Mrs. Pemberton Hincks the Lola, Mrs. Jennie Bohner the Lucia, Payne Clarke the Turiddu, and Herman Gerold the Alfio. While all this pother was making, "Cavalleria Rusticana" was already three weeks old in Philadelphia, where Mr. Gustav Hinrichs had brought it forward with his American company at the Grand Opera House; Minnie Hauk, with a company of her ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... my own peart, measter," continued this charitable publican, "I believes as how they are no better than they should be, else they wouldn't be in such a deadly fear of being overtaken. Methinks, said I, when I saw them in such a woundy pother to be gone, oddsheartlikins! this must be some London 'prentice running away with his measter's daughter, as sure as I'm a living soul. But, be he who he will, sartain it is, a has nothing of the gentleman about en; for, thof a asked such a favour, a never once put hand in pocket, or said, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall trouble me. And in the end your happiness is ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... tolerate at the hands of disreputable exquisites and titled rascals.' Nervous words, but not undeserved. 'How much more rapidly a fashionable foreigner will move in the high road of preferment than one of your thinking, feeling, complex persons, in whom honor, integrity and reason make such a pother that no step can be taken without consulting them!' . . . WE have indulged in one or two sonorous guffaws, and several of Mr. COOPER's 'silent laughs,' over the following 'palpable hit' from a New-Jersey journal: 'A talking-machine,' says the 'Newton Herald,' 'which speaks ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling on the edge, as if its teeth ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... yet he could hardly help smiling at the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if I lose my passage to Boston, you ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
